Florida Gators Baseball Wrap Up: 17 great innings vs USF, one disaster

Playing USF in a home-and-home two-game series, it looked like Florida Gators baseball was going to cruise its way to a two-game sweep and move to 5-0 on the season. The Gators were hitting well, the pitching depth was holding up, and after 17 innings of dominating the Bulls, they just need three more outs.

But even with the new pitch clocks, it’s a timeless game and Florida Gators baseball found that out the hard way last night.

Florida Gators Baseball: Closing time

Tuesday’s game in Tampa played out fairly close to how we anticipated it to play out in our preview. USF was able to hang around into the 9th inning, but the lack of depth of pitching caught up to USF as Florida was able to score four runs in the 9th inning, including back-to-back homeruns from Tyler Shelnut and Cade Kurland.

Florida Gators 6, USF Bulls 1.

Cade Fisher, Ryan Slater, and Brandon Neely combined to only surrender five hits and one walk. Slater was credited with the win and Neely got the save.

The two teams made the bus trip to Gainesville and through eight innings it was more of the same for Florida Gators baseball. Jac Caglianone was 3-3 with two walks and a home run, Michael Robertson was 3-5 with two RBIs, and Wyatt Langford was 2-4 .

After a two-run 8th inning, Florida entered the 9th up 8-3.

USF homered, then took advantage of an error, then walked, and Fisher Jameson came in to try and put out the fire.

He did not.

After striking out his first batter, he gave up a single and it was now 8-5 with the tying run at the plate.

One long fly ball later from USF and the game was tied.

It kept snowballing for Florida with more walks, errors, and wild pitches and by the time Anthony Ursitti was able to get the third out it was 10-8 in favor of USF.

It is just the fifth time ever that USF has beaten Florida in baseball.

The Gators will try and shake off the implosion during a weekend series against Cincinnati at home. First game is Friday at 6:30 PM