Wildest and craziest endings in recent Florida Gators history

While watching Florida Gators baseball lose to Jacksonville last night, I had the FSU vs USF game on a split screen.

USF took the lead in the 13th inning until FSU battled back in the bottom of the 13th.

Down to their final out, FSU had runners on the corners down by one run. The FSU batter popped the ball up to the shortstop for what should have been the final out of the game.

Except, well…

And if you didn’t see it floating around Twitter this weekend, the women’s track and field team from Duke was in route to winning the ACC championship in indoor track and field. All they had to do to win was finish the 4 X 4 with the baton in hand.

Steps from the finish line they had the baton knocked out of their hand and were DQed. The resulting loss of points led the Virginia Tech winning the whole meet.

This got us to thinking here at Hail Florida Hail what are some of the wildest finishes in recent Florida Gators history.  For the purpose of this list, we didn’t go before 2009, so things like Jabar Gaffney catching a questionable TD will be saved for other lists.

Florida Gators: Walk-off grand slam

While we now think of the Florida Gators as a mainstay in the college softball world, they were still an up-and-coming team in 2009. Florida’s first ever appearance in the Women’s College World Series was 2008, where they fell one game short of the finals.

Florida was back in Oklahoma City in 2009 and needed to beat Alabama to make it to the final series. In the bottom of the 7th inning Florida was down 5-2 with two outs and were facing the prospect of a winner-take-all rematch to advance.

The Gators had the bases loaded however when Ali Gardner stepped up to the plate.

One swing of the bat later and Florida advanced to the championship series.

While the Gators fell to Washington that series, Gardner’s grand slam officially planted Florida as a college softball power.