Outside of football, the Pac-12’s two most anticipated and enduring rivalries are surely Arizona-UCLA in men’s basketball and Arizona-UCLA in softball.
Both are about to be diminished or silenced altogether.
Say it ain’t so, right?
From 1990-2012, Arizona won 48 softball games against the Bruins, replacing UCLA as America’s leading program. Part of the reason the UA built Hillenbrand Stadium 30 years ago — then the NCAA’s best softball facility — was to accommodate the demand for tickets to watch Mike Candrea’s team play (and routinely beat) the star-blessed Bruins.
But a lot has changed in 30 years. In this case, many of those changes haven’t been kind to the Wildcats.
When UCLA arrives at Hillenbrand this weekend to play its last scheduled softball series in Tucson, those aching to see Arizona beat the No. 2 Bruins one more time might be wise to modify their expectations.
Arizona is unranked in the current NCAA poll. The Wildcats are No. 42 nationally in RPI metrics.
More imposing, UCLA has gone 25-6 against Arizona since 2012. Most imposing, the Bruins swept Arizona last season 5-0, 3-0, 7-0 in Los Angeles, a historic and humbling sweep in which Arizona managed a mere five hits in 21 innings and was no-hit in Game 2.
UCLA might be better this year. Arizona might be worse.
History? The Wildcats enter Friday’s series opener on a seven-game Pac-12 losing streak. The school record for consecutive Pac-12 losses is eight, set last season.
Jennie Finch pitches to UCLA in a 2002 game at Hillenbrand. The Wildcats used to match the Bruins ace for ace, but in recent years UA has become a team that tries to outscore opponents.
Jennie Finch isn’t walking through the locker room door, nor is Candrea, who retired 20 months ago.
How did this happen? How did Arizona finish a career-worst 8-16 in the Pac-12 a year ago and now limps into the UCLA series at 3-9?
One word: pitching.
Once the center for college softball pitching excellence — from Susie Parra, Nancy Evans and Finch to Alicia Hollowell, Taryne Mowatt and Kenzie Fowler — Arizona has produced just one Pac-12 pitcher of the year since 2004. That was Danielle O’Toole, 2017.
Pitching rules college softball more than any position in any other sport except maybe quarterbacking. This year, there are those who believe the Pac-12 has its best stock of QBs since forever, with Oregon’s Bo Nix, Washington’s Michael Penix, USC’s Caleb Williams, Utah’s Cam Rising, Washington State’s Cameron Ward and Arizona’s Jayden de Laura.
The Pac-12’s collection of softball pitchers might be as good as the league’s group of QBs.
It begins with UCLA’s Megan Faraimo, 19-2, and Brooke Yanez, 11-1, and it continues to Stanford, long a Pac-12 bottom-feeder but now ranked No. 5 nationally. The Cardinal swept Arizona last weekend behind Alana Vawter, 14-3, and freshman sensation NiJaree Canady, 8-0, with 92 strikeouts in 51 innings.
This isn’t a revelation to anyone who has followed Arizona softball through the years.
UCLA’s Megan Faraimo is 19-2 with a 1.10 ERA for the No. 2-ranked Bruins.
The Pac-12 is so flush with pitching talent that in 2018, the league coaches voted seven pitchers — yes, seven — to the all-conference first team. They all seemed to deserve it: UCLA’s Rachel Garcia, Oregon’s Megan Kleist and Miranda Elish, Washington’s Taran Alvelo and Gabbie Plain, ASU’s Giselle Juarez and Arizona’s Taylor McQuillin.
Selecting so many pitchers to the all-conference team isn’t anything new.
The Pac-12 chose six pitchers to the first team in 2021 and 2022 — none from UA — and it appears as if six more are likely to be first-team selections this season: Faraimo, Canady, Vawter, Yanez, Oregon’s Stevie Hansen and Washington’s Ruby Meylan.
For the past decade, Arizona has painfully learned that unless you deploy an all-conference pitcher, you’re not going to win the Pac-12 championship. Hard to believe: Arizona has won just one Pac-12 softball championship since 2007.
It figures that O’Toole was the league’s 2017 pitcher of the year.
You could look up statistics and crunch the Pac-12’s offensive numbers over the past 30 years, and what you would find is that Arizona has been the league’s premier hitting school for three decades, even during the 2008-22 period in which it won a single league championship.
Candrea was and remains widely viewed as America’s leading softball hitting coach. That legacy continues today.
Even though it is 3-9 in conference games and in eighth place, Arizona ranks No. 1 in the conference in batting average (.346), runs scored (294, which is 48 more than any other Pac-12 team) and home runs (50).
Defensively, Arizona has been terrific. The Wildcats have been charged with just 17 errors, fewest in the league.
Yet they are on a seven-game conference losing streak, trying to climb out of eighth place.
Recruiting the nation’s leading high school pitchers and developing them into All-Americans is what has made the difference between UCLA and Arizona the last 15 years. Predictably, the Bruins have signed the nation’s No. 1 high school pitching prospect in the Class of 2023, Addisen Fisher of Bend, Oregon.
Arizona? Second-year coach Caitlin Lowe’s first full recruiting year produced lefty Ryan Maddox of California’s Clovis North High School. Maddox is generally ranked in the top five of all high school softball pitchers. This year she is 12-0 with 140 strikeouts in 74 innings.
At a time UCLA is preparing to leave the Pac-12 and end its softball rivalry with Arizona, Lowe is just getting started. She’s going to need her own Alicia Hollowell or Nancy Evans to get Arizona back to its long-held position as one of America’s leading softball precincts.
Ryan Maddox can’t get to Hillenbrand Stadium soon enough.
