COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – In the second week of the season, San Diego State softball has the Mountain West Player of the Week and MW Pitcher of the Week, the league announced Monday.
Jade Ignacio earned top player honors for the second week in a row while Key-annah Pu’a garnered Pitcher of the Week accolades. The duo led the Aztecs to a 5-1 weekend in the Campbell/Cartier Classic at SDSU Softball Stadium, the best record of the five teams that competed.
San Diego State (8-2) beat Baylor 4-3 on Thursday on Tylie Kitchen’s walk-off single in the eighth inning. Following a defeat in a rematch with the Bears on Friday, the Scarlet and Black earned a 6-0 win over North Dakota in the nightcap. On Saturday, the Aztecs won a pair of extra-inning games, beating Fordham 2-1 in the eighth inning on Ignacio’s walk-off single before a three-run home run by Olivia Gigante ended an 8-5 win over Oregon State in nine innings. SDSU rallied for seven runs in the fifth inning against Oregon State on Sunday to earn a 10-5 victory.
Ignacio started all six games for San Diego State, playing behind the plate four times and at designated player twice. She hit .458 on the week with a .980 OPS (.480 on-base percentage and .500 slugging percentage). Ignacio had a hit in five of six games, tallying multiple hits three times. She finished the week 11-for-24 with a double, seven RBIs, five runs scored and a walk.
In Thursday’s win, Ignacio singled and scored as well as walked. She drove in half of San Diego State’s runs in the win over North Dakota with an RBI groundout in the first inning and a two-run single in the second. The now-two-time Player of the Week was the hero against Fordham on Saturday, hitting an RBI single in the sixth inning before a walk-off RBI single in the eighth in the 2-1 win. She capped off the day by reaching base in all five plate appearances against Oregon State. After reaching on an error and scoring in the first inning, Ignacio singled in her remaining four at bats and came around to score the game-tying run in the seventh inning and the game-winning run in the ninth. The backstop finished the weekend with a pair of singles, a two-RBI double and a run scored in Sunday’s victory.
Pu’a appeared in the circle in three games, all wins for the Aztecs. She struck out six hitters in 11.2 innings, allowing just one earned run on eight hits. Over the course of the weekend, she totaled a 1-0 record, a 0.60 ERA, a 0.943 WHIP and a 2.00 K:BB Ratio.
The Fresno State transfer started in the circle on Thursday and pitched the first five innings, striking out five Bears and limiting Baylor to one run on three hits. She started again on Saturday night against Oregon State, going 4.1 innings without allowing an earned run while striking out three. Pu’a finished the week on Sunday, entering with the bases loaded and the Aztecs trailing by a run in the fourth inning. She escaped the jam and threw two more scoreless innings with a strikeout and just one hit allowed (a single) to earn the win.
San Diego State heads to Cathedral City, California, this week for the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic. The Aztecs will face No. 4/4 Oklahoma on Thursday, UC Riverside and Saint Mary’s on Friday and Seattle U and No. 1/1 Texas Tech on Saturday. All five games will be streamed on FloCollege.