Hawaii thumps USU in island softball action
USU softball was soundly defeated in Wednesday’s doubleheader against Hawaii at Hawaii’s LaRee and LeGrand Johnson softball field Wednesday afternoon, 12-4, 18-8.
In the second game, USU’s Kali Kaneshiro and Simone Hubbard hit two home runs apiece off Hawaii’s pitching staff. Hubbard hit her homers, both solo shots, in the second and fifth innings. Kaneshiro hit her homers in the third, at which time the game was still very much in contention, and the seventh, by which time the game had all but been decided.
Rachel Evans started out the third inning of the second game by taking an errant pitch in the back by Hawaii’s Paia Karnaby. Nicole Tindall followed up Evans, by sending a single to left field, placing Evans in scoring position at second. Carissa Millsap-Kabala called for Xiao Xue Chang to get the sacrifice bunt, which Chang executed with perfection. Then, Kaneshiro came to bat and hit a home run over the center field wall to bring in three runs with only one out in the inning. At that point, USU locked up the score at four apiece. Kaneshiro said she came to the plate with a load of confidence.
“I felt like I was seeing the ball really well,” she said, “and I had my team behind me, backing me up, so I felt like I had all the support in the world. I just saw the ball and hit it as hard as I could.”
Before the inning was out, USU managed to get one more run around and take a 5-4 lead.
The lead was short-lived, however. Hawaii’s batting was nothing short of superb in this doubleheader. In total, Hawaii amassed 32 hits over the 13 innings of the two games, averaging 2.46 hits per inning and 2.3 runs per inning. In these two games, Hawaii also hit nine home runs against the Aggie pitching staff, the worst stretch being in the top of the fourth inning of the second game. In that inning, USU pitcher Kate Greenough surrendered back-to-back solo jacks to the Wahine with two outs on the board. The Wahine had the Aggies’ number all afternoon in the batter’s box. By contrast, USU struggled to find a solid game at the plate, averaging 1.23 hits per inning and 0.92 runs per inning.
The relentless offensive pounding put on by the Wahine may not have been all that much of a bad thing, according to Millsap-Kabala.
“It’s a great example of a team that takes their hands to the ball and has the full plate covered,” she said. “It’s what I’ve been trying to get our players to do, so it’s great to have a perfect example and to see someone succeed from it. Now we can do that. If you look at the way Kali Kaneshiro and Simone Hubbard did that – I mean, they were up there drinking the Kool-Aid, covering the whole plate. Simone got two shots, Kelli got two shots and it’s good to jump on that bus. We can learn and we can move forward from this.”
Kaneshiro agreed with her coach on the statement that USU’s batting needed to be much better against a team with the offensive strength that Hawaii has.
“You’ve just got to play good defense and hit them back as hard as you can,” Kaneshiro said. “I guess a team that hits like that, you can’t do anything but hit like that back, so you’ve just got to fight as hard as you can with all you’ve got.”
Regardless of the scoring differential, the Aggies played a pair of decent offensive games. What did in the Utah women was the consistency of the Hawaii women to figure out USU’s pitching and produce offensively throughout the game. In particular, an extremely painful seventh inning in the second game erased all doubt of which team would come out on top, as Hawaii rattled off eight runs and put Wahine in front, 18-6.
Hawaii’s Mikalemi Tagab-Cruz started out the top of the seventh with a single to left field and was followed by a Amanda Tauali’i double down the right field line. With no outs in the inning, Greenough then delivered a pitch to Hawaii’s Katie Grimes who nearly hit the ball out of the park. The ball struck the top of the fence in left-center field, went straight up and just barely landed in play. Both Tagab-Cruz and Tauali’i scored, and that ended Greenough’s day. Shelbi Tyteca promptly replaced Greenough in the circle. Millsap-Kabala explained the reasoning behind the substitution.
“Kate (Greenough) worked so hard,” she said, “but it was the fifth time that the batters were coming around on her. If we have to face Hawaii in the WAC, why give them more pitches against Kate? She’s our go-to. There’s no sense in that. It’s a great opportunity for Shelbi to get some pitches against people that are covering the plate for her to learn how to do that, so that way if it ever falls on her again that she can have that experience.”
Hawaii continued its dominant ways against Tyteca, scoring six more runs before the inning was out. Tyteca, however, stood undaunted and continued to battle to the best of her abilities until the day was done. With the slimmest hope of redemption in the bottom of the seventh, Hawaii came out and left little to doubt. USU managed to score two off of Kaneshiro’s second homer and reduce the gap to 10 runs, but could do no more.
Next up for the Ags is a set of road games at second-place Fresno State. USU will take the first pitch Friday at 7 p.m. MST and will continue in a doubleheader to be played Saturday beginning at 2 p.m. MST. These games are the first three of eight straight on the road for USU.
– la.hem@aggiemail.usu.edu