S(EC)uper Regional: Stakes Outweigh Familiarity
Friday, May 22, 2015 | Softball, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Eighty-three more innings and 15 more complete games.
That was the workload for Kentucky standout junior pitcher Kelsey Nunley last season, when she helped lead the Wildcats to their first Women's College World Series berth, compared to this season, when UK finished next-to-last in the Southeastern Conference standings.
Coach Rachel Lawson had to answer some questions during a difficult league campaign about picking her spots with the Wildcats. Lawson, though, had a plan. She hopped to have her workhorse fresh for a postseason run. Never mind UK entered the NCAA Tournament on a seven-game losing streak, with defeats in 13 of the previous 15 games. She had confidence her ace would come up big in the big games.
The Wildcats rested Nunley for first-round regional play against Northwestern and won 5-4. They rolled her out next for a second-round game got a 5-0, two-hit shutout of Ball State and then rode Nunley's arm for a 4-3 upset of host Notre Dame in the championship bracket to advance to the Super Regional round, one step from the WCWS in Oklahoma City.
For Kentucky (32-24), the reward is a best-of-three series with top-seeded Florida (53-6) at Pressly Stadium, where the Gators have never failed to advance in six times hosting the Super round.
Kentucky junior Kelsey Nunley, who led the Wildcats to WCWS last season, lost a pair of close games to the Gators in Gainesville last month.
“When someone asked me about Kentucky earlier in the year, I thought they were smart not to pitch Kelsey Nunley every inning of every game,” UF coach Tim Walton said. “They weren't pacing themselves, but they were doing a good job of making sure they'd have their players fresh for down the road.”
Their best player, actually.
“She got them to the World Series last year,” junior catcher Aubree Munro said. “She carried them.”
Nunley, known for her face mask and wicked rise ball, was a stellar 30-11 last season as a sophomore with a 1.88 ERA, but those numbers dipped to 14-14 and 2.39, respectively, in 2015. Rolled into that data is a pair of tough losses at Florida in April, with the Gators winning 1-0 on a Saturday and then 2-0 on a Monday, collecting nine hits, with all three runs earned. Those wins did not come easy.
"They're going to come out with a little bit of fight and a little bit of edge and we just have to be ready for that," sophomore outfielder Justine McLean said. "We can't take any pitch off."
Exactly where the Wildcats turn for a pitcher in a best-of-three remains to be seen, but if Lawson threw Nunley in Game 1 of a regular-season series, it only figures the Cats star will be in the circle with the season on the line. If Lawson didn't rest Nunley for Saturday's Game 1 opener, what did she rest her for?
As for the UF counterpart, well, that isn't so hard to figure out.
Nunley's numbers against the Gators were awfully good, but they were dwarfed by what senior Lauren Haeger, one of three finalists for National Player of the Year, did to the Wildcats in those same two games: 14 innings, four hits allowed, no runs, eight strikeouts, four walks. Oh, and two victories.
Still, both games definitely were pitchers' duels.
"Kelsey Nunley doesn't give up a lot of home runs and you have to keep the ball out of the air," Walton said. "She can get on your hands pretty good and her off-speed pitches are a lot better than they have been in the past. She's really good, a really strong competitor. We have to do a good job of not wasting at-bats. When she throws outside, we have to do a good job hitting line drives."
Haeger will take her 26-1 record and 1.34 ERA into the Super Regional; not to mention a .335 average, team-best 65 RBI, plus 15 home runs.
[Worth noting: The Gators also will have Bailey Castro, who hit .322 and leads the team with 17 home runs to go with 36 RBI. She missed the UK regular-season series, but not because they were saving her. Castro was out that weekend with flu-like symptoms.]
Walton likely will give serious consideration to pitching freshman Aleshia Ocasio (17-3, 1.99 ERA), who one-hit FAMU with 17 strikeouts in her NCAA debut last weekend, for at least one of the games. Ocasio worked six innings in the middle game of the UK series last month -- a 6-3 win -- before giving way to sophomore Delanie Gourley to wrap the seventh.
This will be Florida's seventh home Super Regional -- the Gators are 12-1 in the previous six -- but just the first against an SEC opponent. Five of those foes were Pac-12 teams that had to come all the way across the country; the other was Alabama-Birmingham, by way of Conference-USA.
This time, it's a team (with a pitcher) the Gators know very, very well.
And vice versa.
“I think the scores [of the previous meetings] speak for themselves. ... All of our games have been close,” said Walton, adding the cut-and-dry stakes -- a trip to OKC -- outweigh all match-ups and intangibles. “When you dangle the College World Series carrot at an athlete, they're certainly not going to overlook an opponent, no matter how many games they've beaten somebody. It's best out of three. Really, what you've done in the past, has no bearing.”
