Fanned by Past, Fresno State Blows CSUN Away in Sweep

The Fresno State softball team blew into town and did the improbable on a windy Friday afternoon. Something it hasn’t been able to accomplish in 15 years. A feat Coach Margie Wright, a 543-game winner at Fresno State, has not witnessed since taking over in 1986.

For the first time since 1982, Fresno State swept Cal State Northridge, 1-0 and 3-1, in a Western Athletic Conference doubleheader and took two giant steps toward knocking the three-time defending champion Matadors from their pedestal.

Fourth-ranked Fresno State (28-6, 7-1 in the conference) took a one-game lead on the Matadors, ranked No. 5, and extended its winning streak to 11 games. The streak began with a 2-1 victory over Northridge in a tournament consolation game March 23.

Northridge, which had its 16-game winning streak snapped during that tournament against No. 7 South Carolina on March 22 and lost to Fresno State the following day, has hit the skids in a big way. The Matadors (26-8, 6-2) have lost their last four games, three by one run.

The problem is clearly in the bottom half of the lineup, where batters hitting in the No. 5 through No. 9 spots were a collective two for 25 (.080).

“That’s what I was just saying [to the team],” Northridge Coach Janet Sherman said. “In the last five games we must be hitting like .150.”

In the opener, the Matadors squandered several chances, but instead stranded six runners, four in scoring position. Northridge batters led off with doubles in the fourth, fifth and sixth, but the Matadors came away empty. In the fourth and fifth, they couldn’t even move the runner to third. And in the sixth, after Chelo Lopez’s single moved Jamie Herrington to third, Shelby Wilcox missed a squeeze sign at the plate and Herrington found herself in a rundown, to which she succumbed.

Lopez, who went three for five, summed it up clearly for the Matadors.

“We didn’t hit the ball, we missed signs, we made errors,” Lopez said. “We didn’t execute when we needed to and that’s the key.”

Fresno State freshman right-hander Lindsay Parker (10-0), a La Canada High product and The Times’ 1995 pitcher of the year, allowed five hits and struck out three.

Fresno State scored the game’s only run in the sixth on a bases-loaded single by senior Jen Henry, a Buena High graduate.

In the second game, Jo Pini’s single scored Amber Wall in the second and the Bulldogs added a pair of unearned runs in the fifth.