Northridge’s Early Hopes Are Swept Away by UCLA

It was too good to last, and no one knew better than the Cal State Northridge softball team.

“You can’t lay down against UCLA,” Cheri Shinn of Northridge said. “They’ll come back. Good teams always do.”

Clinging to a two-run lead late in the first game of a doubleheader Saturday against UCLA (22-4), Northridge’s fortune turned south.

More specifically, toward Westwood.

Third-ranked UCLA bunched eight of its 10 hits in the final two innings of the opener and routed Northridge, 9-2. The Bruins, winners of 17 consecutive games, continued the onslaught with four home runs to win the second game, 8-3, in front of an estimated 1,200 at Matador Diamond.

It was the most runs Northridge has allowed against UCLA in single games since the Matadors moved to Division I in 1991.

Northridge (8-7-2), ranked No. 18, set a school record for most earned runs allowed in Division I competition, giving up eight in the first game.

Despite that, Matador Coach Janet Sherman, a UCLA graduate, wasn’t discouraged.

“I’ll trade [these losses] for three others that we’ve won and played with no heart and no desire,” she said. “We played with guts today.”

In the first game, Chelo Lopez put the Matadors ahead with a solo home run off the scoreboard in left-center field in the first inning. Shinn hit a solo shot to left in the fifth for a 2-0 Northridge lead.

But junior right-hander Tara Glaister, who limited UCLA to two hits in five innings, surrendered five hits, including a grand slam by Julie Adams, in the sixth.

UCLA’s Nicole Ochoa, a senior outfielder from Thousand Oaks High, started the sixth-inning rally with a single to right. Julie Marshall’s looping single to left three batters later scored Ochoa.

With one out and bases loaded, Glaister struck out Stacey Nuveman--UCLA’s top hitter--on three pitches, but surrendered the game breaker to Adams for a 5-2 Bruin lead.

Shinn, who pitched in relief in both games, replaced Glaister in the seventh and allowed three hits and a walk, which UCLA parlayed into four more runs.

Northridge had eight hits off B’Ann Burns (10-0), including three singles by Jennifer Parker.

The second game added insult to injury for Northridge, which has lost five of its last six home games.

Alleah Poulson, Nuveman, Julie Marshall and Ochoa homered off Glaister (4-5), who allowed five hits and five earned runs before being yanked in the sixth.

Consecutive homers by Poulson and Nuveman gave UCLA a 3-0 lead in the first.

Northridge made it a game early, manufacturing a run in each of the first three innings on four hits to cut the Bruins’ lead to 4-3.

But the Matadors, who were batting just .248 as a team before Saturday, went hitless in the final four innings against starter Courtney Dale (5-1) and Christa Williams, who relieved in the sixth.