Florida Gators
Moorehead State
Gators can talk about being SEC East champs with one more win over Tennessee
Saturday, May 7, 2011 | Men's Basketball, Softball, Scott Carter
They won in their final at-bat on Friday. They scored the game's only runs in the first inning on Saturday.
The Gators are finding ways to win and if they can squeeze one more victory from the regular season on Sunday -- the game is live on ESPNU starting at 3 p.m. ET -- they will clinch the SEC East title and have a chance to win the overall league crown if Alabama stumbles against Ole Miss.
It was a walk-off home run in the bottom of the seventh by freshman Cheyenne Coyle that won Friday's game against Tennessee. On Saturday senior Kelsey Bruder had the most important swing, hitting a two-run homer in the first.
The two runs were enough for starter Stephanie Brombacher and reliever Hannah Rogers. The two combined to shut out the Vols on six hits, striking out six and walking none for the Gators' 46th win of the season.
When the final series of the regular season opened on Friday, the Gators knew they had to sweep the third-ranked Vols to win the SEC East. It seemed a stretch considering Tennessee entered with only seven losses all season.
Two days later, not so much. Both teams have a 20-7 conference record entering Sunday's regular-season finale.
“We want to win all these games,'' Coyle said after her homer on Friday.
Prior to the series, Gators coach Tim Walton met with the team on Thursday to let them know he was making some tweaks to the lineup, most notably moving Aja Paculba back up to the No. 2 spot and Bruder back down to the No. 3 spot.
Walton tinkered with a different lineup for a few games and while the Gators won, he didn't like that their run production dropped off. They haven't been lighting up the scoreboard this series either, but the Gators have gotten enough big hits at critical times to make sure efficient work by Brombacher and Rogers didn't go to waste.
One thing Walton said he didn't talk about in Thursday's meeting was the need to sweep the Vols to have a shot at the SEC regular-season crown.
“We haven't talked about SEC,'' Walton said. “I told them that making these [lineup] adjustments that we're going to make on the team is not about winning the SEC, it's about finding a way to get better and keep getting better.''
After two games against Tennessee, the Gators have been just good enough. If they can pull one more win out of their bag on Sunday, Walton won't be able to avoid SEC talk. That's what everyone will be talking about.
