Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The regular season ended earlier this month with a series loss at home to Mississippi State, a team sitting next-to-last in the Southeastern Conference standings. Dropping two of three to the Bulldogs meant the Florida softball team would finish 2019 without a winning record in league play for the first time since 2002 — four years before Tim Walton came on as coach and began building his dynasty. 

That UF got out of that weekend with a win was a credit to freshman pitcher Elizabeth Hightower, who threw a six-hit shutout in a 2-0 win in the third game, allowing the Gators to close the season with a 12-12 SEC mark. But it was what happened in the first two games of that series — more specifically, their aftermath — that altered the direction of the Florida season. 

Senior superstar Kelly Barnhill took the blame. 

Think about that, as the No. 5-seed Gators (47-15) head into Friday night's NCAA Super Regional against Tennessee (42-15) at Pressly Stadium with their ace starter deserving of the credit. 

"You ask what's the biggest difference in our play?" Tim Walton said Thursday. "Kelly Barnhill."

[Read senior writer Chris Harry's UF-UT "Tale of the Tape" breakdown blog here]

In Game 1 of that MSU series, UF's two-time All-American and all-time strikeout leader got rocked for five runs in just two innings, including a pair of two-run homers in a 6-4 loss. Less than 24 hours later — after she and her classmates were honored in an emotional pre-game "Senior Day" ceremony — Barnhill got knocked around again, this time for four runs over 6 1/3 innings, in a 4-2 defeat. 

Great senior sendoff, right?  

In the locker room after the third game, Barnhill spoke to the team. 

"I'm sorry," she said.  The 2017 Honda Award winner as the nation's top player and 2018 SEC Pitcher of the Year, apologized for how she'd played in the series and vowed to do all she could the rest of the way. Quite a statement from a generational student-athlete already with more than 100 career victories and well over 1,000 strikeouts.

"She called herself out in front of her teammates. … That doesn't happen all the time," Walton said. "She could have thought, 'I'm pitching fine. You guys need to score more runs.' She didn't. She took ownership."

On herself and the opposition, as it turned out. 

Yes, Barnhill could have chalked UF's break-even SEC season up to other things, especially an offense that finished last in the league in batting average and next-to-last in runs scored. Case in point: In her two losses to Mississippi State, the Gators managed just five hits and left 17 runners stranded on base. 

Nope. The only finger Barnhill pointed was the one she turned on herself. 

In six games since making her pledge, Barnhill has gone 5-0, surrendered just 11 hits and one run over 36 innings for an ERA of 0.19 to go with 38 strikeouts and 11 walks. The first of those three games came in the SEC Tournament, where she crop-dusted, in succession, No. 20 LSU, No. 24 Auburn and No. 4 Alabama over three days, with the final game atoning for the league regular-season champion Crimson Tide's three-game sweep of the host Gators two weeks before. 

In last week's home NCAA Regional, it was more of the same. Fifteen innings, six hits, no runs, 14 strikeouts, two walks. 

"I haven't been trying to do anything differently," Barnhill said. "It's more like, 'I'm going to go right at this. I'm going to hit my spots.' Maybe it's with more intention and that leads to more intensity out there, I don't know."

Whatever the case, it's working. 

Even Barnhill's teammates saw something different about her, especially when she — somewhat uncharacteristically — put her emotions on display after striking out Alabama's KB Sides, with the tying run on first, to end the game and give the Gators, seeded sixth in the field, a second straight tournament title. After Sides swung and missed, Barnhill ripped the mask off her head, stomped a foot and threw herself into the arms of her teammates.

Yeah, it was different.
 

What better way to get career win 💯 than with a strikeout in the @SECSBTourney championship game? #NCAASoftball
(via @GatorsSB) pic.twitter.com/mzf0qMGF5J

— NCAA Softball (@NCAAsoftball) May 12, 2019

"It's been exciting for us to see her compete like that; to see her externally show that," third-year junior shortstop Sophia Reynoso said. "We hadn't seen anything like that from her. It gives me the chills right now just talking about it."

Barnhill allowed her body language was unique that night.

"That's actually one of the few times I've shown emotion, but it was such a big moment, to get it done for the team," she said. "I was like, 'This girl is not getting on base. I'm going right at this girl one way or another.' I just wanted to do it for my team." 

What Barnhill did in the circle that weekend didn't surprise Walton. Obviously, he knows what she's capable of. Her remarks to the team didn't really surprise him, either. The timing of them, though, may have taken Walton a tad aback.

It was perfect.

"Full circle leadership, full circle accountability," he said. "Proud moment, that's the only way to define it. She understood. We got beat two out of three games [against Mississippi State]. Why? We didn't pitch well, didn't hit well, didn't play well, but it starts in the circle." 

Come what may, this will be Barnhill's final weekend in the circle on the field she's called home for the last four seasons. Just like when she started there back in 2016, she'll finish there in 2019. But she wants to throw her last pitch in a Florida uniform from a certain other circle about 1,200 miles to the west. The Gators and a certain flame-thrower have put themselves in a very good position to make that happen. 

That 12-12 seems so long ago. 

"All we know is everything is working," senior All-America outfielder Amanda Lorenz said. "We've always really liked each other. Our chemistry has always been really great and everything just kind of all of a sudden started to click. We don't know what made it click, but we're not going to mess with it. We're excited and we're going to roll with it."

And with all that?

"We're like, 'Keep doing you, Kelly!' " sophomore second baseman Hannah Adams said. "She's really focused right now and we're loving it."