Vickers Dominates Nevada, GCU Forces Game 2 with 3-0 Win

GCU ace Oakley Vickers shut out the high-flying Nevada offense Saturday, forcing a winner-take-all championship game in the 2026 MW Softball Tournament. | David Kadlubowski/GCU Athletics

After all the buildup and months of trials and tribulations, we have finally reached the Mountain West Softball Championship. Appropriately, this ended up being a matchup between the two best teams in the conference all year, and two teams that will remain in the Mountain West in 2027: Grand Canyon and Nevada. The former, in the midst of a historically dominant season, needed to win two games to take home the title, having advanced to this point from the losers’ bracket. The latter squad just needed to take one of two to claim their first Mountain West Tournament title, and their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2009.

After looking like far and away the best team in the tournament for the past three days, the Nevada curse returned, as the bats were fully silenced by GCU ace Oakley Vickers for seven innings in a shutout, 3-0 loss. GCU forced Game 9 to take place, as the team that advanced from the winner’s bracket could not prevent that fate for the second year in a row.

Entering this game, both Nevada’s (37) and GCU’s (28) offenses had broken the previous MW Tournament record for runs scored in a tournament (25, SDSU 2006), despite having still played one fewer game than the previous record-holders. How appropriate, then, that both teams went ice-cold to start, with Hannah Di Genova’s four-pitch walk serving as the only baserunner for either team in the first.

After a hitless top of the inning from the Wolf Pack, the Lopes got back-to-back singles off of the inconsistent-pitching Tess Bumiller to lead off the bottom of the second, advancing both runners to scoring position with a wild pitch. Addison Shifflett’s sac fly batted in her tournament record 10th RBI, putting the Lopes on the board first. The Lopes got another run on a Tinley Lucas double, leaving the second with a 2-0 lead. Both sides got nothing going in the third, with Ainsley Berlingeri having taken the place of Bumiller in the circle.

Katie Wetteland finally gave the Wolf Pack some life with a leadoff double, then the very next pitch hit Di Genova in the hip. After two straight outs, the Pack ended up leaving the bases loaded, with that problem from preseason coming back to bite them at the worst possible time. Berlingeri continued to dominate the Lopes with two more strikeouts, but that “0” on the scoreboard was looming large at this point.