(SB) Ongoing UF Softball Commentary

After a pretty bad mental fart momentum changed and things started to spiral. But GRIT has been the defining word for this team this season. They stopped the bleeding and got the win. Shouldn’t have been so difficult but they’ve been our cardiac kids all year, we just forgot about that during their amazing end of season performance. Omg deep breaths.

 

I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue.

 

Love Super Regional traditions:
(1) The year is immediately placed on the outfield wall

 

Love Super Regional traditions:
(2) Players gather around and celebrate. That's Falby and Welch who have climbed on the wall (with the trophy)

 

Love Super Regionals traditions:
(3) Losing team leaves cleats at home plate, signifying that they left everything on the field

 

Note the Gators Ticket Office does not have an allotment of tickets to sell for the Women's College World Series. Fans wishing to support the Gators in Oklahoma City are encouraged to purchase tickets directly from the Women's College World Series.

 

DJ Lagway attended the Super Regional game, wearing a 00 Brown jersey.
Are they dating? Wouldn't be the first time the quarterback date a softball player (Kyle Trask / Jade Caraway)

Also, Gabrielle Essix in attendance again. She often attends.

 

DJ has been coming to softball a lot. He sat with us one game and said he liked softball because his cousin plays.
Riiigghhht.
We had heard a couple of weeks ago that they were a thing. But, this is the first time at KSP he has advertised it.
Personally, I think it's great news. DJ is a stand-up person, kind, mature, and intelligent . They make a good match.

Also, if you have not met Austin Barber, try to do so. He is Reagan's boyfriend.
He is the nicest and politest person you will meet.
And, at over 6'6" and 315 pounds, he does stick out.

 

Section 114, row F seats 5-6

OKC here The wife and I come!

So glad I don’t have to sell these tickets this year.

 

Very jealous -- we will have to live vicariously though you so please make many posts.

 

I think the two NC years on the wall should be a different color (orange?) to highlight them

 

@notexgator will be out there as well. Tuesday can’t get here fast enough.

 

My dream vacation. It's always around my anniversary

 

I don't think anybody was happy we didn't land one of the big transfer arms but I do believe there's no way we could have done better than being in this position at the end of the season and no doubt these freshman would not have developed as they did. Probably the best miss for the future of the program.

 

World Series Bound!!! Celebrate!

 

Mia’s Home Run:

 

Celebrate Good Times, Come-on!

 

I wanna see her dad’s reaction. Camera cut away right before.

 

I wonder if they have no idea who he is, or if he kinda asked not to be the center of attention. Most of the time when there’s famous parents in the stands, it’s all they want to talk about on the broadcast.

 

D1Softball’s account of the game: (copied for those that don’t have an account)


D1Softball’s Gainesville Super Regional Central


Picked by coaches to finish seventh in the SEC this season (albeit with one particularly perspicacious first-place vote), Florida is instead one of eight teams headed to the Women’s College World Series. Their inexperience tested in both the series and Sunday’s winner-take-all finale, No. 4 Florida held off Baylor 5-3 to win Game 3 and the Gainesville Super Regional.

Florida heads back to Oklahoma City for the 12th time under head coach Tim Walton and the second time since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Player of the Game

Mia Williams. For the story to work, it had to be one of the new faces. That’s how the Florida team that exceeded—defied, if you prefer—expectations had to get over the hump. And why not make it the No. 9 hitter, the defensive whiz kid who persevered through season-long struggles at the plate?

Williams came up with the biggest hit in Florida’s biggest game of the season, a two-run home run in the second inning that doubled the team’s lead and perhaps more than doubled fellow freshman Keagan Rothrock’s margin for error in her third start in the circle in three days. Never mind that Williams only got the chance to swing for the fences after fouling an attempted bunt off her leg for a second strike. Freshmen are going to make mistakes. How do they respond?


How did the new-look Gators respond all season? Fearlessly, for one. And with a lot of crooked numbers, for another.

Williams, of course, is one of college softball’s more recognizable freshmen because of her name, the daughter of Florida sporting royalty: basketball standout Jason Williams and track standout Denika Kisty. Those roots make for a good story, one we’ll hear plenty more about—complete with camera cutaways to her parents—in Oklahoma City. But she’s also part of another Gators lineage, one spanning 12 WCWS appearances in the past 16 years under Tim Walton. She’s the product of this program.

To that end, it wasn’t her mom or dad’s reaction I wanted to see after Williams reached low across the plate to drive Aliyah Binford’s 0-2 pitch over the fence. After the freshman’s back knee almost touched the dirt in her effort to reach the pitch, I wanted to see Francesca Enea in the Florida dugout. All these years on, the legend has grown to the point that, if you listen to people like me, Enea used to hit home runs with both knees on the ground. Still, there was something so very familiar watching a Florida hitter reach for a pitch she had no business hitting and drive it for extra bases. That’s how Walton grows them.

