Loss to UCLA ends 'Dogs softball season

Published online on Sunday, May. 17, 2009

LOS ANGELES - As Fresno State's softball players left the field and walked single file into the concourse at Easton Stadium, they were met with loud applause from their contingent of fans.

The Bulldogs had just absorbed a 9-5 loss to UCLA for the Los Angeles Regional championship that knocked them out of the NCAA tournament.

This is the 10th straight year coach Margie Wright's team has failed to take the next step toward the College World Series in Oklahoma City. But Fresno State, with one senior in Haley Perkins and one pitching ace in Morgan Melloh, probably traveled as far as possible.

"Our goals are never going to change. We just need to find a way to get past that hump," Wright said. "If you want to set your sights lower than that, what's the use of playing?"

Fresno State bows out at 38-20 with Western Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament championships in tow.

Perkins, a three-time all-conference infielder out of Clovis West High, couldn't hold back the tears after her final game in a Bulldogs uniform. The team's leading hitter this year, she'll leave her name in several Top 10 categories of the record book.

"I'm proud of this team," she said in a shaky voice, then buried her head into the shoulder of teammate Nicole Angene.

This was another tough one for the Bulldogs to take. They had to beat UCLA, the No. 2 seed overall, twice to win the regional and Melloh wasn't at her best.

The nation's leading strikeout artist served up a home run to Andrea Harrison on her eighth pitch and it didn't get any better. UCLA chased Melloh in the second with a seven-run inning.

Melloh lasted only 1 2/3 innings, allowing eight runs and eight hits, including three homers, a triple and a double.

Afterward, Wright didn't make Melloh available to the media.

"When you play a team like UCLA, ranked in the top five all year, your job is to keep the ball in the ballpark. We didn't do that," Wright said. "But our team battled back and fought ... and came up short."

The Bulldogs rallied after Harrison's homer and scored three times in the bottom of the first. Michelle Moses drove in two runs with a double and Lisamarie Coronado added an RBI single.

But Melloh, who usually gets tougher with the lead, appeared to have nothing left in the second inning. She had pitched every game of the WAC tournament and every inning of the NCAA tournament to that point.

What it amounted to was a repeat of Fresno State's 10-2 loss to UCLA in February when Melloh gave up nine hits and seven runs in 3 1/3 innings. Not the strong five-hitter she threw in Saturday's 4-2 loss to the Bruins.

UCLA sent 10 batters to the plate in the second in taking an 8-3 lead.

"We tried to swing bigger this time and go with her outside pitch, her strength," said UCLA clean-up hitter GiOnna DiSalvatore.

Julie Burney led off with a shot over the left-field wall, and both DiSalvatore and Amanda Kamekona scorched Melloh for three-run homers.

"You need to be at your best against a team like that and Morgan wasn't," Wright said. "She'd pitched a lot of innings against some very good teams this weekend. She did a great job this year, but didn't have one of her better games today."

Melloh (30-16) finished with 450 strikeouts, just shy of the single-season record 454 she set last year.

Freshman Mackenzie Oakes replaced Melloh and gave the Bulldogs faint hope of a comeback with 5 1/3 gutty innings. She allowed just four hits and one run.

The Bulldogs, down 8-3, made it interesting with a run on Perkins' RBI single in the fourth and Angene's solo homer in the fifth. But Bruins pitcher Donna Kerr shut the door by retiring seven of the final eight batters to nail down her team's 12th straight victory over the Bulldogs.

Bruins coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said there's been no special reason why UCLA has owned Fresno State the past nine years.

"There's a lot of tradition and history between our two schools," she said. "But at this point, they're merely another opponent and, today, one more step for us to get back to Oklahoma City."