LAWRENCE Kan. – As the regular season dwindles to a close, the 2025 UCF softball team is ensuring its future postseason opponents know one thing at the very least.
This squad cannot be counted out until the contest’s final out is recorded.
The Knights entering Saturday’s game two against Kansas had overcome multi-run deficits or come back from fifth-inning-or-later deficits on six different occasions, and on Saturday afternoon at Arrocha Ballpark recorded their seventh.
Entering the top of the seventh inning facing a three-run Jayhawks lead, the Black and Gold continued to battle, tying the game at four before taking their first lead of the game in the eighth in producing team’s latest dramatic win, a 5-4 extra-inning effort to clinch the series win over Kansas.
Saturday’s result, which pushed the Knights back to 10 games north of .500 overall at 31-21-1, also matched the team’s win total from a 2024 campaign that saw the program finish 31-25 after making its fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance.
The win also clinched UCF’s fourth Big 12 Conference series victory of the season, as well as its second over the Jayhawks in as many opportunities as conference-mates after the Black and Gold took two of three from Kansas in Orlando March 8-10, 2024.
Trailing 4-1 entering the game’s final frame, freshman designated player Izzy Mertes led off the inning with her seventh home run of the season, pulling her squad to within two runs.
Once fellow freshman catcher Beth Damon drew a subsequent six-pitch walk, forcing Jayhawks starter Olivia Bruno out of the game, a third straight freshman, Olathe, Kansas native Kendall Yarnell, kept UCF’s rally alive with a pinch-hit single to shortstop to give UCF runners on first and second with none out.
Sophomore catcher Kiley Strott came off the bench and advanced the runners with a sacrifice bunt, and Madison Simon, who kickstarted UCF’s offense in the fifth inning with her second home run of the season, worked a four-pitch walk to load the bases for Aubrey Evans.
The junior shortstop, owner of the team’s second-most hits with runners in scoring position entering play Saturday, once again came through, tying the game with a two-run single through the right side of the infield.
The Knights took their first lead of the game an inning later, thanks to back-to-back one-out doubles by Mertes and Damon.
The late-inning rally buoyed a strong relief showing by the freshman tandem of Yessenia Lopez and Isabella Vega, who closed out Kansas with 3.1 innings of three-hit ball.
Vega, not 24 hours removed from no-hitting the Jayhawks in Friday's series-opener, recorded yet another dominant relief appearance Saturday, earning her 12th win of the season with just one hit allowed in her two innings pitched.
The Bradenton native saw her season ERA drop even further to 1.25 through 106.1 innings, accompanied by 95 strikeouts and a .180 batting average-against. She also enters the final day of conference play as the Big 12’s ERA leader in league play, boasting a 0.92 ERA through 53.1 innings pitched.
UP NEXT
UCF will look for its 12th conference win of the season, as well as the series sweep of the Jayhawks, in Sunday’s finale, with first pitch slated for 1 p.m. ET from Arrocha Ballpark. The game will be streamed live on ESPN+.
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