No. 12 Oregon softball (21-1) never fully got the bats going in Friday’s ranked showdown with No. 8 Florida State (19-4) to open its Jane Sanders Classic slate. But with Lyndsey Grein the circle, the Ducks didn’t need much offense, as she shut out the Seminoles by herself in a 2-0 win.
Grein, a coveted junior transfer from Virginia Tech, held a formidable Seminoles lineup, which came in with 34 home runs this season, to a single hit — a Kennedy Harp single in the first inning.
Grein would go on to throw 100 pitches and walk only one batter, finishing with five strikeouts. She continues an otherworldly start to her Ducks career with a perfect 12-0 record and a 0.72 ERA. Until March 1 against San Diego, a complete game shutout was just about the only thing she hadn’t done this season. All of a sudden, she has two in a row.
Factor in the difficulty of this matchup, and there’s a case for calling this the best game of Grein’s Ducks career to date, but Grein is uninterested in that conversation.
“I wouldn’t call anything ‘the best’ so far, because I have a lot more to do,” she said.
Grein has always been a riseball-heavy pitcher, but a major part of her leap has been the addition of a new pitch to her mix.
“She's just been determined to get her dropball,” Oregon head coach Melyssa Lombardi said. “It just opens things up for her. Just proud of how hard she's worked and to see her be able to throw that and throw it well.”
On the offensive side, the production came from an unlikely source: sophomore catcher Braiesey Rosa. Rosa was filling in for the injured Emma Cox, and she made the most of her chance. In the second inning, Rosa sent a pitch from Annabelle Widra over the wall in dead center. It drove home Katie Flannery from first and would be the only scoring play of the game for either team.
Rosa didn’t even have a hit in her Oregon career until one game ago, when she hit an RBI double against Loyola Chicago. She followed that up with her first career home run on Friday in front of a raucous Oregon crowd. She celebrated the moment, but after that, it was back to catching pitches from Grein.
“I was proud, but I was also like, ‘okay, this is my time to keep working and keep moving forward,’” Rosa said.
Oregon has won 16 straight and has already earned its fourth top-25 win of the season, further strengthening its top-10 case. It will have a chance to get a fifth when the Ducks and Seminoles rematch on Sunday. Before that, Oregon will face its rival Oregon State on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. back at Jane Sanders Stadium.