No. 14 Georgia softball clinched a top-10 series win with back-to-back victories over No. 8 Florida after dropping the opener, defeating Florida 10-9 on Friday and 9-1 in five innings on Saturday at Jack Turner Stadium.<\/p>\n
In the second game, Georgia rallied from a five-run deficit on Friday before senior Jaydyn Goodwin hit a walk-off RBI single in the seventh inning to even the series. The Bulldogs then used another late offensive run Saturday, capped by freshman Gabi Novickas\u2019 fifth-inning walk-off grand slam, to secure the victory and their first home series win over Florida since 2018.<\/p>\n
Georgia opened the weekend with a 5-3 loss on Thursday despite home runs from Goodwin and Keirstin Roose. Florida scored twice in the seventh inning to break a 3-3 tie and claim the opening win.<\/p>\n
In Friday\u2019s win, Florida jumped ahead 7-2 through three innings, but Georgia answered with a seven-run fifth inning rally. Sarah Gordon and Novickas each drove in runs during the rally, while Goodwin finished the comeback with her game-winning single. Goodwin went 3-for-4 with two RBIs, and four Bulldogs recorded three hits.<\/p>\n
Left-hander Randi Roelling earned wins in the final two games of the series, improving to 16 wins this season. She closed Friday\u2019s match and threw a complete game Saturday, allowing one run on three hits with five strikeouts.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s senior day finale remained tied 1-1 through three innings before Georgia broke it open in the fourth. Tyler Ellison and Gordon each scored runs before Emily Digby added a two-run home run for a 5-1 lead.<\/p>\n
In the fifth, Novickas ended the game with her second grand slam of the season, securing the run rule win in front of a crowd of 2,280, the 10th-highest single-game attendance in program history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took a big hit on that pitch, and it paid off,” Novickas said.<\/p>\n
Georgia moved to 34-50 in all-time play against Florida and improved to 36-17 on the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the crowd was just amazing and so supportive and gave our team such a boost,\u201d head coach Tony Baldwin said. \u201cWe played with just a great sense of urgency, competitiveness and joy\u2026I’m just really proud of the way that we came out on senior day and competed and just played Georgia softball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Georgia now awaits seeding for next week\u2019s SEC Softball Tournament in Lexington, Kentucky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No. 14 Georgia softball clinched a top-10 series win with back-to-back victories over No. 8 Florida after dropping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[39081,3816,102411,102419,102420,102423,102406,102412,102418,28,2530,30,29,111502,89214,102621,9004,102403,102405,102407,102404,102408,102413,102427,111503,57526,102410,13086,110,102422,57528,102409,111500,111501,78290],"class_list":["post-256678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-ball-and-bat-games","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-competitions","tag-baseball-events","tag-baseball-finals","tag-baseball-games","tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","tag-baseball-teams","tag-champion-seasons-in-major-league-baseball","tag-florida","tag-florida-gators","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-grand-slam-baseball","tag-home-run","tag-inning","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","tag-major-league-baseball-seasons","tag-major-league-baseball-teams","tag-major-league-baseball-teams-seasons","tag-outdoor-sports","tag-run-baseball","tag-run-batted-in","tag-seasons-in-american-sport","tag-seasons-in-baseball","tag-softball","tag-sports","tag-sports-events","tag-team-sports","tag-turf-sports","tag-walk-off-home-run","tag-win-loss-record-pitching","tag-world-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}