By Dave Ford

In the final regular season series of the 2008 softball campaign, the No. 12 Lady Vols became another victim of the orange and blue machine known as the Florida Gators.

The second-ranked Gators stepped foot into Lee Softball Stadium and took three consecutive games from the home team  over May 3-4 to solidify themselves as the SEC regular season champions heading into the conference tournament, which kicks off May 8 in Baton Rouge, La.

Although the Lady Vols (46-13, 14-12 SEC) were much more effective offensively than UF (59-2, 27-1 SEC), the combination of stranding too many base runners and inconsistent pitching led to their demise.

“Florida is a tremendous team and is very deserving of the SEC championship,” said Lady Vol co-head coach Ralph Weekly. “When you out-hit a great offensive team like Florida with 25 total hits over three games, steal four bases and score nine runs off an All-American pitcher in Stacey Nelson, you expect to win a couple.”

Until Sunday’s finale, which Florida won 5-3, Nelson had not surrendered a home run all season (253 innings). When UT senior Shannon Doepking stepped up to the plate in the bottom of the first inning, that statistic changed.

Doepking took a few pitches before slamming her third homer of the season off the scoreboard in left center to bring home junior Lillian Hammond, who had just gotten on base via a one-out single, to give the Lady Vols an early 2-0 lead.

But UT freshman pitcher Ashton Ward couldn’t hold off the Gators, as she was replaced in the top of the third inning after giving up two runs on three hits in two innings.

Senior Megan Rhodes took the hill in relief, but was of little help after throwing 227 pitches the previous night in her 11-inning complete game effort, albeit a 6-5 loss that came after three hours and 47 minutes. On Sunday, Rhodes took the loss and fell to 19-8 on the season after allowing two runs on two hits in two innings of relief.

“Our problem in this series was in the circle where we walked 16 total hitters, at least eight coming to lead-off an inning, and threw eight wild pitches with four leading to scores,” said Weekly.

Junior reliever Danielle Pieroni worked three innings after Rhodes was pulled, and allowed one run on three hits.

Although the Lady Vols got off to a bad start beginning with a 4-2 loss in Game 1 of the series on Saturday, they did see two records fall over the weekend. Senior Tonya Callahan broke an SEC single-season record when she recorded her 52nd walk of the year, surpassing the record (51) formerly held by Alabama All-American Kelly Kretschman and Mississippi State All-American Iyhia McMichael. And freshman right fielder Kelly Grieve set a program record by stealing her 17th base of the season, breaking the UT freshman stolen base record of 16, formerly held by three-time All-American Lindsay Shutzler (2004).

The fourth-seeded Lady Vols will take the field again on May 8, when they match up against No. 5 seed Georgia in the first round of the SEC Tournament. The contest is scheduled to begin at 12 p.m. ET and live stats will be available through www.utladyvols.com.