Arizona softball's offense, including frosh catcher Emily Schepp, shining as NCAAs roll on

The teams will certainly see more of each other often starting next season — that’s when the Wildcats officially become part of the Big 12, right at the same time current Big 12 powers Texas and three-time-defending national champion Oklahoma leave for the SEC; but it was a May evening in Oklahoma City two years ago that until Friday’s matchup provided the most recent connection of the potential conference standard bearers for 2025 and beyond.

That night, a two-run homer by then-UA catcher Sharlize Palacios gave the Wildcats a 2-1 lead in the top of the fifth of a game the Cowgirls eventually won, 4-2, in that season’s WCWS opener for both teams.

Back again to this year, and Palacios entered this week’s Super Regional play as one of the nation’s hottest hitters (she had nine home runs in her last 16 games entering this week). Yet, as has been well chronicled, she’s done that not as a Wildcat, but rather with Pac-12 rival UCLA; that’s where she transferred after that 2022 UA World Series run.

Coincidentally enough (or not), this year’s Wildcats have a pretty solid overall offensive unit themselves. The UA entered Super Regional play in Stillwater, Oklahoma, on a tear of its own.

After leading the Pac-12 in cumulative batting average, runs scored, hits and RBIs during the 2024 conference slate — the Wildcats led the same categories among Pac-12 programs when counting nonconference games, too — the UA ended up one of two unseeded teams among 16 to reach a Super Regional.

Arizona’s regular-season prowess proved no fluke last weekend as the Wildcats’ 25 runs in three games in Fayetteville, Arkansas, was the fourth-best scoring output among those 16 regional champions.

In terms of runs scored per seven innings, Arizona’s 9.21 “per game” trailed only No. 1 Texas (9.58), No. 4 Florida (9.88) and Palacios’ own pesky Bruins (10.29), the NCAA softball bracket’s sixth-seeded team.

Arizona’s Super Regional opponent, fifth-seeded Oklahoma State, averaged 5.33 runs per seven innings in the Cowgirls’ three regional matchups.

The lowest scoring output for a regional winner: No. 7 Missouri, which needed five games — two of them nine-inning affairs — to get through the Columbia Regional on their own campus. Both of those extra-inning marathons, one a 3-1 Mizzou loss and one a 1-0 win to claim the regional title, came against Omaha; Arizona happened to defeat Omaha twice earlier this season in Tucson, 13-2 and 8-0, both in run-ruled 5-inning affairs.

At plate, behind it, Schepp shining on biggest stages

On the one hand, it might be fun to play the “what-if” game regarding Palacios: how good could Arizona’s already outstanding offense be if one of the game’s most feared power hitters hadn’t left Tucson for Westwood two seasons ago?

But on the other, true freshman Emily Schepp is proving the future is now behind the plate as Lowe’s Wildcats inch closer to a return to the WCWS.

Schepp didn’t start behind the plate in the first game of the season. But once Schepp did strap on the so-called tools of ignorance, she’s rarely given up that seat in the UA lineup.

And just last weekend in Fayetteville, Schepp’s star grew further. The Torrance, California, native went 3 for 3 with a late home run in a regional-title-clinching win over Villanova.

“I was most proud of her bunt for a base hit in her 3-for-3 performance,” Lowe said of Schepp. “Man, you just — she played the game.”

While Lowe said there wasn’t exactly one moment this season that showed that Schepp could be an everyday player and more, she did say that Pac-12 play as a whole really showed her what her catcher was made of.

“The Pac-12 Conference will make or break a freshman real quick,” Lowe said this week, remarking at how well Schepp adjusted to facing NCAA Tournament-caliber competition like UCLA, Stanford, Washington, Oregon and others every week. “With how tough our conference opponents are, they learn about you, and they’re going to game plan against you. And you have to be able to be tough enough between the ears to just really deal with the ups and downs.”

Schepp’s numbers prove she weathered that just fine. While she’s hitting .290 on the season overall, her average spiked to .325 when looking at only Pac-12 play on its own. That mark was fourth-best on the Wildcats in conference games, trailing only first-team All-Conference honorees this season in freshman Regan Shockey, sophomore Dakota Kennedy and senior Allie Skaggs.

Schepp made the Pac-12’s All-Freshman team, naturally.

“I think for someone like Emily, it’s really helped to her to have a sophomore class (and) a senior class — those are our two biggest classes — with just a really good head on their shoulders to kind of show her the way,” Lowe said.

An eye on 40 wins

With Arizona and Baylor the only two aforementioned unseeded teams to make it out of regional play, the Wildcats entered Friday night’s matchup with Oklahoma State three wins shy of reaching an all-too familiar UA milestone: the 40-win mark.

It would be Caitlin Lowe’s first 40-win season in her three years as head coach; the Wildcats won 39 in her first year and 29 last season.

To get there in 2024, though, the Wildcats would need to not only win a pair in Stillwater to reach this season’s WCWS, they’d need to win one (or more) in Oklahoma City, too.

Since Lowe’s predecessor and her own former coach, the legendary Mike Candrea, took over the UA program in 1986, the Wildcats have topped 40 wins 32 times (30 of those were Candrea-coached teams and two by Larry Ray, the longtime UA assistant who stepped into the top spot when Candrea coached Olympic teams in 2004 and 2008).

The four times Arizona didn’t win 40 games during Candrea’s tenure: the 2020 COVID-shortened season (Arizona started 22-3), 2012 and 2013 (the Wildcats won 38 and 33 those seasons), and 1986. The latter was Candrea’s first season with the Wildcats, when he led the UA to a 27-13-1 overall record. The Wildcats would start their string of 35 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances the next season.

Thirteen of the 16 teams to reach the Super Regional this season have already won 40 games. The three still trying to get there: unseeded Baylor and Arizona, and No. 14 Alabama (36-17), a team Arizona lost twice to back in early March in 2-1 and 1-0 road results.