LAWRENCE, Kan. – Kansas showed why it entered Thursday’s two-game slate as the third-place team in the Big 12 Conference standings as No. 22/23 Sun Devil Softball had to attempt a pair of late-game rallies – one successful, one not – in order to earn an 8-5 victory, before falling to Jayhawks, 11-7, during the night gap of the day’s twin bill.
Kansas used a solo home run off the bat of Ella Boyer to take a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first to begin the day’s action. The one-run advantage stood for the Jayhawks until Arizona State strung together seven hits and pushed across four runs as Ryan Brown, Brooklyn Ulrich and Kaylee Pond all had run-scoring singles throughout the frame.
Despite relinquishing the momentum back to the Sun Devils, Kansas responded with a four-run fourth of its own to re-take the lead, 5-4.
It took Arizona State the fifth and sixth innings to re-take the lead after Ulrich tied the game in the fifth with a RBI groundout, before Katie Chester sent a 2-1 pitch through the left side of the diamond for a two-out, run-scoring single in the top of the sixth.
Despite having Kenzie Brown (S, 3) in the circle, Ulrich and Pond drove in a pair of insurance runs in the top of the seventh to withstand any potential seventh-inning rally by Kansas.
A seventh-inning rally is what Arizona State needed in the second game as the Sun Devils spent the final five innings attempt to claw out of an early 7-1 deficit after two innings. The deficit grew out to 9-1 – a potential mercy-rule scenario – but Chester, playing 45 minutes from her hometown of Liberty, Mo., crushed a three-run home run to spark a four-run top of the fifth to cut the deficit to four.
Kansas, though, answered right back with two runs of its own in the bottom half of the fifth.
Again, not showing a lack of fight, the Sun Devils scored two more runs in the top of the sixth to, again, cut their deficit down to four. But Arizona State managed just one more base runner the rest of the contest following a two-out, run-scoring single by Emily Schepp in the bottom of the sixth.
GAME NOTES
- For the third time this season, Kaylee Pond led off an Arizona State softball game with a solo home run as the first-year Sun Devil sent the second pitch of Thursday’s doubleheader over the centerfield fence.
- Pond also accomplished the feat at Arizona on Friday, March 20 and at North Carolina on Saturday, March 28.
- With her three-run home run in the top of the fifth inning of Thursday’s second game, Katie Chester connected for her 15th home run on the season, joining a nine-player tie for 10th on the program’s single-season home run list.
- Arizona State’s 8-5 win over Kansas to begin Thursday’s doubleheader marked the first time the Sun Devils have beaten the Jayhawks in Lawrence, Kan.
- The second game of Thursday’s doubleheader marked the 10th consecutive game for Arizona State away from Farrington Stadium in Tempe, the longest such streak under fourth-year head coach Megan Bartlett.
- With her three-hit performance against the Jayhawks during the first game on Thursday, Emily Schepp joins Samantha Swan (12), Ashleigh Mejia (11) and Katie Chester (10) as active Sun Devils with 10-or-more multi-hit games during the 2026 season.
UP NEXT
Arizona State (29-10, 4-7) will look to clinch its second Big 12 Conference series on the season when the Sun Devils return to the field at Arrocha Ballpark on Saturday, April 4 to wrap up its three-game conference series against Kansas (26-11, 7-4).
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