Box Score GAINESVILLE, Fla. — With two outs in the bottom of the seventh and the tying run at first, Florida's Kendra Falby dropped an opposite-field single to left to put the winning run on base and bring superstar slugger Skylar Wallace, already with a pair of home runs in the game, to the plate to face unbeaten Florida State lefty Makenna Reid. The rollicking Pressly Stadium home crowd was primed for a big-time, game-deciding pitcher-batter duel.

Instead, the throng was denied. Twice, as it turned out.

Seminoles coach Lonni Alameda called for Wallace, batting a Southeastern Conference-best .461 with a team-high 18 homers, to be intentionally walked, thus loading the bases and bringing Charla Echols and her solid .372 average to the batter's box. While Reid was tossing her four outside pitches to Wallace, FSU first baseman Bethaney Keen turned to Falby and asked why the crowd was booing the free pass.

"We don't want to face Charla, either," Keen said. 

But Echols, with the tying run on third and winning run at second, jumped on the first pitch and popped a foul-out to the catcher, putting an altogether unsatisfying and anti-climatic bow on UF's 8-7 loss Wednesday night, giving third-ranked FSU a second straight season sweep and fifth consecutive victory in their rivalry series.

Afterward, Florida coach Tim Walton praised his team's fight to the finish. The 15th-ranked Gators (36-15) gave up three runs in the second to fall behind 3-1, yet battled back to take a 4-3 lead in the fourth on Wallace's first solo homer, surrendered four runs in the fifth to trail 7-4, only to put themselves in position late. All that despite being out-hit 11-6 (with Wallace's two homers and a two-run shot from Sarah Longley accounting for half), plus going 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position and stranding 10 runners. 

"Nothing is easy right now," Wallace said. 

The difference, like so many times this season, was in the circle, where all three Florida pitchers threw 2.1 innings, each giving up at least a run and each exiting with ERAs over 3.00. Sophomore starter Lexie Delbrey, just three days after one-hitting Ole Miss, gave up three runs, five hits and walked four. Senior Rylee Trlicek (12-4), as she did four days earlier against Ole Miss, gave up six hits, four runs and took the loss. Fifth-year senior Elizabeth Hightower gave up the final run — and game-winner, as it turned out — on a wild pitch that was so wild the FSU runner went from first to third, then scored on a sacrifice fly, a brutal and costly sequence of events.

"We make so many mistakes in every game, but it is what it is," Walton said. "There are so many things we don't do very well."

In contrast, FSU is rolling toward its first Atlantic Coast Conference title in four years. The Seminoles (43-8) only needed one of their two outstanding pitchers to close out the win. Reid came into the game in the UF sixth with an 11-0 record and left with a 0.90 ERA after holding the Gators scoreless the final two innings. Florida didn't even see Seminoles' All American Kathryn Sandercock. She rested her arm, 18-3 record and 1.17 ERA. 

Walton, with a sixth loss over the last eight games, doesn't have that kind of pitching staff luxury and is running out ways to talk about the lack of an ace to lean on. 

"It's the same," he said. "We're the same."

In the bigger picture, there's one thing about this 2023 Florida team that's not the same compared to any of Walton's previous 17 teams. This version, which will close out the SEC regular season with a weekend series at Kentucky, is in very real jeopardy of not hosting an NCAA Tournament regional round. If that's the case — and next week's conference tournament at Arkansas could be the deciding factor — then the Gators played their final home game Wednesday night. On May 3. 

The last time UF did not host a regional was 2004. 

The Gators, for what it's worth, aren't talking about that kind of stuff. 

"I just want to win," Walton said.  Falby, the sophomore outfielder, did a little deeper dive. She threw out the term "Phase 3" to describe how she views the upcoming postseason. Presumably, "Phase I" was non-league play, "Phase 2" was the SEC season. 

"Phase 3" starts next week.

"It doesn't matter what you did in the regular season, at all," Falby said, reflecting back to just a year ago when the Gators, in her freshman year, won a road Super Regional for the first time in program history to reach the Women's College World Series. "Nothing really matters once you get to 'Phase 3.' You just go out and play softball. You scratch and claw because everybody has to scratch and claw." 

Some teams (like this one) will have to scratch and claw even harder. What was it Wallace said? 

Oh yeah. Nothing is easy right now.