On Sunday, No. 17 Stanford softball fell to No. 20 Clemson by a final score of 7-6. Brooke McCubbin (8-5) was the winning pitcher for the Tigers in a relief role while Kylie Chung (10-4) was the losing pitcher for the Cardinal in a relief role. Clemson improves to 30-11 overall and 11-4 in the ACC while Stanford falls to 26-8 overall and 9-6 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Clemson at Stanford-Sunday, April 6th
“Yeah, I think there were some things we did that were really really good and that we should be really proud of,” Stanford head coach Jessica Allister said after the game. “I’ll take our fight. I thought we had some good fight in the circle. I thought we had some good fight in the box. You know, we had two innings where we made a lot of mistakes, all back-to-back-to-back and got away from us. So we gotta clean those things up and it looks like a different outcome.”
Neither team scored in the first two innings as Stanford starting pitcher Alyssa Houston and Clemson starting pitcher Reese Basinger both were pitching well. In the top of the 3rd inning, Houston pitched another scoreless inning as she only gave up one walk before getting the next three batters out with two strikeouts and a fly out.
In the bottom of the 3rd inning, Stanford got on the board as Taryn Kern hit a two-run homer with no outs to bring home Kiley Buckley, who was pinch-running for Kylie Chung. Stanford wouldn’t add any more runs the rest of the inning, making it a 2-0 lead for them after three innings.
Neither team scored in the 4th inning, keeping it at 2-0. However, Clemson responded strong in the top of the 5th inning with four runs. With the bases loaded and no outs, Maddie Moore tripled to bring home all runners after which Julia Knowler flied out to left field to bring home Moore. Up 4-2, Clemson now had some momentum.
“Yeah, we made a lot of mistakes,” Allister said of their 5th inning. “And those are the things where when you give them outs, that’s when big innings happen. And we gave them a lot of outs there. And you gotta take the outs and not try to force plays. Try to force plays and they’re in trouble. We’ll give them one, we’re not going to give them two, we’re not going to give them three. We just gotta take the outs when we give them the outs.”
In the bottom of the 5th, Stanford scored two runs to it up 4-4. Kern hit a solo home run to left center with no outs to make it 4-3. With one out, River Mahler tripled to right center after which Jade Berry grounded out to short stop to bring home Mahler. That made it 4-4.
In the top of the 6th inning, Clemson added three more runs. Chung gave up back-to-back hits including a double, to put runners on second and third base. Taylor Pipkens then flied out to right field to bring home Kennedy Ariail and advance Kylee Johnson to third base. Jamison Brockenbrough then singled to bring home Johnson and advance to second base before then stealing third base with Alex Brown at the plate. Brown then reached on a fielder’s choice to bring home Brockenbrough. Up 7-4, the Tigers were looking good.
In the bottom of the 6th, Stanford added one run as Emily Jones flied out with the bases loaded and no outs to bring home Allison Morikawa. Unfortunately for Stanford, they were not able to bring home any more runners, making it 7-5 at the end of the 6th.
In the top of the 7th inning, Zoe Prystajko kept the Tigers’ batters at bay, keeping it at 7-5. In the bottom of the 7th, Stanford now just needed to score two runs to force extra innings and three runs to win. With one out, Kyra Chan hit a single after which Allie Clements hit a single to advance Chan to second base. Caelan Koch then singled to bring home Chan and advance Clements to second base. That made it 7-6. With the bases loaded and two outs following an intentional walk to put Kern on base, Jones hit a fly ball into center field, but it wasn’t deep enough as it ended up being caught for the third out. That ended the game.
“You can’t even begin to put a price or you can’t even begin to put a value on that fight,” Allister said of her team. “Like that fight is exactly what we want and what’s going to serve us down the road. Now we just gotta clean up some of these other things, but I’m incredibly proud of them.”
For Stanford, this loss stings given how close it was. All three of their games a week ago were lost by one run, so they’ve been snakebit in a lot of these games. That said, they can take comfort in knowing if they tighten a few things up, they can start racking up more wins. The same cannot be said for Stanford baseball, who is currently getting beaten like a rented mule every time they step on the field against an ACC opponent.
“I think we get six, I don’t think that’s bad,” Allister said of their run production. “I think early on, maybe we had some single hits and we couldn’t quite string them together and then we got a little bit better at the end. But you know, I think offensively we’ll take 10 hits and six runs every day. Jones crushes that one at the end there. I think we gotta clean up the defense.”
Up next for Stanford is a road trip to the state of Idaho to face Boise State in a three-game series. The first game will be on Friday at 5:00 PM PT on Mountain West Network.
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