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Arizona Suffers First Conference Loss; Hard-Luck Weekend for Texas Tech

No sooner had I written about the University of Arizona's dominating start to Pac-12 play (see previous post) than the Wildcats dropped a Saturday decision at Cal, 1-0 in nine innings. U of A  won the other two games of the series to improve its conference record to 17-1. As I noted in the previous post, series with Washington and UCLA await Arizona.

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The hard-luck team of the weekend has to be Texas Tech. The Red Raiders were swept three straight against Oklahoma State in Stillwater. All three games were decided by one run: 3-2, 8-7, and 6-5 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, respectively.

On Saturday, Tech led 7-0. OSU tied the game in the fifth inning on a two-out, two-run triple. The play could have been a lead-preserving out had the two Raider outfielders not collided with each other and jarred the ball loose from one of the mitts. In the sixth, the Cowgirls scored the go-ahead run on a one-out, bases-loaded grounder through the pitcher's legs. If the ball or the mitt is a few inches in another direction, perhaps the pitcher gets the lead runner at home.

On Sunday, OSU tied the game 3-3 in the fifth inning on another two-out, two-run fly, again just inches from the Tech right-fielder's grasp. Then, after the Red Raiders scored two in the top of the seventh to take a 5-3 lead, this happened (with two runners on)!

Texas A&M transfer Samantha Show (pronounced "Shau"), in addition to her game-winning home-run in Game 3, hit a two-run homer to tie Friday's game 2-2, and pitched complete games on Friday and Sunday (more impressively on Friday).

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