The SEC tournament has moved from twelve participants to just four in two days’ time, and the conference bracket has already seen its share of upsets. Mississippi State bested Texas A&M late in the first round, while Arkansas took care of business against Georgia in the quarterfinal round.
Four teams remain standing: Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, and Arkansas. Before those squads duke it out for a spot in the conference championship game, here are four things that stood out to us from the teams in the semifinal round.
1. Arkansas’ Haff is the real deal
Haff really seems to fight like an upper classman… after giving up a home run on what looked like a riseball in the second inning against Kentucky in the tournament’s opening round, she made adjustments and didn’t shy away from using that pitch through the rest of the game. Haff is very versatile on the mound and finds a way to make plays that a lot of pitchers wouldn’t.
2. Pitching to Amanda Lorenz is not a good idea.
Facing the Florida Gators is never easy, and it’s only compounded by the fact that every member of their batting order could have an all-American-caliber performance on any given day. Amanda Lorenz, the newly-minted conference Player of the Year, is a major catalyst to the Gators’ success. Still just a junior – even though she often plays like a 10-year veteran – it was Lorenz’s three-run home run that capped the Gators’ come-from-behind efforts to secure the win against Alabama in the quarterfinals.
3. Mia Davidson’s bat is only one piece of her impact on Mississippi State
Davidson paced her team offensively in her first year in maroon and white, with eighteen home runs on the season. But it wasn’t her bat that stood out in her team’s two-game stay in the tournament. She works extremely hard for her pitcher behind the plate. She NEVER gets lazy. She frames every single pitch. A pitcher, who knows that her catcher will work hard for her, will always work harder to make the catcher’s job easier. Mia is a super aggressive player behind the plate.
Justin McLeod and Bailey Watts Ducroz are covering the SEC tournament and contributed to this article.
