OKLAHOMA CITY – In the past two seasons, the Florida Gators have lost only nine softball games, none of them by more than two runs.
They picked a bad time to change that trend Monday in the first game of the best-of-three championship series at the Women’s College World Series.
“Obviously it’s not the way you draw it up, coming out in the national championship series and getting run-ruled – or what should have been a run-rule,” Walton said. “We’ve got to figure out a better way to approach the game tomorrow, and obviously this is a game of highs and lows. I haven’t seen this team be this low before.”
That low point for top-ranked Florida was at the wrong end of an 8-0 defeat at the hands of No. 3 Washington (50-12) and its brilliant junior right-hander Danielle Lawrie, who allowed just two hits while striking out 12. The loss snapped a season-high 29-game winning streak for the Gator (63-4), who had gone through April and May without a loss.
The Gators are down but not out and they need to go back to the drawing board after this one. But don’t expect Walton to make radical changes going into Tuesday’s game at 8 p.m. (ESPN2) against the Huskies (50-12) and Lawrie (41-8), who sure didn’t look tired after throwing 285 pitches in 15.2 innings against Georgia on Sunday.
“You’ve got to go with what got you here,” Walton said. “I don’t think at this point and time we’re going to rattle the cages too much. We’ve just got to figure out a better approach. … The defense wasn’t very good and we didn’t pitch very well.”
The poor defense and poor pitching are the direct opposite of Florida’s first two games at the ASA Hall of Fame Stadium – a 3-0 victory over Arizona on Thursday and a 1-0 victory over Michigan on Friday. In both games, Florida’s senior ace Stacey Nelson was the epitome of unhittable, allowing two leadoff singles against Arizona and just one hit by Michigan.
Nelson, who earned All-America honors for the second straight year, started to show signs of mortality on Sunday against Alabama when she gave up four earned runs in five innings. But even she is somewhat at a loss for words at the reversal.
“Something’s not clicking,” Nelson said. “I’m not hitting the spots that I want to. I have to go home and figure out why that is.”
Nelson gave up six runs (four earned) on five hits and two walks in five innings of work while striking out just five batters. She fell to 41-4 on the season and her NCAA-leading ERA rose to 0.58.
But Nelson didn’t get any help from her defense either. Sunday’s heroine, Ali Gardiner, dropped a sure-out throw from Corrie Brooks after Ashley Charters opened the game with a high-hop infield single, putting runners at second and third with no outs.
But Nelson got Jenn Salling to hit a grounder to Aja Paculba, who threw home to catcher Kristina Hilberth to nail Charters. Nelson then struck out Lawrie and finally got Morgan Stuart to ground out to Brooks to end that threat. But things went downhill in a hurry after that.
Washington’s batters jumped all over Nelson and put pressure on Florida’s defense all game long, using speed to attack the base paths. Nelson walked Niki Williams, who has three home runs in the WCWS, to start the third inning. Charters then followed with her second infield hit and Kimi Pohlman reached on a fielder’s choice to load the bases with no outs.
But this time Washington wouldn’t allow Nelson and the Gators to escape without paying a heavy price. It took just one pitch and when Florida had finished throwing the ball around, the Huskies had a 4-0 lead. Jennifer Salling singled up the middle to bring home two runs, Hilberth fielding Kim Waleszonia’s late strike but missing the tag on Charters.
Hilberth then tried to pick off Pohlman at second base, but her throw sailed over everyone, including center fielder Waleszonia, rolling all the way to the wall, allowing Pohlman and Salling to both score for the 4-0 lead.
Nelson retired the next three batters, but the way Lawrie was pitching, the damage was already done.
“You love the aggressiveness for Kristina to go out and try to get the kid,” Walton said. “She makes a good throw and it turns into an out there. But the ball sailed right out of her hand. (We made) uncharacteristic mistakes. Two mistakes on paper and probably another two that cost us a lot of runs.”
The huge inning followed Gardiner’s inning-ending double play in the bottom of the second. It was one of many huge plays that aided Lawrie, the USA Softball Player of the Year.
