GAINESVILLE, Fla. — After setting down South Alabama in order in the second inning Saturday afternoon,
Natalie Lugo came to the Florida dugout and got an encouraging greeting from pitching coach
Mike Bosch, who made reference to Lugo having just struck out the side.
Lugo did a mental double-take.
"I was like, 'Really?' " she recounted later. "I was just trying to get outs."
That laser-focus kept Lugo from wallowing in striking out the next two batters (for five straight), as well, and followed her to the locker room after the fourth-seeded Gators wrapped a 10-0 win over the Jaguars in the winner's-bracket round of the NCAA Tournament regional at Pressly Stadium. When it was over, Lugo had thrown her third complete-game shutout of 2021, but done so in the first postseason appearance of her career, limiting the Jags to just two hits (one of them an infield single), fanning a season-high 11 and walking just two to move UF one victory from advancing to an eighth straight Super Regional.
"Her stuff was really good," Florida coach
Tim Walton said of Lugo, who improved to 17-2 on the season and dropped her season's ERA to 1.51. "She competed really well.
Before throwing her first pitch, Natalie Lugo had a 2-0 lead to play with.
The Gators handed Lugo a 2-0 lead before she'd even hit the circle. The margin crept to 3-0 in the third, 4-0 in the fourth, 7-0 in the sixth and 10-0 in UF's last turn at the plate. The additional runs were welcomed, but Lugo made them unnecessary.
Walton praised the way she not only commanded her three pitches (rise, curve and a really effective change-up), but also how she mixed them up to induce the strikeouts, as well as a bunch of ground balls.
Lugo said she wasn't nervous in taking the circle for the first time in NCAA play. Instead, she said, whatever postseason butterflies were bumped out of her system in the 3.1 innings of work she got at the Southeastern Conference Tournament last week, when Lugo tallied both wins for the Gators in relief against Mississippi State and Missouri.
The latter appearance wasn't exactly smooth sailing.
A night after giving up just one hit in relief in the first-round 6-2 defeat of the Bulldogs, Lugo was summoned from the bullpen after the Tigers rallied from a 5-1 deficit to trail 5-3 with two on, but down to their final out.
Mizzou's Emma Raab greeted Lugo with a go-ahead three-run homer and 6-5 lead.
Florida picked up Lugo with two runs in the bottom of the seventh for a walk-off 7-6 win.
Her adversity seal had been broken.
"Once I had [to deal] with that, everything today turned to calm," she said Saturday.
The Gators talk all the time about having each other's backs. They had Lugo's last week. She had theirs (and then some) Saturday on the way to a seven-inning gem and nearly a dozen strikeouts.
"The most important part to me was the shutout. I'm really happy for her," Walton said. "We have a saying that we started a long time ago: If we don't give up any runs, we can't ever lose. That's our mantra, that's what we stick by."
Lugo, in turn, just tried to get outs.
