Courtesy BYU Photo

BYU softball coach Gordon Eakin said he’s at the point in the season where he gets a little worn out, and admitted he’s still not a big fan of the transfer portal.

Still, the program he’s built over the past 23 seasons is moving along really well.

The good news is Monday turned out to be a nice, early day of work for Eakin and the Cougars.

BYU took care of Fresno State with some late-game heroics, claiming a 7-4 victory at Gail Miller Field in a matchup that started at noon due to it being “Kids Day.” A few hundred grade school children provided some energy and the Cougar bats were lively with four home runs to account for all seven runs.

“We’re hitting the ball out a lot, and that’s nice to see,” Eakin said. “Today we made it a lot harder that it needed to be by giving them those three runs on an error. But I was proud of them for being resilient and not letting that affect them, then coming back and closing the game out like they did.”

Courtesy BYU Photo

BYU is 26-12 overall and 8-7 in Big 12 play heading into a 3-game series with the University of Utah beginning Thursday.

“We believe in playing one game and one pitch at a time,” Eakin said. “If we start talking about how we need to win six of our last nine, or seven of our last nine, we get way ahead of the process. We’re pretty good as a staff and as players not looking ahead but looking at the opponent on that day and each inning we play. Now we’re focusing on Utah and Game 1, inning one and pitch one.”

The early start left enough time for Eakin to look forward to mowing his lawn, sitting down with a Mountain Dew and drawing up a game plan for the upcoming showdown with the Utes.

BYU took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first on a solo home run from Hailey Morrow and a two-run shot from Ilove’a Brittingham gave the Cougars a 4-1 advantage after three innings. Fresno State managed three runs in the top of the fourth, all unearned after a two-out error by BYU, to tie things up at 4-4.

Senior catcher Lindy Milkowski — who said she’s never even tasted Mountain Dew — brought plenty of her own energy and led off the bottom of the sixth with a solo blast over the scoreboard in right for a 5-4 BYU lead.

Courtesy BYU Photo

Coming into the game, the Cougars were ninth in the country in home runs per game (1.65, 61 home runs in 37 games).

“I think we were just kind of getting in our heads a little bit,” Milkowski said. “We had a good talk right before we came out to hit. And it was just like, ‘Let’s band together, let’s play our game and let’s go be confident and go take it to them.’

“My mindset going up to hit was not trying to do too much. I just want to hit a single to right field. And I just happened to take all my aggression out on the ball, and it happened to go pretty far.”

Milkowski said she and her teammates call that approach “passing the bat” and she eventually passed the bat to teammate Maddie Udall-Woolley. Bre Townsend drew a two-out walk and Udall-Woolley homered to center for a 7-4 advantage.

“Our team is a bunch of fighters,” said Milkowski, who transferred to BYU from Eastern Illinois last season. “We’ve come back from a lot. We’re kind of the unexpected team in the Big 12. This is only our second year in the league and I think we can come together and play our brand of softball. We can set the tone for the next few weeks. We want to make our mark that BYU is the team I know we can be.”

Courtesy BYU Photo

Katie Dahle got a no-decision but pitched 5 2/3 innings, striking out a season-high nine batters. Kaysen Korth got the win, throwing 1 1/3 innings with three strike outs, retiring all four batters she faced.

Milkowski transferred to BYU after one season at Iowa and three seasons at Southern Illinois to play for what members of the media sometimes refer to as the “Fighting Gordon Eakins.”

“That’s so fair,” Milkowski said. “I love that. Actually, people have compared us to each other. They say I’m an old soul, except for the Mountain Dew thing. He’s a Mountain Dew drinker and I’m not. But we all kind of band behind him because we know he’s a fantastic coach and we respect him. I love the way he lets us be ourselves and let’s us each have our own individual piece that we can bring together, to use as a team to create cohesion.”

BYU dominated the Mountain West Conference and the West Coast Conference before becoming members of the Big 12 in 2024, where every game of every series is a dogfight.

“I’m a very competitive individual and I’ve always wanted to coach in a power conference,” Eakin said. “The switch to the Big 12 excited me. It didn’t scare me. We already had good players but I think we did a good job of transitioning our players to the Big 12 properly. Other sports helped us. We learned those lessons and use those as examples.

Courtesy BYU Photo

“We sell the quality of the program (to recruits), we sell the family atmosphere. We can sell that we’re playing on the biggest stage as the capstone to everything else that we’ve been doing.”