Sharlize Palacios helps UCLA softball peak as Super Regional play begins with Georgia

LOS ANGELES — Sharlize Palacios gauges the demeanor of each pitcher she catches, judging their readiness as they enter a ballgame. Their facial expression, she explains, says it all.

Take UCLA freshman Kaitlyn Terry for example. When she stepped into Saturday’s game against Virginia Tech in the bottom of the second inning — the Bruins, down three runs, with Hokies occupying first and second base — Palacios noticed a stone-faced visage similar to the expression Terry flashed when she was “mowing girls down against Arizona State” on May 9.

Palacios’s notion was sound. Terry settled right in, staving off the Hokies offense as the Bruins completed their fifth comeback of four or more runs this season.

After their run-rule win over Grand Canyon on Friday, that three-run deficit against Virginia Tech, which ballooned to four in the second inning, humbled these surging Bruins.

“(Virginia) Tech slapped us and socked us in the face,” head coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said.

For a brief moment, it reminded UCLA of its experience in the 2023 Los Angeles regional. As the No. 2 seed in the tournament, UCLA lost to Grand Canyon and Liberty and was done. That further educated Inouye-Perez, who says, what should be and what actually is doesn’t always match up. Teams that, at the beginning of the season appear as Women’s College World Series shoe-ins, sometimes fall flat; and teams that struggle early can get hot at the right time.

These Bruins utterly embody the latter.

“There’s no way I thought we were a top-eight seed in February,” Inouye-Perez said.

But here they are, having emerged from the Los Angeles Regional, needing the minimum of three games to do so, preparing to host No. 11 seed Georgia (43-17) in the NCAA Super Regionals.

The first of a best-of-three series starts Thursday at 6:30 p.m. when No. 6 seed UCLA (40-10) will try to carry over the momentum it has built.

Imagine this: The team that just scored 25 runs in the Los Angeles Regional and held its opponents scoreless for 14 out of 17 total innings, was, three months ago, a barge punctured with a hole on its way down.

UCLA lost 16-0 to Texas. One day later, Oklahoma State rolled into Easton Stadium and incited another run-rule, 9-1. Georgia, too, took care of the Bruins, 7-2, February 16. Utility player Alexis Ramirez was ruled out for the season with a torn ACL. Seneca Curo and Janelle Meoño were injured with murky timetables for return.

“We were completely all over the place,” Inouye-Perez said.

The Bruins, who have assigned readings of the book: Chop Wood, Carry Water, were far from being on the same page

But Inouye-Perez had an idea.

Taking the beginning of a late-February practice to prove a point, she asked her players to grab handfuls of softballs and lay them out on the field side-by-side. Each one represented a different stretch of their schedule:

A tournament. The start of conference play. Weekend and midweek series against Pac-12 foes. The Pac-12 Tournament. Regionals. Super Regionals. So on and so forth.

“You know how much time we have guys?” Inouye-Perez said. “Look at all these fricken balls.

“I get it. I get it’s hard. I get it’s emotional. I get we’re hurting. I get we’re embarrassed. I get it all. No one feels sorry for us outside this room. So either get to work and understand we have time or this is going to be our reality.”

The Bruins responded, personifying the antithesis of last year’s team which entered the Pac-12 Tournament at 50-4. They made mistakes throughout the regular season, learned from them, and are peaking during postseason.

Palacios has been a significant factor in that response. A confident veteran, she has helped author the Bruins’ turnaround.

When Ramirez went down, she was thrust into starting behind the plate every day rather than shifting between catcher and designated player. She took on the responsibility of bringing along UCLA’s starting pitchers, both underclassmen. Her mentorship required a calculated approach. She took the early part of the season to observe their tendencies. Terry’s fiery, while Taylor Tinsley is more methodical, Palacios says. Her messages vary. They cater to fit each individual’s personality and the many circumstances they face.

Then there’s her bat. She rewarded Inouye-Perez’s decision to slot her in the three-hole. Her three home runs in the Los Angeles Regional helped spark the Bruins’ offense.

In fact, she’s hit nine home runs in the last 14 games. The outburst of power, she says, is no product of some change to her swing, rather a heightened focus on her rhythm.

“Everything that the game has given us,” Palacios said. “We’ve worked for it.”

Her understanding for how each pitcher is fairing in the flow of a game extends to her barometer for this team’s status as a whole. She and Inouye-Perez are aligned in the sense that the Bruins have flipped the arc of this season. Not entirely on its head. Not yet, because there’s still another level left to ascend.