Most teams use the first games of their seasons to prepare for their conference schedule and the postseason, but not the UF softball team.
No. 2 UF (12-2) will continue its difficult out-of-conference schedule by taking on No. 6 Michigan (11-3) today at 4 p.m. in Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium.
The Wolverines will be the fourth top-25 team the Gators have faced this season, and Baylor, which UF faced in its season-opening series, received the fourth-most votes among unranked teams in this week's National Fastpitch Coaches Assocation Top 25 Poll. UF has gone 4-2 against those five teams.
"If we just wanted to win, we'd play teams that weren't very good. We want to challenge ourselves and see how good we are," catcher Kristina Hilberth said. "I would have liked to come back from California 5-0, but hopefully … if there's a situation like that come the World Series or SECs, we're experienced and have already gotten through a situation like that."
Much like the other highly ranked teams the Gators have fallen to this season - Baylor and No. 3 Washington - the Wolverines will bring outstanding pitching into Gainesville. Sophomore Lauren Taylor (5-2) is fresh off of a seven-inning no-hitter against Indiana on Sunday, and junior Nikki Nemitz (6-1) has only allowed 5 earned runs on the season.
Facing talent like Taylor and Nemitz - as well as Washington's Danielle Lawrie and Baylor's Whitney Canion - will only help prepare UF for the Southeastern Conference season and postseason.
"The more you're exposed to great pitching, the better your hitters are going to get," Hilberth said. "So our batting averages weren't as high against those pitchers, but that's what's going to happen when you play great teams."
UF fell to both Lawrie and Canion earlier in the season, and the team was not able to get anything going offensively in either loss.
First baseman Ali Gardiner cited the team's lack of aggression at the plate - they were overly selective in choosing which pitches to swing at - as the main reason for their struggles against Lawrie and the Huskies.
"Although we did a great job of taking (Lawrie) deep into counts, we took a lot of good pitches too early in the count and put our fate in the umpires' hands too much," Gardiner said.
Gardiner added that the losses this early in the season don't worry her, as the team can use the defeats to improve toward their ultimate goal of winning the World Series.
"There are so many different types of teams out there that it's almost impossible to go without losing a game in the season, and I think it's better to lose early in the season and learn from it than late in the season when you're kind of caught off-guard," she said.
