ASU Softball: Sun Devils return home for Sun Devil Classic

No. 15 ASU softball returns home to host the Sun Devil Classic where they’ll face No. 9 Texas and Princeton twice as well as a game versus Wisconsin.

No. 15 ASU Softball is traveling home after a 4-2 record  in California last week. The Sun Devils look to keep the momentum back in Tempe against Princeton, Texas, and Wisconsin. ASU will face Princeton and Texas twice each and Wisconsin once in between those four games.

Wisconsin will be a fairly tough game as the Badgers are a bubble team in the top-25 looking in currently. Some key aspects for the Sun Devils winning against Wisconsin is the bats have to be awake early.

The Sun Devils will face the second best pitching team in the Big Ten as Wisconsin has a team 1.38 ERA after 13 games. The Badgers are led by sophomore pitcher, Haley Hestekin, who is currently 6-1 this season with only 12 earned runs in 38.1 innings pitched.

The beginning of the Sun Devils must start off with a bang in order to keep the momentum rolling and throw Hestekin off early. Kindra Hackbarth, Skylar McCarty, and Morgan Howe have to be a consistent 1,2,3 combo to help the Sun Devils win.

Defensively, the Badgers are a heavy hitting team with a team batting average of .316 and 16 home runs. The defense has to play smart and make the easy throws and limit errors.

The Sun Devils will have No. 9 Texas twice in what has to be at least a 1-1 split decision for each team. Neither team can lose both as that can hurt their ranking tremendously.

The main keys to beating Texas is shutting down Janae Jefferson. Jefferson is second in the Big 12 in batting average with a whopping average of .463.

ASU has to try and pitcher Miranda Elish early too to keep her out of the game. Elish currently has an ERA of 0.23 and 41 strikeouts. If the Sun Devils don’t touch her pitches, it was be a disaster in one of those two games and the Sun Devils will drop that game.

The Sun Devils will have to win offensively in this game because their pitchers won’t be able to hold Texas to less than five runs. Samatha Mejia will most likely take this matchup and must use the variety of pitches she has as well as locate her hard throwing fastball on the corners to stop as many runs as possible.

Lastly, the Sun Devils face Princeton. This can be the games where coach Trisha Ford throws out her freshmen pitchers Abby Andersen and Mikayla Santa Cruz to get reps for later in the year. Also, this is a time for players to break out and develop. DeNae Chatman and Yannira Acuña have been the expected breakout players this year and these are the two games for those two to finally go off.

At the end of this classic, the worst the Sun Devils will do is 2-3 by dropping both to Texas and Wisconsin and the best they can do is 5-0 and shock the softball world by sweeping Texas at home.