The No. 22 Florida Softball team improved to 33-17 on the season and 9-9 in Southeastern Conference play with a 3-0 win over the Auburn Tigers (19-26, 6-14 SEC) in Auburn on Saturday afternoon. Sophomore pitcher Stacey Nelson (Los Alamitos, Calif.) pitched a near perfect game in the win.

Florida scored its three runs in the top of the sixth. With one out, freshman Francesca Enea (Woodland Hills, Calif.) reached and moved to second on an error by the Auburn centerfielder. Freshman Corrie Brooks (Christmas, Fla.) came in to pinch run for Enea at second. Senior Melissa Zick (Tampa, Fla.) drew a two-out walk. Junior Mary Ratliff (Mt. Sterling, Ky.) hit her third home run of the season to give the Gators the 3-0 lead.

Nelson had a perfect game going through six innings before she gave up a base hit to Ashley Arcuri to lead off the bottom of the seventh. Nelson struck out six Tigers in the win. Anna Thompson struck out six Gators and gave up all three runs before she was relieved by Brittany Day in the seventh. Thompson moves to 11-12 on the season in the loss.

Florida was leading game two of the doubleheader 4-0 heading into the bottom of the fourth before the game was called due to lightning in the area. The Gators scored two runs on a Zick home run in the second and two on a Ratliff two-RBI base hit in the fourth. Zick set the school runs scored record with 130 with her home run.

Saturday’s second game will resume at Noon ET, followed immediately by Sunday’s originally scheduled game. Both will air live in GatorZone.com via yahoo.com and live stats will also be available on GatorZone.