Well after the last pitch of the game was thrown and the scoreboard was turned off, the Arizona Wildcats softball team stayed on the field, most of the players in tears.
Meanwhile, as Arizona State’s Marissa Schuld walked off Mike Candrea Field at Rita Hillenbrand Stadium, the sophomore was greeted by “perfect game” chants from fans.
With another dominating performance, No. 20 Arizona State completed a dominating three-game sweep of No. 14 Arizona with a run-rule 8-0 win on Sunday.
Once again, the Sun Devils (25-5, 6-0 Pac-12) produced on all cylinders with strong batting, pitching and an error-free defense in the five-inning win.
Schuld, who transferred from the Wildcats’ program after the shortened 2020 season, got the start for ASU in Game 3 of the series and went on to throw a perfect game — the first of the sophomore’s career.
Arizona (19-10, 0-6) had no answer.
Schuld, who recorded two strikeouts, said she was never really thinking of the perfect game. She was simply trying to perfect her pitches.
Either way, Schuld said it “felt good” to pitch a perfect game in the stadium where she got her collegiate career started.
“It definitely felt good, for sure,” Schuld said. “That’ll go in the books. And for my teammates to have my back like they did, making those great plays at the end — that felt good.”
For Arizona coach Caitlin Lowe, it didn’t matter who the Sun Devils put in the circle — she saw the game slip away “from the get go” from her batters.
At the end of the day, her team just didn’t bring what they needed, Lowe said.
“I don’t think, honestly, it could have mattered who was on the mound, I think we were grinding ourselves at the plate and just putting too much pressure,” Lowe said. “... We were just not in the right place mentally.”
With a six-game losing streak to start conference play and No. 9 Washington coming to Tucson next weekend, the games could start to feel daunting to the UA players. The Wildcats were outscored 15-0 at UCLA last weekend and 28-2 this weekend against ASU.
But Lowe said there’s a silver lining — there’s still plenty of games left to play. If this were the end of the season, it would be a completely different story. However, UA has 22 regular-season games left — 18 of them against Pac-12 teams — to try to right the ship.
Lowe believes the Wildcats have the tools to be successful. Now, it’s just a matter of getting the team’s mindset back on track.
For now, there’s a lot of frustration going around, the first-year coach said.
“Nobody sees it right now, (but) we went through our bumps last year to make us into the team that we were at the end of the year,” Lowe said. “And I think that is the perspective that we need right now is what team are we building towards? Not what team and what feeling we have right now, but how is this going to fuel our fire to get us to where we need to be.”
