Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Tim Walton and assistant coach Francesca Enea were in the hitting cages early Sunday morning admiring how Florida's players were mashing the ball. It did their souls particularly good given the Gators' high-powered offense had been quieted less than 24 hours earlier in the second game of their NCAA Super Regional against Baylor, a performance that forced a rubber-match winner-takes-world-series Game 3. 
 
Apparently, all the skull-sessioning of the night before was worth it. After being held to just five hits by Bears starter RyLee Crandall Saturday, Walton and his staff stayed at their Pressly Stadium offices late, broke down everything about Crandall and everything about their players' at-bats and came up with a different strategy. 
 
"We had more intel [Saturday] night than we had on Wednesday," Walton said after the fourth-seeded Gators' 5-3 victory that clinched the program's 12^th trip to Oklahoma City and Women's College World Series. "We took the intel and changed the plan." 
 
Sometimes it takes a loss (UF's first in 13 games, dating to April 27) to force a reset. That's adjusting. That's coaching.
 
[Read senior writer Chris Harry's "And That's the Ballgame" recap here]
 
In this case, the combination of the additional intel and the reset led to traffic on the base paths early for the Gators Sunday, compared to falling behind like they did in the first two Super outings. Psychologically, it seemed to make a world of difference. 
 
The Gators scored the game's first four runs – with freshman second baseman Mia Williams's two-run second-inning homer the big knock – then had to set their collective jaws as BU mounted a comeback that produced some unwanted seventh-inning drama for the packed KSP crowd. 
 
The Bears got the first two runners on base and had their alpha bats coming to the plate.
 
As it turned out, UF freshman Keagan Rothrock, who Baylor knocked around for three runs before knocking her out after just 12 pitches Saturday, had some additional intel, too, courtesy of pitching coach Chelsey Dobbins. Rothrock, on her way to her 30^th victory this season, paired that data with her champion's mindset in a pressure-packed moment. 
 
"We came in this morning and looked over those first three [Baylor] batters. That's where I'd had the most trouble this weekend," said Rothrock, who'd allowed the three Bears hitting in those holes to score five of their team's 10 runs in the series. "We went over those three and went more in depth on what would work to get them out."
 
Other than surrendering a two-run homer to leadoff hitter Emily Hott in the fifth, Rothrock had mostly minimized damage at the top of Baylor's order in Game 3. In the seventh, Taylor Strain reached on leadoff single and Hott walked, putting runners at first and second with nobody out and the Gators protecting that two-run lead. 
 
"I was confident we were going to find a way," sixth-year senior shortstop Skylar Wallace said. 
 
No. 2 hitter Presleigh Pilon tried to bunt the runners into scoring position, but Rothrock got her to pop out to third baseman Ariel Kowalewski for a huge out. Then stepped in Shaylon Govan, who after chasing Rothrock with a mammoth three-run, first-inning homer Saturday arrived at the ballpark Sunday morning hitting .449 on the season.
 
Rothrock, the unfazed freshman, got Govan on a flyout to right. 
 
Clean-up batter Aliyah Binford, with four hits (one a homer) in the series, stepped in next. Rothrock, like a seasoned senior, got Binford to pop to first and the Gators had secured their first Super regional title at home since 2019. 
 

Taking it all in ✨ pic.twitter.com/H27gNWC2RH

— Gators Softball (@GatorsSB) May 26, 2024

After the game, Walton quoted a statistic: 81 percent of teams that win Game 1 of their Super regional (as UF did 4-2 on Friday) go on to reach the WCWS. The next stat he wasn't as certain about, but didn't need to be. 
 
"I know that percentage goes way down to probably less than 50 percent when you lose the second game," he said. "I thought we did a really good job of getting our players to reset and get back to who they were."
 
In something of a microcosm of the series, the Gators weren't perfect Sunday. Far from it. Their five runs were well below the 8.0 per game they averaged on the season. They had just six hits (none in the last three innings) and batted a combined .228 for the series – Wallace went 5-for-8; the rest of the team 11-for-62 (that's .177) – but role players like like Williams and Katie Kistler picked things up in Game 3 for the top half of the UF order that, by its standards, really struggled. 
 
And yet, there go the Gators, back to Oklahoma City. Their first game will be Thursday at 9:30 p.m. ET against Oklahoma State, an opponent UF lost to more than three months ago. 
 
That leaves four days for intel-gathering.

And, if need be, another reset.
 

This team is special 🧡 pic.twitter.com/GBTh6GHHbH

— Gators Softball (@GatorsSB) May 26, 2024

"We've won a lot, but a lot of times losing brings out something different," Walton said. "People get angry, get upset, get mad, whatever. I think [after losing] we've won a lot of games and been a better version of ourselves in some ways."
 
Next goal: Be their absolute best version in OKC.