Although it was coming off its worst loss of the season, the Florida softball team proved last weekend it can play its best when it matters most.
The No. 4 Gators (47-8) successfully rebounded from last week’s 9-1 Southeastern Conference Tournament semifinal loss to then-No. 17 LSU by rolling through Gainesville’s NCAA Tournament Regional, which ended with UF’s five-inning 13-3 run-rule beatdown of FIU (38-21) on Sunday.
All weekend, Florida’s brightest star was junior ace Stephanie Brombacher, who gave up only three runs and 11 base runners while pitching every one of the team’s 19 innings.
“The way she’s been pitching the last two games, I gotta give her the ball,” coach Tim Walton said of his decision to start Brombacher in her third game in as many days. “She had to have the ball today and she really pitched well.”
Brombacher was aided by Florida’s potent offense, which averaged more than eight runs per game on the weekend and twice gave Brombacher a lead before she ever took the field.
The Gators’ quick-strike ability was never more apparent than on Sunday, when the team scored five runs on one hit in the top of the first thanks to a grand slam by freshman Brittany Schutte.
“(The run support) just lets me go out there and make my pitches and lets my defense work,” Brombacher said of her team jumping out to the early lead. “It kinda takes a little bit of weight off of my shoulders.”
The Golden Panthers scored two in the bottom of the first to cut the Gators’ lead to three, but that was as close as they would get as senior Corrie Brooks pushed the lead back to five in the third with a two-run home run to left.
The round-tripper was Brooks’ ninth of the season and the team’s record-high 100th on the year.
“It’s just about the way we practice and the way we mentally approach hitting one through nine,” Walton said. “When your eight-hole hitter hits a 270-foot home run and does it regularly, it’s like Brittany Schutte said, you just feed off of each other and keep on building momentum and that’s how we’re able to hit so many.”
Two of the weekend’s long balls came from junior Kelsey Bruder, who was without question Florida’s top offensive performer.
The right fielder, who moved up three spots to third in the lineup due to some favorable pitching matchups, went 6 for 10 with two home runs and 4 RBIs in the Regional.
“I don’t feel any different I’m just going out there with the same approach of just get on base,” Bruder said after Saturday’s 6-0 victory over UCF. “Every time you try to hit a home run it doesn’t work out so I’m just thinking single up the middle.”
Following Sunday’s win, Florida will host No. 14 Arizona State for a three-game series in the NCAA Super Regional round of 16, which begins Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and concludes on Sunday.
