Danielle O’Toole remembers her first time facing the UCLA Bruins, though she probably wishes she didn’t.
“We were down by some runs and I just remember looking as runners were going by me and everything was happening so fast,” she recalls.
On that night in April of 2016, the Arizona Wildcats’ ace surrendered seven runs on 12 hits as the Bruins won 8-6 to begin a three-game series in Tucson.
The magnitude of the UCLA-Arizona rivalry was greater than O’Toole had imagined.
“I think I was mentally unprepared last year and I’m not afraid to say it because it was not a good outing for me,” said O’Toole, who mentioned UCLA-Arizona contests are “100 percent different” from other series.