Northridge a Little Two Much for Fresno : College softball: Matadors make the most of their hits for a 2-1 victory, holding off the Bulldogs with clutch pitching and errorless defense.

Two hits, two runs.

Minimal perhaps, but it was all Cal State Northridge needed to beat Fresno State, 2-1, Saturday in the first game of a best-of-three regional series in the NCAA Division I championships at Northridge.

The teams will face off today in Game 2 at 1 p.m. at second-ranked Northridge (46-6-1). If necessary, a third game will be played immediately. The winner will advance to the College World Series in Oklahoma City, May 27-31.

As it turned out, what the Matadors lacked offensively they made up for with error-free defense and clutch pitching by Kathy Blake.

The 11th-ranked Bulldogs (37-23) outhit Northridge, 10-2, but stranded 10 runners, including six in scoring position. Fresno State left the bases loaded in the sixth and seventh innings.

Apparently it has been a trend this season for the struggling Bulldogs, who have left 414 runners in 60 games. “. . . All year long in the games that we’ve lost,” Fresno State Coach Margie Wright lamented. “All year long.”

Meanwhile, hitting home runs has been the trend for the Matadors--who have stroked an NCAA record-setting 39--and freshman Scia Maumausolo definitely has those tendencies. She proved it again with a two-run home run in the second inning, her seventh of the season, following Tamara Ivie’s single.

Maumausolo’s blast, which cleared a 15-foot-high scoreboard in left-center field, was the Matadors’ last hit off Marcie Green (23-10).

After the game, Northridge players didn’t want to talk about their minimal offensive output. Instead, they pointed out the positives.

Said first baseman Ivie: “If we can only get two hits a game and score on those two hits, then we gotta have the defense to back it up, right?”

Right. The Bulldogs had eight of their 10 hits in the final three innings, but Blake and the Matadors yielded just one run. The Matadors however, had some help.

Jenifer Henry, a graduate of Buena High, led off the fifth with a triple. Jennifer McNatt followed with a bloop single to left, but Henry was held at third because the ball appeared catchable. Two batters later, Jennifer Donner laid down a bunt to move McNatt to second, but Henry misunderstood the sign and bolted for home. Ivie fielded the bunt and flipped to catcher Missy Cress, who tagged out Henry after a rundown. A popup ended the inning.

In the sixth, Fresno State loaded the bases with singles. With one out, Henry singled to right-center field, driving in Donna McDaniel (three for four). While it appeared that the Bulldogs could have pushed another run across to tie it, Wright held Kim Maher (two hits), another Buena High graduate, at third. A conservative call, given the circumstances, but Wright refused to second-guess herself.

“I don’t see any reason to take yourself out of an inning when you’ve got two or three people on and the kid with the best arm on the (other) team has got the ball,” the coach said. “I’m sure (if I had sent her and she had been thrown out) the question would be why did you send her? Why did you run on (center fielder Jen) Fleming on that play? Everybody else gets to make the decision after the fact. Nobody knows where that throw is gonna go. Nobody.”

Fleming was surprised by the strategy.

“I was ready to throw it,” she said. “I looked up and she wasn’t going. (Maher) was almost standing on the bag when I looked up and I was like, what is she doing? It was like (Wright) was holding her automatically.”

Blake (20-2), a sophomore right-hander, worked herself into another jam in the seventh. With two out, Fresno State loaded the bases, but Alycia Lawton popped up to end it.