No. 3 Oregon softball bounces back with blowout win over Michigan State to take Big Ten title

EUGENE, Ore. — The Oregon Ducks have captured a share of a conference championship for the first time under head coach Melyssa Lombardi. With their commanding 14-0 stomping of the Michigan State Spartans in just five innings, the No. 3 Ducks are the Big Ten's regular-season champs in their first year in the league and will head into next week's conference tournament with the top seed.

"This is not easy to be regular season champions," Lombardi said after the game. "It's not easy. There's so much involved, and just to see this entire team put our team first in all of their decision-making is why we're standing here today."

No. 8 UCLA's Friday loss to Northwestern gave Oregon the chance to clinch in its series opener against Michigan State before being stunned by a 6-4 upset. On Saturday, the Ducks (46-6, 18-3) rebounded like the top three team that they are, scoring multiple runs in every inning in a complete domination of the Spartans to ensure that the game was never in doubt.

"Yesterday was tough, we just didn't get what we wanted," Lombardi said. "But we learned from it, we grew from it, we are better for it, and you can see that today."

After cruising through the final five frames of Friday night's contest in relief, Oregon starter Elise Sokolsky continued to dominate the Spartans on Saturday. She faced the minimum through the first two innings to bring her total to seven straight dating back to Friday night. A first-pitch single put a leadoff runner on to start the second, but thanks to her second strikeout and a double play from her middle infield combination of Kaylynn Jones and Paige Sinicki, Sokolsky worked out of the frame cleanly.

"To come in the first inning, really important to get the one-two-three inning to allow my offense to work," Sokolksy said. "So that was pretty much the main goal, just have momentum switch on and off with offense and defense."

The momentum Sokolsky had found carried over to the Ducks' offense as they got off to an opposite start to Friday's game, which saw their first seven batters retired in a row. Chaos ball on a perfect bunt from Sinicki put her on second, and Kai Luschar — who walked to lead off the game — was on third before Kedre Luschar plated a run with a sacrifice fly to left. Two pitches later, Rylee McCoy got all of the 1-0 offering from Michigan State starter Carsyn Cassady, sending it 202 feet into the center field bleachers for her team-leading 16th homer of the year.

"There was no way we were letting that happen to us twice in a row," McCoy said of the Ducks' Friday night loss. "We just came out on fire and played Oregon softball, which is always good."

Ayanna Shaw and Kai Luschar both reached base on bunt singles in the second, putting two on with two outs for Sinicki. After staying patient to get ahead 3-1, Sinicki got her pitch — a middle-middle fastball from Cassady — and put her barrel out ahead of the ball, pulling it over the left field fence for her seventh homer of the season to make it 6-0 Ducks.

"I was just looking for something hard," Sinicki said of her three-run blast. "I knew she had threw me two changeups before, and I was like, 'She's gonna throw me a fastball and I'm just gonna take it over the fence.' Take my best swing, and that's what happened there."

For the first time in their last eight innings against Sokolsky, Michigan State (16-28, 6-15) was finally able to put multiple runners on base in the top of the third. But she was able to work around them with a soft flyout to right and an easy grounder back to the circle.

"I'm doing it for every person on the field, every person in the dugout, everyone that's helped get us to this point," Sokolsky said of what motivated her to toss 142 pitches between Friday and Saturday. "You can't really think of how many pitches or how my body's feeling. That's not important. What's important is going out there and digging deep for my team."

After Emma Cox singled, Dezianna Patmon was hit by a pitch, and Katie Flannery reached on a fielder's choice, Jones singled to load the bases as the Oregon lineup flipped back over to Kai Luschar at the top with one down.

Luschar took ball one before chopping the second pitch from Michigan State's Ava Mullen up the middle past the infield — playing in to attempt to counter her speed — to bring another two runs across and push the Ducks into mercy-rule territory. Sokolsky picked up her fourth and fifth strikeouts to work around a two-out walk in the top of the fourth before Oregon's offense went back to work in the bottom of the frame.

"We asked her today to come in and see if she could take care of business," Lombardi said of her starting pitcher. "I really like how efficient she was, she fed her defense, she got to strikeouts when she wanted to get them, and she competed."

After Kedre Luschar flew out to center to lead off, McCoy barrelled a fastball at the top of the zone to send her second homer out to center. The freshman first baseman's 17th longball of the season places her in a three-way tie for second on Oregon's single-season leaderboard, two short of Ann Marie Topps' 19-homer 2007 season.

"If you didn't know her and you were watching her play, you would think that she was an older athlete on our team," Lombardi said of McCoy. "The fact that she's just a freshman, it's just amazing to see her do the things she's doing at the plate."

Stefini Ma'ake followed by shooting a single to right before back-to-back two-out, four-pitch walks to Patmon and Flannery loaded the bases. Jones walked to bring home Ma'ake, before Kai Luschar beat out an infield single to score Flannery, and Sinicki walked to plate Jones. With the bases still loaded, Kedre Luschar sent her second hit of the day into left to score two more runs, bringing the Ducks to six runs in the fourth and 14 for the game.

Sokolsky returned to the circle for the top of the fifth, needing just three more outs to secure the Ducks their first Big Ten title. After flyouts to center and right quickly gave her the first two outs, Jenae Walsh sent an 0-2 single to left for the Spartans' third hit of the day. That wouldn't last long, though, as the next batter sent a fly ball to Kai Luschar in left, who hauled in the catch for the final out.

The Ducks mobbed each other in the infield after Luschar secured the catch, celebrating the program's first conference title since 2018 in front of a standing ovation from the Jane Sanders Stadium crowd.

"We're not done," Sinicki said. "This is just the beginning for the rest of the year."

The series will wrap up at 1 p.m. on Sunday, and the Ducks' Senior Day celebrations will take place after their final home game of the regular season.