Even if it hadn’t yet reached its first World Series when Arizona won its most recent title in 2007, Florida feels as if it has been Florida forever. For Williams and Rothrock, who were barely walking when the Gators first made the trip to Oklahoma City in 2008, it has been this forever.

But only because people keep it going. Now an assistant coach at her alma mater, Enea was a sophomore on that 2008 World Series team. That made her something of an old soul alongside a freshman class that included the likes of Stephanie Brombacher, Kelsey Bruder, Megan Bush, Tiffany DeFelice and Aja Paculba. Perhaps she understands how Skylar Wallace feels looking around at Williams, Rothrock, Ava Brown and Ariel Kowalewski, the talented freshmen who started Sunday—and even newcomers Jocelyn Erickson and Korbe Otis.


After the disappointment of a season ago, when Florida failed to host a regional and faced the prospect of rebuilding a pitching staff and no small part of the lineup from scratch, this group revived the lineage. Freshmen and transfers alike, they chose Florida because of what it was—from Enea’s teams to the national champions who followed. Sunday, from Williams’ home run to Rothrock’s resiliency and more, they took the lead in shaping what Florida will be.

That’s how what felt so new in 2008 becomes so familiar in 2024.

The game turned when …

Florida ran itself out of visions of the run rule. Other sports usually get “a tale of two halves” treatment—basketball, soccer, football. Seven isn’t the easiest number to divide in half. No one likes fractions. But Game 3 was very much one sort of game for the first three and a half innings and very different game the rest of the way.

Baylor was probably always too stubborn—and too good—to go away, but the game felt like it was trending toward run-rule territory when the Gators loaded the bases with no outs and 4-0 lead in the third inning. Except that instead of a 5-0 lead on a bases-loaded walk, a replay challenge successfully found that Katie Kistler left early at second base. A double play followed to end the inning, and instead of a victory lap, the Gators had to fight to the final out.


Key moments

Bottom of the first: In Game 2, RyLee Crandall survived her first trip through Florida’s gauntlet. stranding a runner in scoring position in the first inning. She couldn’t duplicate that feat in Game 3. Even though she was subsequently forced at second base, Kendra Falby’s leadoff walk set things in motion. Korbe Otis replaced Falby on first after a fielder’s choice, then aggressively took third on Skylar Wallace’s single (Wallace taking second on the throw). That set up back-to-back RBIs from Jocelyn Erickson (sacrifice fly) and Regan Walsh (single). Florida 2, Baylor 0.

Bottom of the second: So much for small ball. With a runner on first, No. 9 hitter Mia Williams tried to put down a sacrifice bunt, only to foul it off her leg for a second strike. No problem. She hit the next pitch for a two-run home run. Six of her 17 hits this season have left the year—including three in the SEC and NCAA tournaments. Baylor went to the bullpen after the home run, Aliyah Binford replacing Crandall. Florida 4, Baylor 0.

Bottom of the third. Baylor got creative, in a distinctly 2024 way, to keep the dam from breaking. With the bases loaded after two singles and a walk, Binford appeared to walk Ava Brown to bring home the fifth run of the game. Except Glenn Moore challenged that Katie Kistler at second base left early, and sure enough, she did. Kistler out, no run. Binford then walked brown to re-load the bases, but snared a Williams line drive and doubled Brown off first base.

Top of the fourth: Binford did her best to build on the momentum of the previous half inning’s great escape. She led off with a single and took second when Florida was sloppy getting the ball back in. She was Baylor’s first leadoff runner to reach and its first runner in scoring position. Collazos then brought her home with an RBI single. Rothrock snuffed out the momentum right there, retiring the next three batters on eight pitches. Florida 4, Baylor 1.

Top of the fifth: Baylor just wouldn’t go away. After Taylor Strain led off the inning with a single, Hott caught up with a rise ball and hit a two-run home run. It was just Hott’s fourth hit of the NCAA tournament—but also her third home run in those seven games. Florida 4, Baylor 3.

Bottom of the fifth: After Erickson and Walsh opened with back-to-back walks, Baylor tried to come up with one more defensive gem in a weekend full of them. It didn’t go their way. With runners on first and second, Katie Kistler bunted to move them over. But Baylor catcher Sydney Collazos, one of the best in the business, snapped up the spinning ball and tried to force the lead runner at third base. Erickson beat the throw by inches, confirmed after a replay challenge, and Florida promptly added an insurance run on Ariel Kowalewski’s sac fly. Florida 5, Baylor 3.

Top of the seventh: Just like in the fifth, Strain led of the inning with an infield single. The potential tying run, Hott would have loved to reprise her home run but settled for a walk. So good in the field all weekend, Presleigh Pilon then popped up the bunt attempt that would have put the tying run in scoring position. That still gave Govan a chance, but Otis tracked down her fellow All-American’s line drive just shy of the warning track in left field. A ball way from loading the bases, Rothrock instead retired Binford with a game-ending pop to first base.