Florida Gators News: Baseball has a split personality, two key moments sink Softball

Following last week’s sweep against Alabama, Florida Baseball looked as lethargic and non-competitive as a baseball team could look. That’s not our words, that’s from Kevin O’Sullivan, who ripped into the Gators following Sunday’s loss. Combined with the series loss to High Point in the non-conference play, the seeds have been planted for Florida to let this season go south.

So how have the Gators responded?

A midweek win over little brother FSU to secure the season series and a Friday night 9-4 win over No. 4 Arkansas on the road. Perhaps most impressive is that Liam Peterson had his pitch count driven way up, and he only made it four innings before Florida’s bullpen, which melted down against Alabama, held on for the remaining five innings.

Ethan Surowiec and Karson Bowen both had home runs, and more importantly, compared to last week, Florida drew ten walks on the night. Kyle Jones also had a highlight catch on the warning track and had a stolen base on the night.

As up and down as Florida’s season has been, they are now 7-3 in Quad One games and entered the week ranked No. 5 in RPI despite being unranked overall.

Game two is at 2 PM with Aidan King expected to get the start.

Softball falls short to Arkanas

In a case of rare circumstance, Florida Softball is also on the road in Arkansas this weekend. Florida is coming off a massive series win over Tennessee that gave the Gators a clear pathway towards a potential SEC title after previous sweeps against Missouri and Kentucky.

This weekend’s series against Arkansas is probably the toughest series they have left and while Florida had chances, they fell short in game one and lost 6-2 to fall to 32-3 on the season.

Florida fell behind 2-0 but tried to rally in the 5th inning. They got one run across and had the bases loaded with two out and Taylor Shumaker at the plate. Shumaker smacked a ball up the middle, but Arkansas was shaded that way and stepped on second to end the threat.

Then, in the bottom of the 5th, Arkansas loaded the bases, and Olivia Miller came in to try and prevent any damage. Florida looked like it had gotten the second out of the inning at home on a ground ball, but Miller was called for an illegal pitch. Given a redo, Arkansas hit a sacrifice fly to make it 3-1 with two outs. The Razorbacks then tacked on three more runs to put the game out of reach.

Game two for softball is at 8 PM.