What went down in the ninth week of NCAA softball? The aim each week is to bring you five stories that defined the week in college softball or help navigate the long road to Oklahoma City and the Women's College World Series.
Katiyana Mauga reaches 80 ... and keeps going
Softball would be a far less interesting experience without Lauren Chamberlain, the charismatic former Oklahoma slugger who broke the NCAA career home run record and continues to build a legion of fans like few in the sport. That said, a world without her would be one in which the spotlight on Tucson, Arizona, is brighter even than the desert sun above.
With nearly two weeks to spare before the second anniversary of Chamberlain tying former UCLA star Stacey Nuveman's old record of 90 career home runs, No. 3 Arizona's Katiyana Mauga hit her 80th home run in her team's 20-1 rout of Stanford on Friday. She then trotted out No. 81 a day later in a win and Nos. 82 and 83 to complete the sweep Sunday. Even assuming these Wildcats are as good as they look and may have as many as 25 games remaining, including an extended run in Oklahoma City, matching Chamberlain's 95 home runs is a stretch. But Mauga, who passed Sierra Romero and is now tied for seventh in NCAA history, is at least well positioned to make a run at Nuveman in second place.
Imagine the World Series scene if 90 were still the record and Mauga arrived one or two shy.
As pressing in our current reality is the amount of help Mauga has from what is shaping up as one of the best freshman classes in recent memory -- even when memory includes the group that helped Oklahoma win a national title a season ago. Jessie Harper, Dejah Mulipola and Alyssa Palomino, a redshirt freshman, combined to hit seven home runs and drive in 19 runs in the series against Stanford. Three of four first-year players who start regularly, they have 38 home runs between them, more than roughly 200 Division I teams had entering the weekend.
Scholar, slugger, star for Illinois
Nicole Evans received one of the more exclusive awards available to NCAA athletes, had a near-career day at the plate and helped Illinois move ever closer to what would be just the sixth NCAA tournament appearance in program history. It was a pretty good week.
Before the start of a weekend Big Ten series against Purdue, Evans was named the Arthur Ashe Jr. Female Sports Scholar of the Year, as awarded by the magazine Diverse: Issues in High Education. Now in its 25th year, the award, which recognizes one male and one female athlete, is based on athletic, academic and community service criteria and open across all NCAA sports and divisions. Evans is the first softball winner since Oklahoma State's Chelsea Garcia in 2012.
Evans then had a quiet start to the series against the Boilermakers, her teammates doing most of the run production in a 9-1 win Friday. But it was all Evans a day later. The Illini already down by four runs after the top of the first inning, her sacrifice fly got them on the board to begin a rally. Her double in the third inning drove in two runs to cut the deficit to 4-3. She singled and scored on Stephanie Abello's home run in the fifth inning that put Illinois ahead for the first time. And Evans provided the exclamation point with a grand slam in the sixth inning for an 11-4 win.
The day's work: three hits, seven total bases, a sacrifice fly and six RBIs. Then she provided the walk-off winner with a single in the series finale Sunday, just for good measure.
With only Minnesota and Michigan ranked higher among Big Ten teams in the most recent RPI, the immediate future looks bright for the Illini. The long-term future looks good for Evans.
Alabama survives Bailey Landry
No. 11 Alabama never did solve No. 8 LSU's Bailey Landry this past weekend. But neither has the rest of the country when it comes to the senior outfielder still hitting .515 more than 40 games into the season while playing in the deepest conference in the country.
What Alabama did solve was the rest of the LSU lineup.
Landry had seven hits in the three-game series against Alabama pitchers Alexis Osorio and Sydney Littlejohn. The rest of the Tigers had five against the only two pitchers the Tide used. That was still nearly enough, LSU leading the decisive series finale on the road as late as the fourth inning. But there was no answer when the Tide rallied from that deficit for a 4-2 win.
It was a big week for offense in the SEC -- No. 5 Texas A&M's Riley Sartain proving almost as difficult to retire as Landry in a non-conference series against Oklahoma State, Ole Miss scoring double digits to swipe a game away from No. 6 Auburn and No. 17 Tennessee's Scarlet McSwain driving in 10 runs during an eye-catching road sweep at No. 20 Kentucky. But coming off a series loss at Missouri a week earlier, Osorio and Littlejohn delivered quality inning after inning in the circle for a team with a schedule over the final month that made this series one Alabama really needed to win.
Rachel Garcia ends Oregon's streak
Rachel Garcia, meet Morgan William. A week after William, the Mississippi State point guard, ended one memorable winning streak with a shot against Connecticut on the basketball court, No. 12 UCLA's Garcia took it upon herself to bring a record streak to an end on the softball diamond.
The UCLA redshirt freshman threw a five-hit shutout in her team's 2-0 win over No. 1 Oregon on Friday, ending the Ducks' 35-game winning streak to open the season. Oregon and UCLA, circa 1999, are now tied for the longest winning streak to open a season. Three innings of shutout relief the next night earned Garcia a second win against the Ducks and clinched the series.
Garcia actually extended her own mini-streak to 12 consecutive shutout innings against Oregon when she started the series finale, but a six-run third inning chased her and put Oregon on its way to an 11-4 win. That creates an interesting statistical situation in which the Bruins were outscored in total the past two weeks (33-29) but emerged with four wins in six games against Oregon and Washington, another top-10 opponent.
In both cases, Garcia was outstanding in the series opener, effective in relief the following day but unable to hold out through a second start in the finale. That suggests UCLA is still searching for consistent depth beyond her in the rotation. But for now, she's the reason the Bruins are in much better shape than appeared possible after they were swept by Utah to open Pac-12 play.
James Madison's very Good player of the year candidate
The names of the 25 finalists for USA Softball Player of the Year will be released in the coming days, which makes Megan Good's week a rather timely reminder that few players in the country mean more in more ways to a program than the multi-purpose junior star does to No. 13 James Madison.
The week began with a six-inning two-hitter in a win against Virginia, the ACC program whose struggles are only magnified by the success of an in-state foe from the CAA with a homegrown talent like Good. The Cavaliers could take some solace from a doubleheader split, but only after Good went 3-for-4 with two RBIs as the designated player in the nightcap.
The full extent of the chess-piece nature of her existence came in Saturday's conference doubleheader against Towson. Good started the opening game and pitched a scoreless bottom of the first. But when an eight-run top of the second inning, including an RBI single from Good, pushed the lead to a commanding 11-0, coach Mickey Dean pulled her from pitching duties but kept her in the batting order as designated player. That allowed her to come back and start the second game almost fully rested. She responded with six shutout innings and allowed just one hit. On the day, she went 6-for-8 at the plate and drove in four runs.
It was only fair by then that her teammates provide a lift Sunday. A 13-run eighth inning secured the sweep and ensured Good, who didn't allow an earned run the previous seven innings in the circle and reached base twice as a hitter in the big inning, improved to 24-1.