Florida had nothing going offensively Sunday.
For seven innings, FAU starting pitcher Amanda Wilson was mowing down a Gators lineup that outscored its opponents 13-0 through two games of the Gainesville Regional.
But then the eighth inning came and Lauren Haeger stepped up to the plate.
And on the first pitch she saw, Haeger ripped an RBI double to the right field gap to score Kirsti Merritt from first base to give No. 1 Florida (53-6) a 1-0 win in extras to send them to the Super Regionals.
The Owls (39-19-1) went toe-to-toe against the No. 1 team in the country, and their gritty performance was summed up in one word from coach Joan Joyce: “Damn.”
“We came to win and came up one short again,” Joyce said. “We have to give a lot of credit to Amanda for keeping Florida off balance because she did a great job against them.”
Wilson allowed just two hits through seven innings with both of them coming from Nicole DeWitt. At one point in the game Wilson, retired 12 Florida hitters in a row keeping them off balance by mixing her pitches.
“I keep hitters off balance if I mix all of my speeds,” Wilson said. “I have three different speeds and I was just using my different speeds keeping them off balance and just worked out.”
While Wilson was terrific in the circle in her own right, Haeger was even better.
The Peoria, Arizona, native went the distance for the second consecutive day to cap off a successful weekend. She scattered two hits over her eight innings of work and struck out five Owls.
In a game where one mistake from either pitcher could change the game, Haeger said she didn’t feel the weight of the pressure. Instead, she relished it.
“That’s my favorite thing in the whole entire world is to be out there in situations like that,” Haeger said. “The crowd was in it, everyone was in it, everyone was hyped. That’s why I came here for situations like that.”
Haeger went 2-0 in two starts in the Regional, pitching 15 scoreless innings while allowing five hits and striking out 13 batters. She’s now 26-1 on the year with a 1.34 ERA.
Florida Atlantic’s best opportunity to score came in the second inning. The Owls got two runners on base after back-to-back singles from Melissa Martinez and Laura Mann with one out.
UF coach Tim Walton made a visit to the circle to calm down his star pitcher. After Walton’s visit to the circle, Haeger struck out the next two Owl hitters to get out of the jam.
“She actually left a couple of pitches up and didn’t quite get her rise ball where she wanted to get,” Walton said. “So we just talked about making sure with a quality hitter at the plate we wanted to make sure we understood where she was at.”
On the other side, Florida didn’t have a runner reach scoring position until the top of the sixth when Justine McLean drew a four-pitch walk before reaching second base on a fielder’s choice by Kelsey Stewart.
McLean then stole third base with Merritt at the plate.
But Merritt couldn’t pull through with the clutch hit as she grounded out to shortstop to end the inning.
Merritt, however, would use her speed in the eighth inning to score the go-ahead run.
“That’s one of my strengths is my speed,” Merritt said. “I knew that I could score from first on a hit like that.”
With the Regionals done and over with, UF will now shift its attention to the Kentucky Wildcats who won the South Bend Regional.
Florida swept the Wildcats in Gainesville on April 11-13 and will have to beat them two more times if they want to go to Oklahoma City for the Women’s College World Series.
“We played tough games against Kentucky this year and in previous years. They’re a good team,” Walton said. “It’s going to be tough for us. It’s hard to beat somebody three times let alone having to beat them five times to make the next move.”
Follow Luis Torres on Twitter @LFTorresIII
UF's Kirsti Merritt crosses home plate to score the lone run of the game in the eighth inning of Florida softball's 1-0 win against Florida Atlantic during the NCAA Regional finals on May 17, 2015, at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium.