The game was supposed to be a battle of college softball’s two best pitchers, but with Nelson struggling, Lawrie took her game to another level, holding Florida to two hits and striking out 12 batters in the game.
Lawrie gave up a single to Corrie Brooks in the bottom of the third inning, but even after Brooks advanced to second, the Gators were unable to get any traction against the Huskies’ ace. It was a trend that plagued the Gators all night as they were only able to muster five base runners total.
It was not an unexpected performance. Back on Feb. 20 at the Cathedral City Classic in Palm Springs, Calif., Nelson and the Gators had lost a 1-0, nine-inning outing to Washington and Lawrie, who surrendered just two hits (both to Waleszonia) and five walks while fanning 12.
“She (Lawrie) did a really good job working with her catcher and taking advantage of the strikes she was getting,” said Brooks. “She worked the corners really well and kept us off-balance. I think we took way too many pitches. We didn’t really fight a whole lot. We’re definitely going to have to come out tomorrow and be ready to swing.”
Nelson kept Washington’s hitters at bay for another inning, retiring three Huskies in a row, but the Husky batters could not be contained on Monday.
For the second straight game, a close two-out play at first went against the Gators and set the opposing wheels in motion for two more Washington runs and a 6-0 lead. Against Alabama Brittany Rogers’ infield single started a four-run rally.
This time, the damage wasn’t as great after Salling reached safely to prevent a double play, but it hurt just as much with a four runs already on the board. Lawrie hit the next pitch for a single, setting up a Stuart double over Waleszonia’s head that brought home two more runs, extending the Washington lead to 6-0.
Walton went to Stephanie Brombacher in the sixth for the second consecutive WCWS game but the move did not create the spark needed to bring the Gators back this time around. In fact, the wound only deepened when Brombacher gave up a two-run homer to Ashley Charters, who finished the night 3-for-3 by giving Washington an insurmountable 8-0 lead.
Walton had run out of options against Lawrie and decided to go to his bench in the bottom of the sixth, trying anything to get the Gator bats going. Alicia Sisco struck out to lead off the inning, but Paculba walked and Michelle Moultrie singled to left field to give the Gators their best chance of the night. It was the only inning Florida had two baserunners, but it could not capitalize. With Lawrie in command, no Gator reached third.
The players lined up after the inning, thinking the game was over by the eight-run mercy rule. The umpires even left the field until they all realized that the rule is not in effect during the best-of-three championship series.
The Gators walked back onto the field and returned to the dugout without giving up any more runs, but it was only a moral victory. All they could do was try to make adjustments for the rest of the series.
“That’s the one thing we were trying to pitch from the fifth inning on when we were down by six runs,” Walton said. “Learn from this. It’s a long series. You better start learning from each one of your at-bats and get better.”
Florida has proven on several occasions this year that it is more than capable of fighting back with its backs against the wall. The Gators proved as much just one night earlier when Gardiner snatched victory from the jaws of defeat with her two-out, opposite-field, walk-off, grand-slam home run to eliminate SEC rival Alabama, 6-5.
“They have to have a short-term memory,” Walton said. “It’s such a game of highs and lows. … Hitting is one of the hardest things to do. We’ve just got to do a better job of putting things out of our mind and learning from our mistakes.”
During this record-breaking season, things have never been lower for Walton and his Gators than this moment. And if things don’t start looking up Tuesday night, there will be somewhere to go – home without the championship trophy they have fought so hard all season to win.
Florida still has a chance but it will need a full house—pitching, hitting and defense—to beat Washington and its ace two more times.
NCAA DIVISION I SOFTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP
WOMEN’S COLLEGE WORLD SERIES
At ASA Hall of Fame Stadium, Oklahoma City, Okla.
Championship series
Monday
Washington 8, Florida 0; Washington leads best-of-three series, 1-0.
Tuesday
(1) Florida (63-4) vs. (3) Washington (50-12), 8 p.m. (ESPN2)
Wednesday
(3) Washington vs. (1) Florida, 8 p.m., if necessary (ESPN2)