Sun Devil softball blows out Texas A&M, advances to Super Regionals

The last time Arizona State saw their softball team advance to the Super Regionals, Trisha Ford was their head coach. After losing to Northwestern, Ford left the Sun Devils for a massive offer at Texas A&M.

Now, the Sun Devils are back in the Super Regionals, and it came at the expense of Ford's new team.

After Arizona State blanked McNeese 8-0 on Friday in their first game of the NCAA Regionals, they drew Ford's Aggies, who came in as the top seed in the regional. A seventh inning comeback helped the Sun Devils capture the win and, after the Aggies beat UConn later that afternoon, the two teams met again on Sunday.

The Sun Devils only needed one win to advance, while Texas A&M would have needed to win two games in a Sunday double-header. But it never even got that far along, with Arizona State dominating Texas A&M to the tune of a 9-1 run-rule victory.

Sun Devil ace Kenzie Brown got the start and she started off hot, throwing two strikeouts and yielding just two hits over three innings. The offense was hot, too, with both Samantha Swan and Katie Chester driving in runs in the first inning.

The Aggies would respond with one run in the second, but Arizona State piled on three more runs later in the frame to go up 5-1. That score held over the next two innings, meaning Arizona State needed just four runs to invoke the run-rule.

Of course, that's exactly what happened.

The inning was led off with Chester reaching on a throwing error. A single from Yazzy Avila came next, followed immediately by Yannixa Acuna getting another single. With the bases loaded, Texas A&M made a pitching change, and Mesa native Brooklyn Ulrich stepped up to the plate.

Ulrich's grand slam cemented the win, invoking the run rule for Arizona State to secure a thorough 9-1 victory and advance to their first Super Regionals appearance in four years.

It will also be the first Super Regionals for head coach Megan Bartlett, who came to Tempe after spending two seasons as an assistant with the Texas Longhorns. It's fitting, then, that Bartlett will now face Texas in Austin this upcoming weekend.

It's poetic justice that the Sun Devils advanced to this stage by defeating their former coach, who claimed to have left for a better opportunity. And now they'll have a chance to beat the program that delivered their current coach to Tempe.

Regardless of what happens in Austin, it's been one special season for Bartlett and the Sun Devils.