Day three of the 2026 Mountain West Softball Tournament kicked off with the winner’s bracket final matchup between tournament host Nevada and regular-season champion Grand Canyon. Nevada was the lone team to defeat GCU in a regular-season series, which was surely on the minds of both teams entering this game.
This game quickly revealed itself to be a wacky offensive slugfest. Nevada got on the board in the top of the first, with Hannah Di Genova crushing her 26th homer of the year to put the Wolf
Pack up 1-0. The Lopes got one back on the first batter of the frame, as a horribly unlucky misplay by Bailie Clark in center field allowed Sydney McCray to rocket around the bases for a leadoff inside-the-park home run to tie the game at one. Pack pitcher Talia Tretton walked two batters after the McCray homer, but also struck out two to end the inning tied up at one.
With two outs and two on in the top of the second, Rylie Haith blasted a three-run shot to left that put the Pack up 4-1. GCU once again responded back, bringing in pinch hitter and site friend Alina Satcher, who hit a grand slam to put the Lopes up 5-4. The Lopes tacked on another run on an Emily Gonzalez single off of Pack reliever Hailey McLean, going from a 4-1 deficit to a 6-4 lead in the span of one inning.
Nevada closed the gap on a Haylee Engelbrecht RBI single; a play where Lope shortstop Mackenzie Nolan planted her ankle and twisted it in gruesome fashion, allowing Katie Wetteland to score from third. Tretton then redeemed her pitching woes in the batter’s box, smashing a three-run homer of her own to put Nevada up 8-6. McLean then proceeded to go three-up, three-down with two strikeouts in the bottom of the frame, marking the first scoreless inning of the game.
Nevada just kept pouring it on in the fourth, with Tretton drawing a bases-loaded walk, followed by a Matlyn Leetch triple that emptied the bases and put the Wolf Pack up 12-6. During the bottom of the fourth, MW Coach of the Year Shanon Hays was ejected from the game after leaving the dugout and berating the home plate umpire following a strike call. McLean, fully fired up, struck out the next three batters, marking five strikeouts from her last five batters.
Nevada went three-and-out in the top of the fifth, missing a great chance to end the game early when McLean forced another GCU three-and-out with two more strikeouts. Nevada tacked on another run in the top of the sixth, but the winning run; Hailey McLean as a pinch runner, was left stranded on third. McLean responded with three more strikeouts, breaking her previous season mark of 10 with her 11th strikeout of the game.
Nevada extended their lead with another Di Genova RBI in the top of the seventh, leaving McLean to manage the eight-run lead. McLean allowed hits to her first four batters, including back-to-back two-run homers, quickly replacing the rowdiness of her home crowd with a collective pit in everyone’s stomach. McLean recovered with a putout in foul territory, then two more strikeouts to secure Nevada’s first-ever appearance in the MW Softball Championship.
McLean sullied her peformance a bit with her start to the seventh, but outside of that part of that inning, McLean recorded 13 strikeouts against just two walks and one hit. Di Genova led the way offensively with three hits and two RBIs, while five other Pack hitters recorded two hits, Tretton leading overall with four RBI. Nevada has now scored 37 runs across their three games in the tournament, firing on even more cylinders than we previously thought they even had.
Nevada has now advanced to the conference championship round, where they will need to only win one of two games to take home the conference’s autobid into the NCAA Tournament. As for Grand Canyon, they now fall into the loser’s bracket final, potentially doing so without their head coach, where they will face the winner of the New Mexico-UNLV game today, first pitch will be at 6:00 p.m. PST.
