Lopes top Hokies to make 1st NCAA regional final

Saturday, May 18

Los Angeles

9:05 p.m.

Grand Canyon

50-12

Virginia Tech

40-14-1

Virginia Tech

Grand Canyon

Photo by: Sebastian Molinar

5/18/2024 11:30:00 PM | Softball, Paul Coro

Box Score

Golden pitches complete-game win; GCU beats No. 17 Virginia Tech again

By: Paul Coro

LOS ANGELES – When the Grand Canyon softball team's season was pushed to the brink, the Lopes turned around and fought their way back to the promised land of its first NCAA regional final.

GCU won consecutive must-win games Saturday, following up an emotional 9-7 win against Mountain West champion San Diego State with a quick turnaround to knock off No. 17 Virginia Tech 4-1 in Saturday night's final hour at Easton Stadium. Fresh off their 50th win, the Lopes will face No. 6 UCLA at 3 p.m. Sunday on ESPN2 with the task of beating the host twice to advance to an NCAA Super Regional.

The Lopes (50-12) were seeded behind San Diego State and Virginia Tech but rebounded from a Friday loss to UCLA to join Omaha as the only two of 16 regional fourth seeds that reached a final this weekend. Only GCU, Oklahoma and Boston have wom 50 games this season.

"Kudos to these guys for coming back after such a bad day at the start of the tournament," sad Lopes head coach Shanon Hays, whose team beat the Hokies (40-14-1) for a second time this season. "It would've been easy just to go hide and head home, and these guys wanted to keep playing. Their goal has been all along to win 50 games, and by winning tonight we got to 50. That's a real cool thing."

Virginia Tech celebration

GCU junior pitcher Meghan Golden improved to 13-3 with her eighth complete game of the season after Hays only had planned to use her for two or three innings.

"She wanted more than that obviously," Hays said.

Golden, the Peoria Centenial High School graduate, used her four-pitch mix to strike out four of the last eight Hokies she faced. The first strikeout in that stretch left the bases loaded in the fifth inning.

"I felt like I kind of got an adrenaline rush toward the end," Golden said after throwing 185 pitches in Saturday's two games. "I didn't realize, 'Man, we might beat them,' and then I was like, 'I'm going to throw it harder and shove it to them.' '"

The Lopes banged out 14 hits against the Aztecs and the 35-minute gap between games was not enough to cool the offense. GCU took advantage of an error and a a walk when junior left fielder Kayla Rodgers sliced a two-out double to the left-field corner for a 2-0 jump start to the 9:05 p.m. game.

"Kayla has been clutch all year," Hays said of Rodgers' team-best 16th double. "She finds a way to produce and make adjustments. These seniors just hang in there and play the game the right way."

GCU senior shortstop Katelyn Dunckel padded the lead to 3-0 when she led off the bottom of the fourth inning with her seventh home run of the season, a blast over the left-center field wall. She previously had hit one home run since March 26.

"I was going up there trying to have a clear mind and see a good pitch it and drive it," Dunckel said. "Coach Hays has been telling me, 'Stay back, stay back,' so I was just thinking to stay back. A pitch came inside, and it was perfect."

In the bottom of the sixth inning, Lopes freshman second baseman Savannah Kirk created an insurance run with her speed when she slapped a high-hopping infield single, stole second base and used two wild pitches to score for a 4-1 edge.

"We've struggled with lefties all year long because we have so many lefites in our lineup and we don't see that a lot, especially a lefty with a good curve," Hays said of Hokies starter Emma Mazzarone. "For us to produce some runs early and put some pressure on, we only had five hits so we were very efficient with what we were doing. We were able to move runners. We just took advantage of some situations.

"You've got play really well to beat a really good team like Virginia Tech, and we'll have to play perfectly tomorrow. We're going to take it for what it is to go compete and have fun."

GCU will be playing UCLA (39-10) for the fourth time in three consecutive Los Angeles Regionals on the Bruins' home field with hopes of a fifth meeting Sunday night. The Lopes lost 9-0 to the Bruins on Friday night in only its second shutout defeat of the season. GCU upset then-No. 2 UCLA 3-2 at last year's Los Angeles Regional for the program's first Division I regional.

Taking the program's next step to a regional final should allow the Lopes to play free, Hays said. But they will have to hand 13-time national champion UCLA consecutive losses, which only happened to the Bruins twice this season (in March to Washington and in Feburary to Texas and Oklahoma State).

Katelyn Dunckel

"This is so much fun to be a part of," Dunckel said. "Being on a team is the best thing ever, doing it with these girls, because no one person can do it. Meghan G threw a great game, but we also needed offense to back her up. It's really fun to all work together, and that's a big thing we say, 'Together.'

"It's really fun to be part of this team and giving God all the glory as we do it and trusting Him every step of the way and having each other's back."

In Hays' three seasons at the helm of GCU, the Lopes have increased their victory total each year with successive record-setting win totals that have accumulated his Lopes teams' 136-41 record (.768). GCU became one of 30 programs to qualify for the past three NCAA tournaments, and now it is one of 32 still playing in this NCAA tournament on Sunday.

"He's one of the best coaches in the country," Virginia Tech head coach Pete D'Amour said of Hays. "I've known him for a long time, probably 15 years. They're well-coached, and he keeps his team loose. They
battle. They're grinders. He's doing a good job."

To read about Saturday's first regional win against San Diego State, click here.