Rare bye weekend precedes No. 19 Arizona softball's trek to Stanford for Pac-12 Tournament sendoff

While other Pac-12 teams were finishing their conference schedules against one another, the Wildcats had a chance to rest after a long and grueling season, right before the Pac-12 Tournament commenced this week in Northern California.

"The time off our bodies, just a little bit, is going to be huge for us," UA coach Caitlin Lowe said.

The fifth-seeded Wildcats (33-15-1, 13-11 Pac-12), who didn’t play a game this past weekend, were able to rest their minds and bodies during their off days; they watched games of their potential opponents; they prepared for their postseason games in practice.

Lowe deemed that “refreshing for everyone involved," speaking Tuesday in Tucson — two days before the Wildcats would take the field at Stanford in their first game of the final Pac-12 softball tournament before many of the league's teams go separate ways this offseason.

“I think when you're in the grind, you're wanting those days off your body. I think two days off kind of went by really fast," Lowe said Tuesday. "They just felt crisp.

“It was funny — they started throwing [at practice] and they're like, ‘woah, that felt better, felt different, felt lighter — didn't feel as heavy on their legs.’”

Off days for the Wildcats usually include lifting weights at McKale Center for an hour before recovering their body with their trainer. Aside from that, these days were typically pursued with a “do what you want” approach to free time, according to senior second baseman and first-team All-Pac-12 selection Allie Skaggs, who spends some days hitting golf balls at Randolph Golfing Range. She said that there are others on the team who spend the day soaking up the sun at the pool.

“It's a grind so as all student athletes know and so it's nice to have some time to just relax, kind of step back a little bit and then re-approach this week and be ready to roll,” Skaggs said Tuesday.

For Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year Tayler Biehl, this bye week helped allow her to calm her mind a bit heading into her team’s Pac-12 Tournament game Thursday at 6:30 p.m. against fourth-seeded Washington (31-12, 13-10). Normally through a given week, the Wildcats were only able to watch other conference games around their own respective game schedule, but this week allowed them to kick back and prepare for their next challenge, easing Biehl’s mind even more.

“We could watch the Pac-12 games, some of the SEC games, whatever was on the channel, so that was cool,” Biehl said.

Lowe noted that this bye week “did wonders” for her team — especially her pitching staff.

Coming into the season with seven pitchers, the third-year head coach didn’t think that this break would be needed as much; but now with the staff down to just four, Lowe noted that the timing off this off period was a “blessing in disguise” as the pitchers will be able to rest their arms and legs more heading into Thursday.

Arizona, which conducted intrasquad matchups on Friday and Saturday, worked on its approach for different pitchers the Wildcats may face, including the Huskies’ pitching staff they will take on Thursday night.

“We've just been fine tuning our defensive work and making sure that we're kind of ready to roll with our shifts with different types of defensive plays and then just [staying] sharp with at-bats throughout the week,” Skaggs said. “We got to hit a couple of live pitching at bats, so that was nice for us to kind of just get prepared and execute on some situational hitting.”

Now entering the second annual Pac-12 Tournament — Arizona's Hillenbrand Stadium hosted the inaugural tournament last season in which the UA run-ruled Arizona State before falling short to UCLA — the Wildcats know what they should expect on the trip to Stanford.

“Every game is competitive,” Skaggs said. “There’s no rollover games in the Pac-12, so every game that you are playing, you have to play your best softball if you’re expecting to win.”

The Wildcats' dropped their first home conference series of the season to the then-No. 7 Huskies back in mid-March; Lowe said her team has gotten better since then and that it will be important for the Wildcats to take what they have learned and execute; that's especially important given that every team has information on each other by this point.

“We've been building towards this all year long,” Lowe said. “I truly felt that this team has gotten better every week that we step out onto the field to practice so just excited for them to make their mark."

6 Cats All-Conference; Biehl top defender

Arizona shortstop Tayler Biehl was named the Pac-12 Softball Defensive Player of the Year on Tuesday. She finished the regular season with a .977 fielding percentage and led the conference with 103 assists while committing only four errors.

Dakota Kennedy, Regan Shockey, and Allie Skaggs were named to the All-Pac-12 first team, while Carlie Scupin and Aissa Silva were named to the second team. Biehl made the third team, and Shockey and Emily Schepp were on the All-Freshman team.

Outfielder Kennedy was also named to the All-Defensive team thanks to a perfect fielding percentage this year. At the plate, she has 10 homers, 60 hits and a .516 on-base percentage that ranks second in the conference.

Shockey is hitting .420 (33rd in the nation) to go with 74 hits and eight stolen bases. Skaggs has 13 homers and 42 RBIs and is hitting .307 with a .636 slugging percentage.