Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium in Gainesville, Florida, continues to be a house of horrors for Auburn softball. Auburn has not won a game at Florida since March 2017 and failed to end that six-year losing streak on Thursday night, losing to the Gators 3-2 in eight innings.
Maddie Penta put on a great performance, keeping the Gators' batters on their heels as Florida only had three hits off of her. The Auburn offense outhit Florida, but Florida's bats were clutch in the big moments.
Florida got the offense rolling in the bottom of the third inning with a triple from Skylar Wallace to put the Gators in front 1-0. Auburn had an error that brought Wallace home to bring it to a 2-0 lead.
Auburn was able to get a run in the top of the fifth. The top of the seventh arrived and Auburn was down by one run. With the Tigers down to their final out, Icess Tresvik stepped to the plate. Tresvik hit her sixth home run of the season and tied the game for the Tigers. However, it seemed that the Auburn bats ran out of gas in the eighth inning. Florida was able to bring Wallace in to walk off and get the 3-2 victory over the Tigers.
“We battled,” said head coach Mickey Dean. “It’s a tough one to talk about. We always talk about how defense has to travel. We fall on a fly ball. We come up short and don’t get our glove down on a ground ball. Our hitters battled. Our pitchers battled. We battled on defense late. When you’re playing on the road, runs are hard to come by. We can’t give runs away. We had an opportunity tonight. We have another opportunity tomorrow.”
Florida had its ace in the circle today: Elizabeth Hightower, a fifth-year senior who picked up her 11th victory of the season.
Penta, meanwhile, took her fifth loss despite an ERA of just 0.89. Penta struck out 12 Gators — her 18th double-digit strikeout performance of the season.
Auburn dropped to 28-11 on the season and 6-4 in SEC play. Florida, meanwhile, improved to 27-9 on the season.
Auburn will look to rebound and win the series. The second game of the series will begin on Friday at 5 p.m. CST and will air on the SEC Network.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
TP is a senior from Montgomery, Alabama, majoring in journalism. He started with The Plainsman in fall 2022.
Twitter: @tp_hammock
