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Pure perfection: North Texas pitcher Hope Trautwein strikes out all 21 batters in perfect game

Hope Trautwein was perfection.

The North Texas senior threw a perfect game on Sunday by striking out all 21 Arkansas-Pine Bluff batters she faced on Sunday in a 3-0 victory. It is the first perfect game in school history and is believed to be the first perfect seven-inning game in NCAA Division I history in which every out was a strikeout.

Trautwein has thrown two no-hitters in her career and has struck out 21 batters a total of three times.

"That was a great performance by Hope," head coach Rodney DeLong said, via the Mean Green school site. "Any time she gets the ball, she never surprises us with the success she has. She's the hardest worker on our team, she brings it every day and she deserves all the credit and all the success in the world."

In February 2020 she struck out 21, walked two and gave up one hit over eight innings in a 3-0 win over A&M Corpus Christi. In her first start of the 2021 season on Feb. 13, she struck out 21, but allowed five hits and two runs in the 6-2 win against Southeastern Louisiana.

She became the third pitcher in Division I history with a seven-inning, 21-strikeout game. Alabama's Alexis Osorio struck out 21 against Fordham in 2018. California's Michele Granger did the same against Creighton in 1991, per the AP.

The record for strikeouts in a single game is 28, set by two different pitchers in the early 2000s. Northwestern's Eileen Canney did it in 18 innings in 2006 and Baylor's Cristin Vitek did it in 16 in 2004.

Trautwein (6-3) has 581 strikeouts in her collegiate career and is 131 shy of program leader Ashley Kirk, who reached 712 from 2011-14. She averages a strikeout per inning over her career. Before the shortened 2020 COVID season, she pitched 183 innings in 2018 and 204 in 2019. She's currently at 66 innings with about 20 games on the team's regular season schedule.

Trautwein is currently the program's career leader in ERA (2.21), saves (eight) and lowest opponent batting average (.204) while holding various other single-game and single-season records.

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