Arizona softball: Mike Candrea extremely happy with Wildcats’ depth in 2017

Is this the year Arizona can make it back to Oklahoma City?

When the calendar flips to 2017, it will have been seven years since the Arizona Wildcats last made it to the Women’s College World Series.

For most programs, this wouldn’t be a huge drought. But for Arizona, it’s an unprecedented skid.

In five of the past six years, Arizona has been eliminated in the Super Regional round, but head coach Mike Candrea has reason to believe this is the year they’ll be back in Oklahoma City.

“I’m very excited about this group,” Candrea said at a recent press conference. “I think it’s the best group of athletes that we’ve had for a while. There’s a lot of competition out there. A lot of quality depth, and I think we’ve got the pieces to the puzzle that I feel we can make a deep run if all goes well.”

The team has played a weekend of fall games to this point. In those two games against Eastern Arizona and Grand Canyon, Arizona outscored its opponents 29-0, allowing just three total hits in 12 innings of action, including a combined no-hitter against GCU.

“The depth,” Candrea said about his biggest takeaway from that group of games. “There’s not a kid on our team that can’t play.”

“There was a time in the game where they were throwing a lefty, so I was like alright, I’m gonna take all our lefties out and put all our righties in, and bam bam bam.”

“The quality depth brings competition to practice each and every day,” continued Candrea. “And when you have competition, kids get better. I like it, because I don’t have to watch a kid pout or go through the motions, because they know damn well there’s someone right behind them that can step in at any given moment.”

This has given the team an entirely new feel this fall compared to the past several years.

“Everyone’s on edge a little bit,” Candrea explained. “Nobody feels like they’re going to be there no matter what, so I think it’s a really good culture and environment right now for even our better players to get better.”

“From the time they walk on to the field, to the time they leave, there’s a standard that has been raised where I was used to seeing it, and it’s taken a while to get it back.”

“A good example would be that we have a seven-game series going on right now, and I put all the young kids against the older kids, and right now, the younger kids are up two games to none. So that kind of tells you the quality of depth we have, and I’m really excited about it.”

The lack of depth Candrea possessed seems to be what he thinks has cost this team when it gets into something like a Super Regional situation.

“We had our hands tied and we couldn’t really make any moves,” he said. “You were just hoping that no one got hurt, and right now, the hot hand’s gonna be playing, and I think the competition in practice has really made this team so much better.”

When the spring rolls around, it’ll be interesting to see if that depth plays out the way Candrea thinks it will. But for those that know what Arizona softball has been in the past, there should be reason for excitement heading into the 2017 season.

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