By Brad Goldbach
The top ranked Florida Gators are no stranger to top-ten opponents, but when seventh ranked Georgia came to town Wednesday, the stakes were high and the Gators were on edge. Just how much on edge, the Bulldogs found out the hard way.
By the time the Gators (24-2, 5-0 SEC) had finished off the Bulldogs defeated the seventh-ranked Bulldogs (15-4, 0-2 SEC) by scores of 15-0 and 4-0 in their Wednesday doubleheader at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium, Georgia had a pretty good idea what winning this rivalry means to Coach Tim Walton’s team.
“I don’t care if they’re in the top 10 or the top 100 in our conference,” Walton said. “Any time we win a game in the conference, it’s huge. But the Florida-Georgia rivalry is something to be said in every sport and we’ll take a lot of pride in that. Any time we can win a ball game in this league, we’re not going to take that win for granted. I can tell you that.”
The Gators didn’t take anything for granted Wednesday and didn’t give the Bulldogs a chance to breathe, putting six runs on the scoreboard before recording an out in the first game. After three consecutive walks to start the game, Georgia pitcher Christie Hamilton was pulled in favor of Sarah McCloud, who proceeded to give up a two-run double to Francesca Enea. Two batters later, Corrie Brooks blasted her second grand slam of the season into the trees in center field and the Gators never looked back.
“When you swing the bat like that, how can you not be confident and how can you not be excited?” Walton said. “I thought we were phenomenal. It’s as good as we’ve looked all year long. Against a great team, we came out ready to go.”
Georgia’s resume spoke for itself, coming to Gainesville with a lineup that had already beaten Whitney Canion of Baylor and Danielle Lawrie of Washington, the two pitchers who defeated Florida by identical 1-0 scores earlier this season. But the Bulldogs were not able to deliver a repeat performance against Florida’s two aces.
“Once again, we are going to show people we’re here to play and we can hang with everyone,” pitcher Stephanie Brombacher said. “Yeah, we lost to Washington, but I think we’ll give them a good run for their money again next time we see them. I think we proved how good we could be.”
It would be difficult for Florida’s pitchers to be any better than they were against Georgia. Both Stacey Nelson and Brombacher pitched one-hit shutouts with Nelson striking out four in game one and Brombacher whiffing nine in game two. Both pitchers were brimming with confidence against the Bulldogs after seeing their own lineup put up seven runs in the first inning of game one.
“When we come out on fire like we did the first game, I felt really comfortable coming out,” Brombacher said. “I knew we were going to score runs. It just let me pitch my own game. I can go out there and just throw my pitches and make them hit my pitches and not have to give in to them.”
The Georgia pitchers were not as fortunate as Florida filled up the box score in both games. Aja Paculba went 2-3, with two RBI, a home run and her first triple of the season in the first game. Paculba also snagged her team-leading 15th stolen base of the year. Kelsey Bruder continued her own personal hot streak, crushing her team-leading eight homer of the season to center field in the first inning of game two. It was Bruder’s seventh home run in the last 11 games. Megan Bush followed Bruder with a homer of her own in the second inning and Michelle Moultrie continued her solid play in centerfield, going 3-3 with three RBI in the first game.
But the Florida batters did not let the hot streak get to their head, showing that patience at the plate can be just as deadly as the long ball. The Gators drew 12 walks in the first game alone, with Ali Gardiner and Tiffany DeFelice drawing three apiece.
“We’ve had patience at the plate all year long,” Walton said. “We’ve had 114 walks on the season. If you get a strike zone that’s a strike and a ball that’s a ball, I think we’re as good as any team in the country. If you start to expand it, then we’ll start to chase a little bit. We weren’t chasing early in the game. We did a good job making her bring pitches in the zone.”
The key to Florida’s runaway success against the Bulldogs may have been a harder-than-usual practice session Tuesday.
“I was here all day long hitting with our hitters,” Walton said. “So if you estimate the time we put in, then plus the team practice, I think we were probably a little bit under four hours. We had a tough one. You could say it paid off, but obviously we had a lot of things to work on. Georgia’s a really good team. We had to prepare for this team. If you want to win the SEC and if you want to win the (SEC) East, you have to go through Georgia every year, and you have to do a good job taking care of business.”
Walton sat Enea in game two after Florida’s All-American left fielder suffered a slight injury in game one. Enea did make a pinch-hit appearance in the second game.
“[Enea] got hurt a little bit in the first game, so I gave her the rest of the game off,” Walton said. “We tried to bunt her just to bunt her and get her out of there. She tweaked herself a little bit and went back to the training room, where we got her fixed and ready to go.”
The Gators head to Ole Miss this weekend to take on the Rebels in a three-game series. The teams will play a doubleheader at 2 p.m. Saturday and the series finale at 2 p.m. Sunday.