Alyssa Rivera, admittedly, had been trying to do too much for most of the day.
The Auburn freshman right fielder had two infield hits and a walk in her first four plate appearances but was swinging hard enough to send the ball into orbit.
With one out and the tying run in scoring position, Rivera didn't need to do much to be the hero and Tigers coach Clint Myers let her know it.
"Do less and it's the moment that you wait for all your life," Rivera said of the message she received from the veteran coach. "Don't swing too hard, don't try to do too much, just shorten up and be direct."
Rivera followed guidance to perfection, delivering a walk-off single to left to give No. 7 seed Auburn to a 4-3 win in nine innings over Cal at Jane B. Moore Field on Saturday and send the Tigers to the NCAA Regional finals.
"I said, 'Hey, this girl can't beat you; you're better than she is,'" Myers said. "'You don't have to hit a home run, what you got to do is get the barrel on the ball, stay short, stay direct and know you're going to beat her right here. "This is what you practice for, right here, right now.'"
Auburn will play the winner of Notre Dame and Cal, which leads 4-3 in the fifth inning of a suspended game, at 11:30 a.m. Sunday. NCAA rules allow a Regional to start its final game until the end of Monday, but with rain in the forecast into Tuesday the Tigers could advance to the Super Regional next week without playing again.
"If things turn south, there's stipulations in there," Myers said, "but we're sitting in a good position."
Rivera's game-winner was the 15th hit for Auburn (48-10) off Cal pitcher Zoe Conley in 8 1/3 innings as she lost a pitching duel to the combined efforts of Kaylee Carlson, who allowed three runs on five hits and struck out three over six innings, and Makayla Martin, who allowed one hit and one walk and struck out two in three scoreless innings of relief.
Cal (31-23) had the would-be go-ahead run thrown out on the base paths in the top of the ninth, as Khala Taylor wandered too far off third base and was tagged out at home by Carlee Wallace, who took the brunt of a collision.
"She was pretty vocal in the dugout and getting things going," Myers said. "It was good. That ninth inning was a great inning for us. You want that passion and that excitement and that energy and it was there."
Wallace hit a one-out single in the bottom of the frame and pinch runner Brittany Maresette was who scored on Rivera's single.
The final dramatic play was enabled by Kasey Cooper breaking out of an 0 for 9 slump with a game-tying, two-out RBI single to left in the sixth.
"When the game's on the line," Myers said, "I don't mind Coop having the bat in her hand."
Cooper, who later singled in the ninth, credited Wallace, who told her to swing with "no regrets" and Bree Fornis and Maresette with telling her to she was "thinking way too much" with bringing about a change to her approach at the plate.
"It's a very important game," Cooper said. "We saw the rain forecast; we're not oblivious. We knew that if we won today and we rained out (Sunday), we advance. We didn't want to get put out by a contingency, so we were playing for our lives right there. If we had one loss that's how we were playing."
Morgan Podany scored on Cooper's single on a controversial play at the plate. The ball was in the right hand of Cal catcher Alleah Laxamana, who tagged Podany with her empty mitt and replay appeared to show her right hand with the ball did not make contact before Podany reached the plate.
"I thought the best chance that I had to be safe was to either reach the base and kind of try to avoid it, which obviously, you saw she tagged me on the head because my helmet flew off," Podany said. "Even if she did or did not bobble it, my foot may or may not have been in there safely. ... I didn't know she bobbled it. In that moment, it was a bang-bang play, that's why I look at the umpire to see what his call is."
Cal took a 3-2 lead in the fifth on a two-out single by Kyle Reed after both teams scored two runs in the third. The Bears benefited from a wild pitch and RBI single from Lindsay Rood and rhe Tigers tied it in the bottom of the frame on a solo home run by Casey McCrackin (2 for 4), her third of the season, and RBI single by Haley Fagan (4 for 5).
"It was full count at that point (and) it was a close enough pitch to where I had to swing," said McCracken, who had er second multi-hit game of the season in 42 appearances with 39 starts. "I put a good barrel on the ball and it went very far."
The heroics have been spread across the roster for Auburn all season and Rivera saw the ball where she needed it.
"Over the plate," she said.