Washington wins NCAA softball title, 3-2

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Kimi Pohlman raced home on a squibber back to the circle that Florida ace Stacey Nelson couldn’t handle, giving Washington the decisive run in a 3-2 victory for its first NCAA softball championship Tuesday.

With the bases loaded in the third inning, Morgan Stuart tapped the ball a few feet in front of home plate, but Nelson (41-5) was unable to scoop it cleanly. That allowed the go-ahead run to score.

National player of the year Danielle Lawrie (42-8) shut out the top-seeded Gators (63-5) the rest of the way to clinch the title with a two-game sweep.

Washington (51-12) kept the championship in the Pac-10 by keeping Florida from bringing the Southeastern Conference its first title. The Pac-10 has won 21 of the 27 Women’s College World Series titles, with Arizona State and Washington joining powerhouses UCLA (11 championships) and Arizona (eight) the past two years.

Lawrie settled down after some shaky defense put the third-seeded Huskies in a 2-0 hole right off the bat. She finished with a pair of strikeouts after Christina Enea narrowly missed a tying home run with a line drive off the left field wall in the seventh inning.

Lawrie was selected the most outstanding player of the World Series.

Florida’s Aja Paculba led off the game with a triple to right-center field past a diving Aly McWherter and came in on a passed ball. Kristina Hilbreth reached on an error, moved to second on Enea’s infield single and was able to sneak into third on a steal when Stuart lingered too far from the base to tag her. She scored on Megan Bush’s sacrifice fly.

Washington answered immediately against Nelson, who led the nation in ERA but was coming off two of her worst outings of the season. Lawrie’s RBI single and a wild pitch that brought in Pohlman evened the score at 2 in the bottom of the first.