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Show 6 Thursday April 17, 2014 SPORTS UPCOMING SPORTS EVENTS TODAY: Baseball Utah vs. UCLA 5:00 p.m. Smith's Ballpark Softball Utah vs. Stanford 3:00 p.m. Utah Softball Stadium FRIDAY: Baseball Utah vs. UCLA 5:00 p.m. Smith's Ballpark Softball Utah vs. Stanford 3:00 p.m. Utah Softball Stadium USA SOFTBALL COLLEGIATE TOP 25 Rank Team Record 1 Oregon 37-5 2 UCLA 35-4 3 Michigan 33-6 4 Tennessee 35-6 5 Arizona St. 38-6 6 Alabama 37-7 7 Florida 37-8 8 Florida St. 39-6 9 Arizona 34-9 10 Kentucky 36-8 11 Washington 24-11 12 Oklahoma 32-9 13 Minnesota 32-6 14 Baylor 30-9 15 Missouri 32-10 16 Tulsa 38-5 17 Louisiana-Lafayette 30-7-1 18 Georgia 35-8 19 Nebraska 30-13 20 South Alabama 32-8 21 Notre Dame 25-9 22 Texas A&M 28-14 23 Auburn 31-12-1 24 LSU 24-18 25 SC Upstate 39-5 www.dailyutahchronicle.com GYMNASTICS Senior Red Rocks look back Griffin Adams ASST. SPORTS EDITOR This weekend's NCAA Championships in Birmingham, Ala. will mark the final time the Red Rocks' four seniors will compete. Lia Del Priore, Hailee Hansen, Nansy Damianova and Mary Beth Lofgren have all enjoyed successful careers at Utah and have mixed emotions heading into their final weekend. "Definitely excited," Del Priore said. "Definitely a little bittersweet. I've been doing gymnastics for a really long time, and I'm kind of ready to move on and find something else that I'm really passionate about. But at the same time, it's gonna be really sad to have that part of me come to an end." With this weekend being the last chance these gymnasts will ever have to make it to the Super Six or win a national championship, the pressure is there to produce, but Damianova isn't feeling it. "It's not something that stresses me out," she said. "I do have confidence in the team. If we hit everything, I don't see how we'd have a problem getting into Super Six. But obviously, that's our goal." Hits for Dabritz Utah star Georgia Dabritz will cap off this weekend with what has been a very special season. Along with being named Pac-12 Specialist of the Year, she has been ranked No. i on the uneven bars for nearly the entire season. "This season has been very different from previous seasons that I've been here," Dabritz said. "It's been a lot more challenging for me in a way and a lot easier in other ways." One of the challenges has been learning how to be more consistent. She was somewhat hit-or-miss during her first two seasons as a Red Rock but is now one of the Marsdens' surest gymnasts. "I have complete trust in her approach to competition now," said co-head coach Megan Marsden. "I think she lost a lot of confidence in her years before this when she fell a lot in meets. We had to build that back up with positive experiences." No fault on vault Vault has been one of Utah's strongest events all year, and it sits at No. 3 in the nation. At regionals, however, the Red Rocks posted just a 49.325, and no gymnasts broke the 9.9 barrier. Greg Marsden, the vault coach, feels his gymnasts need to tweak their approach on the event in order to have success on it at nationals. His philosophy is that making sure one performs a good vault is more important than worrying about a stick landing. He believes that if the vault is done well, the landing will come with it. "[Greg] thinks that they're trying harder to stick, and it's not working as well for them," Megan Marsden said. One of Utah's strongest vaulters, Tory Wilson, admitted she was focused too much at regionals on sticking her landing, but she isn't too worried heading into the NCAA Championships. "You kinda go through ups and downs of the season, and I think at regionals, all of us were just trying to stick," she said. "I think now that we realized that, we just kind of refocus and do what we do every day." g.adams@chronicle.utah.edu ci iA fi a alla BRENT UBERTY/The Daily Utah Chronicle Nansy Damianova during her 10.0 performance at the meet against Georgia. BASEBALL COLUMN Utes hope to step up defensively against the Bruins Plouffe shares reaction to draft by Seattle Storm Ian Smith STAFF WRITER CHRIS AYERS/The Daily Utah Chronicle Konnor Armijo catches a ball at a game earlier this month against Arizona. Another weekend series is upon the Utes, but this one will have a bit of a twist. Because Sunday is Easter, Utah will face UCLA at Smith's Ballpark this evening, Friday and Saturday. At first glance, it appears the Utes may be in some trouble, as their biggest weakness is one of the Bruins' main strengths. UCLA boasts a fantastic pitching staff, a problem for a Utah offense that hasn't showed a whole lot of pop. More specifically, Utes coach Bill Kinneberg is wary of UCLA ace James Kaprielian, who is second in the Pac-12 in strikeouts and fourth in innings pitched, and who was recently got selected to play on team USA's National Collegiate Team. "We go one game at a time, but Kaprielian is one of the best pitchers in the country," Kinneberg said. "He's really good. We have a huge challenge ahead of us to try and create some action and some runs. He's been good all year, and he may be the best guy in our conference." Utah has not had a great record against the Bruins since joining the Pac-12, as it has yet to grab a win. UCLA leads the all-time series 13-2. Still, the Utes are confident heading into the series as long as they play their own game. "We have to play to our strengths," said senior catcher Konnor Armijo. "We know we're not the big swinging home run team like ASU or a couple of the other schools ... sometimes we get out of it and try to do the long swing home run swings, and it just doesn't work out for us." Armijo said the team needs to continue to attack the same way it did early in the year when it beat teams like Indiana and Nebraska. Over the past few weeks, Utah has had more success getting runners on base but has had a hard time bringing them home. In the second game against the Trojans last weekend, the Utes left the bases loaded three times. Interestingly, the Bruins are similar to Utah in the way they play offensively. "It's going to be pretty much a mirror image of us offenSee BASEBALL page 8 Sports Editor T he response came at 11:02 p.m., after deadline, but in this instance that didn't matter. On one of the most important nights of her life, I texted former Utah forward Michelle Plouffe to ask if we could chat about the fact that she had just been drafted by the Seattle Storm with the 19th pick in the WNBA Draft. I didn't expect a reply. Most athletes don't respond when I text them, and to be frank, I don't blame them. Reporters can be kind of annoying sometimes, but I figured I'd do my duty anyway and reach out to her. My phone buzzed 92 minutes after deadline, and there was a text from Plouffe telling me she had a crazy evening but that we could talk. I didn't really need to talk to her since my story had already been turned in, but I'm one of those people who likes to finish things the right way. In addition to that, I figured it would be the final time I'd ever talk to her. As we chatted about the next phase of her life that will See MCDONALD page 8 |