Longhorns Advance To Winner's Bracket With Late Rally

The nation's #4 Texas Longhorns and #5 Arizona State Sun Devils were involved in a bitter fight in tonight's opening round matchup of the 2013 Women's College World Series.  The two teams previously met on March 14th in the season's only previous meeting and the Sun Devils shutout the Longhorns 3-0 in the Judi Garman Classic.  This time around, the Longhorns looked for a revenge outing.  Both starting pitchers, Texas' Blaire Luna and Arizona State's Dallas Escobedo, led the way with no-hitters in the early innings, but the Sun Devils broke open the game with the game's first hits and runs in the top half of the 5th inning.  Elizabeth Caporuscio's first hit of the game started a big inning for both teams.  After Bailey Wigness added another hit, Alix Johnson drove in both baserunners with only one out.  Luna escaped the inning after two earned runs and her teammates played the offensive role in the bottom half of the inning.

Stephanie Ceo's single to third base was the Longhorns' first hit of the evening and the start of an explosive inning.  After a walk by Brejae Washington with two outs, Taylor Thom's bloop hit in shallow right field drove in Ceo and a throwing error allowed Washington to tie up the game.  The following batter, Kim Bruins, homered to left as the Longhorns added two runs and took a 4-2 lead.  Bruins was snagged of a home run earlier in the game by leftfielder Caporuscio, but earned every inch of this home run as the ball bounced off the same fielder's glove and jumped over the wall.

Haley Steele opened the 6th inning with a solo home run for the Sun Devils, but the Longhorns struck with the game's final two runs in the bottom half of the inning.  Torie Schmidt and Karina Scott reached base via a hit up the middle and walk, and scored via RBIs by Stephanie Ceo and Taylor Hoagland.

The Texas Longhorns advanced to the winner's bracket with a 6-4 victory over the Arizona State Sun Devils tonight.  Kim Bruins closed out the game for Texas because starting pitcher Blaire Luna's pitches were stolen by an Arizona State coach, but had no issue retiring the side with two strikeouts in the top of the 7th.  The Longhorns ended a seven-year scoreless streak in College World Series games with a program record-six runs in a College World Series game.  The Longhorns will play the nation's top team Oklahoma tomorrow night in the winner's bracket, while Arizona State plays #8 ranked Michigan in the loser's bracket on Saturday.