On the heels of a doubleheader sweep of rival Arizona State on Wednesday night, the Arizona softball team will travel to the Bay Area this weekend for games with California and Stanford.

The No. 2 Wildcats (41-7 overall, 13-3 in the Pacific 10 Conference) will face the 11th-ranked Bears tomorrow at 1 p.m. with the doubleheader against the Cardinal set to start at 1 p.m. on Sunday.

Junior Carrie Dolan pitched a four-hitter in the first game on Wednesday night to lead the Wildcats to a 2-1 victory in nine innings. Freshman Lisa Pitt, in a game of one-upmanship with Dolan, held the Sun Devils to three hits, for her first shutout of the season, in a 6-0 win.

But the story for the Wildcats in the second game was finally getting some offensive production. In a four-game stretch that included a loss to Fresno State, two losses to top-ranked Washington, and the first-game win over ASU, the Wildcats scored a total of four runs.

"It was the same kind of thing. We just got off to a slow start," Arizona assistant coach Stacey Hill said. "But we broke out in the second game. It was important to start swinging the bat again."

Indeed it was.

The going doesn't get much easier for the Wildcats, who must win their last 12 games to have a hope of leapfrogging the Huskies. The homestretch for the conference crown, and a chance to host an NCAA regional, begins in Berkeley.

"Everybody thinks about regionals in the back of their heads," Hill said. "But you just have to take things one game at a time and not look ahead."

With that in mind, Dolan will start the first game and Pitt the second. Both pitchers responded well, Hill said, after tough losses last week. Both Dolan (26-6) and Pitt (11-2) were on the down side of 2-1 ball games. Dolan lost in extra innings to the Huskies, while Pitt lost after giving up a seventh-inning home run against Fresno State.

"I was really proud of both the pitchers," Hill said. "They focused on what they had to do."