By Tommy Deas

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama – The USSSA Pride is kind of like a Swiss Army Knife: a lot of tools and weapons combined in a package that doesn't look terribly dangerous.

It isn't as threatening as a gun or an artillery piece, but those weapons can do a lot of damage. They took the Pride to the National Pro Fastpitch regular-season title, and now they have the team from the Orlando, Florida, area on the verge of winning the Cowles Cup in the NPF Championship Series.

The Pride defeated their longtime nemesis, the Chicago Bandits, 3-1 on Sunday night at Rhoads Stadium in the opening game of the best-of-three title series. USSSA Pride can claim the championship with another win on Monday night in a game set for a 7 p.m. Central Time start.

There was nothing overwhelming about the way the Pride went about beating Chicago, but there was a feeling from the very start that the Bandits had too much to overcome to pull off another upset after they had knocked off Monica Abbott and the Scrap Yard Dawgs in the semifinal round.

"Some days for us, our best just isn't good enough," conceded Chicago coach Mike Steuerwald.

This was one of those times.

The Pride served notice on their first at-bat. Center fielder Megan Wiggins led off the bottom of the first inning by working the count full and then blasting a home run over the fence in right-center to make it 1-0.

Pride coach Lonni Alameda talked strategy after the game.

"In this league now you're seeing the pitchers so much and facing each other so often, it's different than college because you have so much information," she said. "In some situations, you want your hitters to see more pitches."

Catcher Chelsea Goodacre had a different idea. When she led off the second inning, she jumped on the first pitch and knocked it out of the park, the ball following nearly the same path as Wiggins' homer.

"Honestly I was just looking for a pitch that I could drive to left-center, and it ended up going to right-center, which was fine," Goodacre said.

The two at-bats showed the Pride's versatility: Wiggins showing patience to work deep into the count until she got the pitch she wanted, Goodacre flashing aggression to get the same result.

More patience accounted for USSSA Pride's other run, and this time it wasn't produced by power so much as execution. Wiggins drew a leadoff walk and stole second. With two outs, former Oklahoma star Lauren Chamberlain drove a 3-2 pitch to left field to drive in the run.

That gave the Pride a three-run lead and chased Chicago starter Morgan Foley (1-4) from the game, but USSSA Pride wasn't able to get to reliever Lacey Waldrop, who threw 3 1/3 innings of shutout ball.

In fact, the Pride only managed five hits, and after three innings each team had three hits. The difference was efficiency: USSSA Pride's hits were either powerful or timely.

What Sunday's victory also showed is that the Pride can win in a championship setting without legendary lefty Cat Osterman, who pitched her final game a year ago. In her place on the USSSA roster is a stable of arms that give head coach Lonni Alameda a lot of options.

"They just have a good mix of pitching if anything," said Bandits outfielder Brittany Cervantes, who went 2-for-2.

Left-hander Keilani Ricketts (8-5) started the opening game of the championship series, just as she did the first semifinal game against the Akron Racers, who USSSA Pride eliminated in two games. Ricketts, another Oklahoma product, went four innings with little trouble before giving up a leadoff solo home run to Chicago shortstop Kristen Brown to start the fifth.

Chicago tried to press the advantage, with a one-out single by Jill Barrett and a hit batter with two outs giving the Bandits their best opportunity, but Ricketts got a fly-out to left field to end the inning.

Alameda didn't have to see if Chicago was beginning to solve Rickets; instead, she was able to turn to Jordan Taylor, who pitched two no-hit innings to earn her 10th save.

Taylor, who starred at Michigan, is settling into a role as a closer, although she's still sorting out exactly what that means.

"I think it's still being defined in softball, it's not really a thing yet," Taylor said. "I'm still adjusting. It's ironic because in college the seventh inning was my worst inning."

Chicago got the tying run to the plate with one out in the top of the seventh inning by getting a baserunner on by an error, but Jordan shut the door.

The Pride is in position to win the championship despite damage to its biggest threat, league Player of the Year Kelly Kretschman, who became the NPF's first Triple Crown winner by leading the pro ranks in average, home runs and RBIs. The two-time Olympic medalist, playing on the same field where she played collegiately at the University of Alabama, is hobbled by a injury to her right calf and playing with a brace. She hasn't yet produced a hit in the playoffs, and has been replaced in right field midway through each contest.

"She's not as healthy," Alameda said. "We're trying to get her through it."

The fact that the Pride is in this position without production from Kretschman shows how deep this team is, how many tools and weapons it has at its disposal.

"We're stacked," said outfielder Haylie McCleney, a rookie who was a four-time All-American at Alabama. "You look 1 through 23 on our roster and we've got All-Americans all around."

What they don't have yet, at least the younger players, is a trophy. Chicago won last year's crown.

"This being my second year, I don't have a championship yet and I don't have a (collegiate) championship," said Goodacre, who played at Arizona, "so to be with this team fighting to win the last game is incredible."

Chicago, of course, is also trying to prove something. The Bandits lost Abbott, the driving force behind the franchise, when she signed a six-year, million-dollar contract with the Scrap Yard Dawgs expansion team as a free agent. Beating Abbott twice in the best-of-three semifinal round made a statement.

"I think that they're a very scrappy team, very powerful but very scrappy," Alameda said.

They intend to keep scrapping until the final out.

"Obviously we don't like to make it easy," Cervantes said. "We'll come back ready to play."