OKLAHOMA CITY &ndash Washington didn't just punch UF in the stomach; the Huskies reached into the Gators' collective chest and pulled out their still-beating heart like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber.
It's one thing to lose a 1-0 pitchers' duel the way UF did to Washington when the teams met earlier this season on Feb. 20.
Danielle Lawrie is the National Player of the Year and the Canadian did beat Team USA over the summer.
But the way the Huskies hit around UF ace Stacey Nelson with such regularity is alarming.
Nelson is the heart of this team, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that when she started to struggle inside the pitcher's circle, her team lost the ability to play with any emotion or fire.
After Kristina Hilberth's third-inning throwing error put the Gators in a 4-0 hole, the team looked down and out for the first time since I started covering the beat at the beginning of last season's magical run.
Even when UF was down 5-2 heading into the final inning against Alabama on Sunday night, the team looked lively and capable of a comeback.
With Lawrie mowing down batter after batter, hope was no where to be found.
Washington tacked on a two-run double in the fifth and a two-run homer in the sixth on its way to the highest scoring output by a UF opponent in more than two years.
In last season's Women's College World Series, Louisiana-Lafayette shocked the top-seed Gators in their first game and sent them into the losers bracket right off the bat.
The media was prepared to head back to Gainesville the next day, and the fan base was rattled, but the team never showed an ounce of worry.
Justified or not, they had a quiet confidence in themselves to come out and win as many games as necessary with their backs against the wall.
Coach Tim Walton needs to do his best to find that team again before the second game of the championship series at 8 p.m. today or Washington will be the team leaving with its first-ever national championship.
There is no question in my mind that Nelson and the Gators are capable of turning it around and winning two games in a row &ndash this is a team that just won 29 games in a row.
But what I saw in the post-game press conference shocked me.
I asked Nelson what the difference has been for her in her last two appearances, in which she has allowed 11 runs, as compared to her first two shutout gems against Arizona and Michigan.
"There's just something that's not clicking," Nelson said. "I'm not hitting the spots that I want to, and I guess I'll just go home tonight and figure out what that is."
It wasn't what she said, but the way she said it that startled me.
She looked like a pitcher who just got upstaged on the biggest stage.
She looked like a pitcher who just let down her team.
And she looked like a pitcher who didn't have the answers not only to my question, but to the more complex ones she's sure to face on the field today and possibly Wednesday.
I have never seen Stacey Nelson like that.
UF's ace is usually the most composed, worry-free player on the field.
And the Gators will need her to be exactly that in order to dig themselves out of their biggest hole yet.
