GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Neither the coach nor the players at the postgame podium looked shellshocked. Certainly not like a hefty portion of the sellout crowd that filed out of Pressly Stadium minutes earlier Thursday night, many with a look of disbelief after No. 1-ranked and two-time defending national champion Florida was downed by Georgia and pitcher Chelsea Wilkinson in dealing the Gators a 3-0 defeat in their NCAA Super Regional opener.
Coach
Tim Walton laid it all out pretty cleanly.
"We haven't been in this position before," said Walton, whose Gators (56-6) must defeat the Bulldogs (44-18) twice Friday to avoid elimination from the tournament. "Our program has been through a lot — a lot of positives — but this is a challenge."
No question, especially if the UF bats remain dormant like they did in managing just three hits off Wilkinson (26-7), who started the day with a 1.90 ERA that was almost a run and half higher than UF junior
Delanie Gourley, who ranked second in the nation at 0.70 but was touched up for seven hits and three earned runs. But the statement Walton really squared the barrel of the bat on was the one about not being in "this position before." No, the Gators have not been here before. Neither has any No. 1 overall tournament seed.
Get this: No top seed had
ever lost Game 1 of a Super Regional.
So this isn't just uncharted waters for the Gators. It's uncharted for anyone that's ever sat at the top of the tournament bracket. (The NCAA Super Regional Era began in 2005)
"It's a little bit different," senior catcher
Aubree Munro said after tasting just her second loss in a Super Regional play. "We can't be thinking about Game 3. We have to think about Game 2."
So does Georgia coach Lu Harris-Champer, who has a decision to make. After her pitcher so thoroughly handcuffed the Gators, forcing them into a slew of pop-ups, does she roll Wilkinson right back out there at 5 p.m. Friday and go for the kill shot with UF's frustration (not to mention pressure) still fresh? Or does she hold out her ace and risk reaching a Game 3, where UF and its home crowd would be a very tough out.
Not surprisingly, Harris-Champer wasn't inclined to tip her hand.
"We'll probably wait and talk about that in the morning," she said.
There won't be much debate regarding the Gators' starter. Look for UF to go with ace
Aleshia Ocasio, with her sparkling 22-1 record and nation-best ERA of 0.65. Ocasio is a big reason the Gators came into the game with the best team ERA (0.86) in all of college softball, but Gourley was a big part of that figure too. Let the record show the Bulldogs came in hitting .352 as a team, tops in the powerful Southeastern Conference. Gourley collared the league's No. 1 and No. 3 hitters, sisters Sydni (.466) and Cortni Emanuel (.439), and pitched around SEC home run and RBI leader Tina Iosefa (23 HRs, 83 RBI), issuing her two walks.
It was the bottom of the deep-hitting Dawg order that did the Gators in, with Maeve McGuire going 3-for-3 with a pair of RBI and Katie Browne knocking home another on a ground out.
"That's what postseason is all about," Walton said. "It's not about how many hits you get. It's about getting a hit with runners in scoring position and we were o-fer in that category."
Indeed, UF stranded eight runners, never got one as far as second base after the third inning and went 1-for-13 in advancement opportunities, including 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position.
The Gators' heads hit the pillow no doubt aware of those numbers, but even more cognizant of the stakes that await.
"This team that has so much talent, so much heart, so much fight," Munro said. "[Friday] will be a great opportunity to see what this team is made of."
It needs to made of some batters striking the ball; ideally in some outfield gaps or preferably over the fence, but Walton will settle for some hard grounders that force the Georgia defense to make a play. More pop-ups won't do it.
"We're going to have to play better [Friday] than we did today and get us to a third game," Walton said. "This is a three-game series, not a one-game series. We have to work hard, get after it and have fun. I'm excited to see what kind of answer we have and what we're able to bring."
He's excited because he really, really wants to know.
After all, the Gators have never been in this position before.
