Parker pitches Sooners past Sun Devils, Gators
OKLAHOMA CITY — Things returned to normal for Paige Parker on Saturday at the Women’s College World Series. She made doubly sure of that. The Oklahoma senior pitcher threw a pair of two-hit shutouts as the Sooners won 2-0 twice in the losers bracket, eliminating Arizona State in the afternoon and Florida in the evening to keep the program’s hopes of a third straight national championship intact.
Parker entered the week with a WCWS career mark of 8-0, but she lost to Washington on Thursday despite giving up just one run. Against Arizona State, she threw 78 pitches and struck out seven.
“Today was just going out there giving my team a chance to win,” Parker said afterward. “Defense was fantastic today. The last couple of innings, I knew I needed to step it up a notch and really go into shutdown mode and try to be efficient today and go after hitters and stay ahead in counts.”
Against the Gators (56-11), Parker threw 104 pitches and struck out eight.
Oklahoma (56-4) has won three of the past five national titles, with Florida taking the other two. UCLA is the only program to win three straight national titles, but the Sooners will have to beat Washington (518) twice today to reach the bestof-three championship series that’s set to start Monday.
Against Arizona State, Jocelyn Alo homered in the third inning and Lea Wodach’s sixth-inning single drove in the other run.
Arizona State starter Giselle Juarez lost despite giving up just one run and four hits in four innings, a disappointing end for the Sun Devils (48-13) in their first WCWS trip since 2013.
“You will see us here again,” Juarez said. “We’re a really gritty team, and we’re excited because we see where we’re going.”
Against the Gators, Alo hit a monster homer into the wind in the first inning. She leads the nation this season and has tied the Division I single-season freshman record reached most recently by Oklahoma’s Lauren Chamberlain in 2012.
Caleigh Clifton scored in the fifth inning with the bases loaded and two outs, coming home when the batter struck out but the ball got away from the catcher.
› Florida State 7, Georgia 2
Zoe Casas had two hits and knocked in three runs, and Meghan King gave up five hits in a complete game as Florida State ended Georgia’s season.
Florida State (53-12) moved on to another elimination game late Saturday night against Oregon (53-9), with the winner facing UCLA (58-5) today and needing two wins to reach the title series.
Casas hit an RBI double in the second and two-run single in the fourth to help the Seminoles jump out to a 4-0 lead.
Georgia (48-13) bounced back in the fifth when Justice Milz tripled to score two, but Florida State tacked on two more when Dani Morgan singled in the bottom of the inning.
Georgia scraped its way into the World Series despite losing ace Brittany Gray to a right biceps injury for the last half of the season. She led the nation with a 0.48 ERA and had a 16-1 record before having surgery.