Greg Hansen's picks for Mount Rushmore of Arizona softball | Greg Hansen's notebook

Six. It is not a misprint.

Two years later, she hit 30, which was Babe Ruth level. As a senior in 1995, Espinoza hit 37, an NCAA record that stood until this year. Sports Illustrated, then the voice of USA sports, referred to Espinoza as the "Sultana of Swat."

Her NCAA record of 128 RBIs still stands. Those numbers led Arizona to national championships in 1993 and 1994. During that period, the school built the then-most fashionable softball stadium in the college game. No one called it the "House that Laura Built" because there were too many other strong contributors such as Amy Hillenbrand, Susie Parra, Alison McCutcheon and on and on. But without Espinoza's Ruthian-like performances, it's doubtful that Hillenbrand Stadium would've had sellout crowd after sellout crowd.

The Daily Star is in the process of an eight-week Sunday series in which it chooses the Mount Rushmore of various UA teams each week, and Espinoza goes beyond being a no-brainer for Mike Candrea’s national powerhouse.

A two-time first-team All-American who once hit .600 and hit 15 home runs for the U.S. National team at the 1990 World Championships, Espinoza was symbolic of how Candrea built his uber-successful program. He was able to raid UCLA territory — Southern California — for the nation's top prospects, those who earlier had stood in line to play for the Bruins, a 1980s dynasty.

It's my opinion that the four members of Arizona's Mount Rushmore softball program all came from SoCal, all of them declining UCLA offers to play for Candrea and his new wonder ship in Tucson.

Espinoza, from Banning High School in the L.A. suburb of Wilmington, chose Arizona over the Bruins and then-NCAA powers Fresno State and Cal State Fullerton. She laid the foundation for my other three members of the UA Mount Rushmore softball group — pitcher Nancy Evans of Hoover High in Glendale, Calif., pitcher Jennie Finch of Orange County's La Mirada High School and Jenny Dalton of Glendale High School.

All had UCLA pounding on the door. All joined the burgeoning franchise in Tucson.

"I was a kid from the street who played rec ball and stick ball," Espinoza told me in 2019, "but the UA discovered me and the rest is history."

On the night Evans committed to Arizona in 1993, rejecting the nearby Bruins, Candrea was so elated that after hanging up the phone, he got his wife and kids together, called Evans back and had his family sing "Bear Down. Arizona,'" to the coveted pitcher from Hoover High.

Evans was so good, so fast at Arizona that she went 17-0 as a freshman pitcher and went a hard-to-believe 124-8 in her Wildcat career, still an NCAA winning percentage record. She was named the NCAA player of the year in 1998, a time that she shuttled between playing the infield and outfield when not pitching. But at the 1998 WCWS, she pitched every inning of five Arizona games, leading to another national title.

Much credit goes to Candrea, who refused to see his growing UA program as second-tier to UCLA. He strongly pursued Evans after her unforgettable senior high school season in which she went 23-1 with an 0.08 ERA, with 364 strikeouts and just eight walks.

Evans played most of her career with Dalton, the 1996 NCAA player of the year. Dalton, a second baseman, scored 101 runs in 1995, then an NCAA record. She completed her Wildcat days with another NCAA record, 328 RBIs, and was a consensus first-team All-American in 1995, 1996 and 1997. She was so good that she won the Pac-10's triple crown in 1996 with a .469 batting average, 25 homers and 109 RBIs.

Dalton left tears in UCLA's psyche more than once. As a freshman, she broke the 42-game winning streak of famed UCLA pitcher Lisa Fernandez by hitting a two-run homer at the new Hillenbrand Stadium.

Finch, who remains perhaps the most well-known college softball player in history, did not include UCLA among her final recruiting picks. She chose between Arizona and Washington, and why not? Four of her teammates from the national power summer travel team, the Orange County Batbusters, were on the UA roster.

Finch's spot on Arizona's softball Mount Rushmore team was long ago cemented when she completed a 60-game winning streak, including a perfect 32-0 national championship season in 2001.

Espinoza, Dalton, Evans and Finch are a powerful foursome in any era and at any school, even more than two decades after they played their final games at Arizona.