Roughly 90 minutes had passed since a controversial, game-tying home run sent Tennessee softball’s Women’s College World Series elimination game against UCLA into extra innings Sunday. But as she sat down for her post-game news conference after her team’s win, Lady Vols coach Karen Weekly wasn’t any less bothered by what had occurred.
Weekly teed off on the umpiring and replay review crews after No. 7 Tennessee’s 5-4 victory against No. 9 UCLA in nine innings, noting that she believed the incorrect call had been made on a two-run homer from Bruins slugger Megan Grant, who didn’t touch home plate as she completed her trot around the bases.
“I think everybody but four people saw the play at the plate,” Weekly said. “We saw in the dugout she had missed the plate and we saw her teammates had kind of pushed her back. By rule, that should have been nullified. … We went to the umpire and said, ‘This is what happened.’ Then they did their thing.”
After Grant had initially stepped over home plate, one player in her mob of teammates who greeted her, Alexis Ramirez, grabbed her and moved her in the direction of the plate to make sure she touched it.
After a 20-minute video review, it was determined that, while Grant did not touch the plate and had been assisted, it was not reviewable according to Appendix G of the NCAA Softball Rule Book.
When asked later during her news conference about what her team did to occupy itself during the review, Weekly sarcastically referred to it as “that lengthy review-not review.”
The victory the Lady Vols would have gotten had the call gone the other way was ultimately delayed, not denied. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning, Tennessee native Laura Mealer roped a single to left field to bring home the game-winning run.
With the win, Tennessee has advanced to the WCWS semifinals on June 2, where it will play No. 6 Texas. The Lady Vols, who already have a loss in the double-elimination tournament, will need to beat the Longhorns twice in order to make it to the WCWS championship series.