Arizona softball: Michelle Floyd pitches perfect game in Wildcats’ win vs. Hartford

Arizona softball entered the weekend with the fourth-best ERA in the country (0.94) as its pitching staff has turned in dominant performance after dominant performance throughout its non-conference schedule.

On Saturday, it got its best performance yet, but not necessarily from who you would expect.

Scarcely-used senior Michelle Floyd tossed a perfect game in her first start of the season as No. 5 Arizona routed Hartford 18-0 in five innings in Northridge, Calif.

Six of the 15 outs Floyd recorded were strikeouts. It is the ninth perfect game in Arizona softball history and the first one thrown since April 24, 2010 when Kenzie Fowler was perfect against Oregon State.

Floyd had only pitched seven innings all season prior to Saturday’s perfect game.

The right-hander was once Arizona’s featured pitcher — in 2015 she threw a team-high 183.2 innings, compiling a 19-13 record and a 3.62 ERA — but her time in the circle has been significantly limited since then as Arizona has continued to add more and more talent to its pitching staff

Despite that, Floyd decided to stay at UA, putting the team first, and now she has done something that not even Jennie Finch was able to pull off at Arizona.

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