Two weeks into the 2025 season for Florida Softball, the Gators are already out to a 13-1 start to their campaign. The Gators hosted the Bubly Invitational over the weekend and went 5-1 during the event.
Florida will travel to UNF on Wednesday before flying out to Arizona for the Sun Devil Classic next weekend.
Truth: Taylor Shumaker is a stud
Playing coming in as true freshmen can have all the high school accolades they want, but until they step into a college batter's box and face live college pitching, you just never truly know is a player is going to translate.
Well, Taylor Shumaker is translating as the freshman has eight home runs in 14 games, has a batting average of .475, and has a video-game-like 1.763 OPS.
Those numbers will drop once SEC play begins, but if you are keeping score at home, the single-season record for home runs was the 22 that Brittany Schutte hit in 2011.
Truth: The SEC is loaded in 2025
Perhaps one of the hidden aspects of conference realignment was the addition of Oklahoma and Texas in softball to the SEC. For as much talk as there has been about the SEC being loaded in men's basketball in 2025, the conference might be even more loaded in softball.
According to the ELO Rankings, the SEC currently has the six highest-ranked teams in the country, with Florida coming in third. 11 of the 15 SEC softball squads have zero or just one loss so far.
The moral is that Florida needs to keep stockpiling wins now because their pathway will get far more difficult once SEC play begins.
Lie: This team can field
We have seen a couple of early Web Gems out of the Gators, but one concerning area two weeks in is the amount of errors the Gators are racking up.
Last year, the Gators were one of the better fielding teams in the country. However, in 2025, they have already racked up 11 errors and are just 62nd in errors per game.
During their blowout loss to Duke, their lone loss thus far, two backbreaking errors in the 2nd inning, led to the Blue Devils getting five runs, all with two outs.