The Gators continued their streak of both offensive and pitching dominance Saturday.
Florida’s offense has caught fire recently, scoring a combined 25 runs against Eastern Michigan and Gardner-Webb on Friday. That spark carried over to Saturday’s games against Gardner-Webb and Tennessee State where coach Tim Walton’s squad put up a combined 23 runs for the day.
Freshmen Alyssa Bache and Lauren Haeger each added their second win of the tournament already, shutting out each opponent they have faced.
Against the Bulldogs, the Gators had a field day. In the bottom of the first, the Florida offense put up an 11 spot, the most runs scored by UF in an inning this year. Six Gators had at least one RBI, but no player had quite the impact like senior Michelle Moultrie.
Moultrie collected a team-high five RBI in a 3-for-4 performance. Moultrie hit a home run in a third consecutive game, bringing her season total to four. She also showed off her speed with her fourth triple of the year.
The slugfest continued with homers by Haeger and junior Kelsey Horton, who was certainly not finished for the day. The 14-0 pounding the Gators gave the Bulldogs was the second biggest blowout this season; the largest was Florida’s 16-0 victory against Eastern Michigan on Friday. Bache (3-0) only surrendered a single hit to Gardner-Webb in four innings of work. Her shutout performance was good enough to earn her the win. Sophomore Hannah Rogers closed out the game by striking out two of the final three batters.
In the second game, Walton stuck with another freshman pitcher in Haeger. She excelled against the Tigers, pitching a two-hit, five-inning shutout.
And although UF didn’t put 14 runs on the board like it did in the previous game, the bats were still hot against Tennessee State.
Horton, who sent one over the fence against GWU, wasn’t finished against TSU. She launched two more out of the park to bring her season total to a team-high eight. Like Moultrie in the first game, Horton had herself a five-RBI performance.
The Gators’ eight runs to the Tigers’ zero was just good enough to end the game in the run-rule shortened five innings. It was Florida’s 11th run-rule victory of the young season.
