SOUTH BEND, Ind. – A bumpy regular-season road might have cast some doubts about whether Kentucky softball’s freshmen would be able to contribute immediately in the NCAA Tournament.Rachel Lawson, however, saw it coming.”Well yeah, I recruited them,” Lawson said.A day after Rachael Metzger’s pinch hit propelled UK into the winners’ bracket on Friday, fellow first-year players Brooklin Hinz and Erin Rethlake combined for five hits, two runs and two runs batted in as the Wildcats coasted past Ball State on Saturday, 5-0. They gave more than enough support to ace Kelsey Nunley, who allowed just two hits and a walk and struck out seven in a complete-game shutout as the Cats moved into Sunday’s South Bend Regional final.”I thought Coach Lawson called a great game and she really kept them off balance,” Nunley said. “That was the whole goal. She was like, ‘I’m going to call the pitches, you’re going to throw the pitches and we’re going to go from there.’ That’s what we did.”Nunley, after she led UK to the Women’s College World Series a year ago, surprised no one with her performance. Hinz and Rethlake, on the other hand, have never been on this stage before, though Lawson brought them to Kentucky for exactly this.”One of the major criteria I have when I recruit players is that they’re a winner,” Lawson said. “Their high school teams win, their travel ball teams win so that they understand what the postseason is about.”Hinz, who had just 23 hits in 109 at-bats before going 3 for 3 against Ball State, says her freshman season has been building to these moments, like when she led off the second inning with a sharp single and later scored the game’s first run.”I’ve kind of noticed it over the whole course of this year and just really figured out what to do with the details now that I’ve realized what things are,” Hinz said. “I’ve been able to put them together and it’s been working really well.”Though it took until Saturday for the results to show up in the box score for Hinz.”I’ve been really pleased with the work our freshmen have been putting in,” Lawson said. “In the later part of the SEC, they really started to hit the ball hard and looked a lot more comfortable in the box.”With the likes of Hinz, Rethlake and Metzger becoming legitimate threats at the plate, UK’s lineup becomes that much more potent. “We’ve really started to put things together,” Lawson said. “This is the offense that we’ve put together through the beginning of the year that’s really starting to shine right now.”UK has now scored four runs or more six times in its last eight games on the heels of a three-game stretch that saw the Cats score just one run total.”Well I think it’s been coming around for the last three weeks,” Lawson said. “I just think things take time and I think we’ve had enough time to work on some of the things–specifically, we’re working on early pitch recognition and just being on time for the pitch. I think anytime you make major adjustments it takes a little bit of time. So this was about the right timeframe for change to happen.”The timing truly couldn’t be better. UK has snapped a seven-game losing streak with back-to-back NCAA Tournament wins, taking the Cats to within one victory of a fourth Super Regional appearance in five seasons. They’ll go for it at 1 p.m. on Sunday against Notre Dame, Ball State or Northwestern.”Towards the end, we’ve kind of been working on a lot of different things and now I think everything has just kind of clicked together and it’s just been working really well for us,” Hinz said.