Tennessee Lady Vols crushed Florida Gators with ease in 2025 WCWS Game 5

Tennessee's Gabby Leach (55) celebrates a triple with coach Karen Weekly in the first inning the Women's College World Series softball game between the Florida Gators and the Tennessee Volunteers at Devon Park in Oklahoma City, Friday, May, 30, 2025.
Tennessee's Gabby Leach (55) celebrates a triple with coach Karen Weekly in the first inning the Women's College World Series softball game between the Florida Gators and the Tennessee Volunteers at Devon Park in Oklahoma City, Friday, May, 30, 2025. | SARAH PHIPPS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Well, things sure went well for the Tennessee Lady Vols. Friday evening, when facing elimination and the Florida Gators, Tennessee managed to snag a very decisive win in Oklahoma City, beating Florida in a run rule, 11-3 beatdown. This game was ended with a mercy rule in large part due to the fact that the Gators simply couldn’t slow Tennessee at all at any point throughout the game.

And that was certainly true in the first inning as Tennessee managed to keep UF off the board through the first three outs during the top half of the inning and then quickly ran out and pasted seven runs onto the scoreboard. 

That sort of scoring burst was remarkable to watch and it truly made this game nearly impossible for Florida to do anything with just about immediately. 

The Gators really struggled to get anything going in the circle as the entirety of the Florida pitching staff just flat out struggled in this game. UF’s pitchers gave up 10 earned runs across a grand total of four innings.

That’s just not going to be good enough in any game, let alone an elimination game in Oklahoma City. 

Florida Gators struggle to do anything as Tennessee Lady Vols secure run rule win during 2025 Women’s College World Series

In total, Tennessee recorded a dozen hits from a grand total of nine different batters. The Lady Vols hammered multiple home runs and there was a clear combination of timely hitting and remarkably impressive power hitting. 

Tennessee did everything right while at the plate.

Now, it is worth noting that Florida did try to rally in this game. Despite the huge deficit, the Gators did put three runs on the board in the fourth inning. But cutting a lead to seven runs instead of 10-0 really doesn’t do enough. 

It was too little and way too late. 

On top of all of the other issues, Florida also had some fielding problems. The Gators committed a few errors and things just truly didn’t work out for UF in this game. Now Tennessee is advancing on and Florida is headed home to Gainesville to prepare for next season.