Sometimes success doesn't come down to preparation, mental fortitude, pitch location, movement or any of the innumerable subtleties that separate average from good and good from great in the pitching circle.
Sometimes you just need to be 5-foot-10 and hope you catch gravity on a good day.
With two outs in the top of the seventh inning of Sunday's series finale, Missouri trailed Kentucky 3-2 but had runners on second and third. The outcome of the series stood in balance, the first two games split between teams jockeying for postseason positioning. That's when a Missouri batter pounded Kelsey Nunley's 128th pitch into the dirt, and the ball bounced high as it carried toward second base.
If Nunley caught the hop but couldn't set her feet in time to throw to first base for the out, the runner already on third would tie the game. If the ball carried over Nunley, with the shortstop and second basemen playing in and unable to reach it, both runners would score and Missouri would take the lead.
"I more expected it to go to third or short, just because the girl is a slapper," Nunley said. "But honestly, when the ball got at its highest point, I think my heart kind of stopped. From then on, it was kind of a blur."
At full extension, gloved left hand high above her head, she caught the ball, set herself with her left foot on the pitching rubber and threw a strike to first that beat the runner by half a step.
Kentucky won the game and the series because Nunley, a high school basketball and volleyball player, was the right person in the right place at the right time.
Which nicely sums up why Kentucky has won so many games during the past four seasons.
And it's why after earning two wins against Missouri and securing a sweep against LSU days earlier, Nunley is espnW's player of the week -- the same week in which the USSSA Pride made the senior the fifth overall pick in the National Pro Fastpitch draft.
The schedule gave Nunley the opportunity to pile up wins, the series finale at LSU on Monday essentially a bonus start in the week's accounting, but she made the most of the opportunity. Working against ranked opponents with offenses ranked in the top 20 in scoring, she allowed five earned runs in 20 innings and struck out 15 batters. In all three games in the nation's least forgiving conference, twice on national television, she pitched to the tying or winning run in the seventh inning.
At times, she didn't give the SEC opposition much of a chance. In the win in Baton Rouge (her second shutout of the series, even if only one took place in the time period relevant to this award), she allowed just four hits and only a handful of balls out of the infield. At times, she won without dominating. In Sunday's game, Missouri put the leadoff batter on base in each of the first three innings and four of seven innings in all.
It still couldn't beat Kentucky's ace.
"As the situation is going on, I just try to think about the next pitch," Nunley said. "Whatever I might have done wrong or however the girl beforehand was able to get on base, I just try and focus on the next pitch because I know it's the most important one. Confidence is definitely key for me. Knowing I've been able to get out of situations like that before is something that might go through my mind when I'm in the situation again."
That's a career summed up in a week.
Nunley ranks second among active Division I pitchers in career wins and fifth among active seniors in career ERA, trailing only Oregon's Cheridan Hawkins among pitchers in major conferences.
It doesn't matter if you strike out the side or work out of trouble. It doesn't matter if you are from the softball cradle of Southern California or a town called Soddy Daisy, Tennessee, on the outskirts of Chattanooga. It doesn't matter if you go to a school that won titles before you arrived or one that had made but a handful of NCAA tournament appearances. All that matters is if you can consistently put yourself in position to win.
Even if you aren't sure you can jump that high.