AZTECS’ MAGICAL RUN COMES TO HALT

TEMPE, Ariz.

San Diego State softball coach Stacey Nuveman Deniz knows home runs. She left UCLA in 2002 with an NCAA career-record 90, and she remains the NCAA leader in average homers per game.

She saw four Sunday, two too many, when No. 5 and host Arizona State used a pair of go-ahead long balls to beat the Aztecs 8-4 to win the NCAA Tempe Regional with its second victory over the third-seeded Aztecs in two days.

“All in all, the focus is what this team has done and how proud I am of the season we put together,” said Nuveman Deniz, in her first season as head coach. “The belief and the sense of tribe was what I dreamed of when I wanted to become a head coach. This team made that a reality.”

The Aztecs (39-16) won two games in the regional and finished with the thirdbest winning percentage (.709) in school history.

“We’re going to have a hard time getting to this level every single year, but that’s the plan,” Nuveman Deniz said.

Mac Barbara and Alexa Schultz homered early for the Aztecs, who led 3-2. Barbara hit the sixth pitch of the game for her 18th homer in the first inning, and Schultz followed a two-run homer by Arizona State’s Cydney Sanders in its first with one of her own for a 3-2 lead in the

Arizona State 8, Aztecs 4

second.

The game turned on ASU cleanup hitter Jazmine Hill’s two-out, three-run homer — after a pitch-around walk to Sanders with a runner on first — that gave Arizona State a 5-3 lead in the third inning, all it would need.

“That’s the chess match,” Nuveman Deniz said. “Obviously, those big home runs … they were cheating (at the plate). It was like they knew what was coming. Tip your hat to them. They were prepared.”

Arizona State made it 8-3 with three runs in the fourth inning off Mountain West pitcher of the year Maggie Balint, who replaced sophomore starter Allie Light. Balint hit the first two batters she faced, then committed a throwing error on a bunt single to allow two runs to score.

Light, who threw only 452⁄3 innings in the regular season, beat LSU 10-5 in relief in the first game Friday and pitched five one-hit innings in the 8-5 victory over Cal State Fullerton in an elimination game late Saturday night.

“She was 100 percent our breakout star of the weekend,” Nuveman Deniz said.

Barbara and Sanders are top candidates to be named NCAA freshman of the year. Sanders leads NCAA freshmen with 21 homers, a school season record. Barbara is third.