FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas starting pitcher Mary Haff gave her outfielders a break Friday.
The Razorbacks' star freshman won her program-record 27th game of the season in a 2-0 win over DePaul in the NCAA Fayetteville Regional at Bogle Park. It was the first home postseason game in Arkansas' 22-year history.
Haff allowed the Blue Demons only one traditional base hit and struck out eight. She did not issue a walk in 102 pitches.
“I just think coming out of the Big East we haven’t seen pitching like this in a while,” DePaul’s Megan Leyva said. “It was kind of hard for us to get back into that and seeing those kinds of pitches. She had great movement on the ball, and we’ll be more prepared tomorrow because we’ve seen that now.”
Haff's quest for a perfect game was spoiled in the fifth inning when Leyva reached base on a leadoff infield single. In the sixth, Haydn Christensen singled to right to lead off the inning. Outside of those plays, Haff was unscathed.
Sixteen of DePaul's 21 outs in the loss came by way of a pop out or strikeout. Haff's outfielders made only one putout – in the seventh inning. Blue Demons coach Eugene Lenti attributed his club's lack of solid contact against Haff to a specific pitch.
“It’s the fact she’s throwing that great rise ball at different levels,” Lenti said. “And (secondarily) she’s got the changeup to keep you off balance. You’re going to put a rise ball in the air. When you have a great rise ball pitcher, (you get) a lot of pop ups."
Christensen added that she came away impressed with the movement on Haff's rise balls, and said the game's home plate umpire, Chad Spitler, was more lenient on pitches up in the zone. Haff took advantage.
"She has that high-rise, then she can also hit you with that mid-rise," she said. "And when she was hitting that it was really hard to lay off of.”
Arkansas coach Courtney Deifel's favorite part of Haff's outing was that the freshman perhaps didn't even have her best stuff working. Haff was dealing with only two of her three pitches, Deifel said.
Deifel estimated Haff threw only a handful of curveballs. The multi-level rise ball was enough Friday.
"She can usually spin her curve pretty well in there, too, but we didn’t really have that pitch to use that much today," said Deifel, in her third year at Arkansas. "She mixed her speeds very well and she just trusts her spin and kept them off balance.
"I think it was par for the course in terms of what she’s done all year."
The rise ball has become natural to Haff over the years. She doesn't quite remember when she began throwing the pitch, but said the arm motion felt innate to her from the jump.
The rise balls led to a pair of DePaul foul outs in the early going, which included a stellar on-the-run catch by third baseman Autumn Buczek near the wall beyond third.
"I think my location today was better than it has been in the past," Haff said. "Hitting my spots really made a difference in having more infield pop ups compared to the outfield. They got a little rest today.
"They usually get a lot out there, so I gave them some rest today."
Arkansas will face Wichita State at 1:30 p.m., Saturday in the winner's bracket. Wichita State, which defeated Oklahoma State 8-2 Friday, defeated the Razorbacks 1-0 in Kansas on March 6 in freezing temperatures and winds that gusted to 50 mph, Deifel said. A second game was called off.
Shockers coach Kristi Bredbenner remembers the paltry conditions as well and expects a different team than what she saw two months ago.
"We've watched a lot of film of them," Bredbenner said of Arkansas. "They have two great pitchers who complement each other really well between Haff going up and Autumn Storms pretty much being a drop-ball pitcher. ... It'll be the exact opposite of basically everything we saw when we were in Wichita."