Your No. 1 Florida Gators are in the Women's College World Series Championship Series thanks to an epic walk-grand slam by Ali Gardiner to defeat Alabama 6-5. The Best Dressed Women In Gainesville begin play for their first National Championship tonight against No. 3 Washington, in a best of three series.
Gardiner's home run was just another example of how the Gators find ways to win. When you win 63 games, not all of them can be 10-0 wins. While Gator fans should be concerned that UF has scored so much with the long ball in Oklahoma City, Gardiner's homer came when UF found ways to get on base. Not only that, Stephanie Brombacher had to pitch two shutout innings after Stacey Nelson was pulled.
We will know soon enough if Florida is a great team, joining the 2006-07 basketball teams and 2006, 2008 football teams. Also, welcome to Championship Mode.
0 recs | 11 comments
Don't listen to Kruk
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about…..
In these softball games where you have the best pictchers in the nation (the 2 very best will be squaring off in the championship series) all it takes is a run or two to win games.
Although UGA & Washington messed up our game time yesterday by making our team and Bama wait inn the sun for 6 hours to play, I like the fact that UWash had to play a 4 hour marathon in the heat of the day and then come back and play a late nightcap. This is when ace pitchers start to breakdown from overuse because there are so many games close together. UF seems to have the advantage in that department – only having to play 3 games and no extra innings.
Go Gators.
skigator93 - June 1, 2009
I agree, with the qualification that Lawrie is a brute – she threw 395 pitches on the final day of the regional (a 7 inning loss to UMass, followed by a 15 inning win.) If anyone can bounce back from a day like yesterday…
Of course, she has also pitched every inning for Wash for weeks and weeks, so it has to catch up with her eventually (the middle innings of the first UGA game were certainly uglier than anything Nelson has suffered recently.)
Does anyone know what Washington’s #2 pitcher is like?
peachy rex - June 1, 2009
Average No. 2. Definitely no Brombacher. If they hit Lawrie, UF can run the table.
mlmintampa - June 1, 2009
Here's the comparison
Hopefully it lines up correctly.
Player era w-l app-gs cg sho sv ip h r er bb so hr ab b/avg
Lawrie 0.84 38-7 47-45 41 19/0 0 315.0 140 46 38 65 477 10 1073 .130
Harris 3.12 7-2 13-10 5 1/0 0 51.2 56 35 23 17 27 6 209 .268
Clifton 4.93 2-2 10-3 2 0/0 1 32.2 48 31 23 8 16 7 143 .336
Nelson0.48 41-3 48-39 33 22/3 3 274.1 151 31 19 49 347 21 958 .158
Brom 0.76 22-0 33-27 18 14/3 1 156.2 86 25 17 27 190 12 539 .160
I don’t think we’ll be seeing Miss Harris or Miss Brombacher unless one of the games gets out of hand and the losing team wants to preserve their ace.
I have to think that all those innings have to catch up with Lawrie – especially with so many this weekend. She has pitched 15% more innings than Nelson – 41 more total, which is nealy 6 more complete games.
This should be a low-scoring stressful series…..
skigator93 - June 1, 2009
Damn - looks even worse than I thought it would
skigator93 - June 1, 2009
A table button would be an excellent addition to SBN.
bdalebs - June 1, 2009
Just in the WCWS, Lawrie has pitched 29 innings (Washington won two games in which they were the ‘home’ team, partially off-setting the extra-inning games); Nelson has pitched 18. Yesterday alone it was 15 to 5…
peachy rex - June 1, 2009
And there’s an error already… argh.
peachy rex - June 1, 2009
Some fine pitching and D right there to get out of the jam.
peachy rex - June 1, 2009
I hate this freaking Jon and Kate Plus 8 show.
My mom and sister refuse to watch the softball game, and are forcing this crud down my throat instead.
bdalebs - June 1, 2009
You're better off not seeing that game
Lawrie was already completely dominant and then the home plate ump is giving her an extra foot outside the strike zone off the plate. That makes it hard to hit her. But no excuses, our defense was awful and we walked too many hitters so that a hit scored 3 instead of 1.
I hope we can bounce back tomorrow – this was embarassing.
skigator93 - June 1, 2009
You must Login with your SB Nation account and be a member of Alligator Army to post a comment.