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ASU, Texas A&M advance to softball finals

Jeff Latzke Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY – At 5 feet tall and a slender 100-or-so pounds, Jackie Vasquez wasn’t known for hitting home runs. Until she put Arizona State in the Women’s College World Series finals with one swing.

Vasquez hit a three-run home run after slugger Kaitlin Cochran was hit with a pitch, leading the Sun Devils to a 3-1 win Sunday against Alabama and its first chance to play for the national championship.

“It felt really good when I hit it,” said Vasquez, a senior who hit only the sixth home run of her college career. “Not that I’ve hit tons and I know the difference, but I definitely felt like it was going somewhere when I hit it.”

The Sun Devils will face fifth-seeded Texas A&M (56-8) in the best-of-three championship beginning today. The Aggies beat top-seeded Florida 1-0 on Kelsey Spittler’s RBI triple down the right field line in the ninth inning.

The Gators (70-5) had won three straight elimination games, including a 6-1 victory against Texas A&M earlier Sunday to force a rematch.

Vasquez’s blast sailed over the right-field wall, giving the sixth-seeded Sun Devils (64-5) their first hit of the game off Kelsi Dunne.

Dunne (26-6) had hit Kristen Miller to start the third inning and then drilled Cochran in the leg on a 1-1 pitch with two outs to give Arizona State its first two baserunners. She allowed only two other runners – on a walk and an infield single with two outs in the sixth.

“We got one big hit,” Arizona State coach Clint Myers said. “If you’re not going to get a lot of hits, one good timely hit can make all the difference – and again it was our 5-foot-nothing, 103-pound nothing little slapper that once again got the big hit for us.”

Katie Burkhart (39-5) limited the nation’s highest-scoring offense to only two hits, including Jordan Praytor’s RBI single in the top of the third, to end the Crimson Tide’s best run in five trips to the World Series.

The Sun Devils also made it to the World Series the past two years, but got eliminated in three games in 2006 before being the first team sent home last year.