![Florida has a mound conference during the 2026 NCAA Baseball Championship Gainesville Regional championship baseball game at Condron Family Ballpark in Gainesville, FL on Sunday, May 31, 2026. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,x_0,y_0,w_2535,h_1425/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/ImagnImages/mmsport/213/01kt0bez3xg8p4v1t3z4.jpg "Florida has a mound conference during the 2026 NCAA Baseball Championship Gainesville Regional championship baseball game at Condron Family Ballpark in Gainesville, FL on Sunday, May 31, 2026. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]")
For all the wackiness of the first two days of the Gainesville Regional, Florida seemingly had everything perfectly set up to go 3-0 and advance to Super Regionals on Sunday. Troy knocked off Miami in the early game on Sunday, but had to use one of its key bullpen arms to do it. The end result was a starting pitcher with an ERA close to 6.0.
Meanwhile, Florida had everything set up for Liam Peterson to shut Troy down just let Florida’s bat do their thing.
Florida scored 11 runs on Sunday night.
Florida lost by five runs on Sunday night.
Oops.
Florida loses to Troy and sets up a winner-take-all on Monday
If one is keeping score at home, these are the postseason appearances that Liam Peterson has made as a Gator during his time in Gainesville:
- 2024 vs Nebraska - 5.1 innings, 4 hits, 3 walks, 2 earned runs
- 2024 vs Clemson - 1.0 inning, 3 hits, 4 walks, 3 earned runs
- 2024 vs Texas A&M - 2.1 innings, 4 hits, 4 walks, 3 earned runs
- 2024 vs Texas A&M - 0.1 inning, 0 hits, 4 walks, 2 earned runs
- 2025 vs ECU - 1.1 innings, 5 hits, 0 walks, 4 runs (2 earned)
- 2026 vs Troy - 5.0 innings, 10 hits, 1 walk, 9 earned runs
Since his postseason debut against Nebraska, Peterson has now been shelled in five straight postseason appearances.
And this outing on Sunday was probably his single most disastrous as a Gator. Troy looked like it was batting practice for them, and even when Peterson did try to rear back and throw 98 MPH on his fastball, Troy didn’t look fazed by anything he threw.
Florida hitters did make decent enough contact and probably felt like they did enough. But it wasn’t just Peterson who failed to keep a lid on things. The three arms Kevin O’Sullivan trotted out of the bullpen all failed to shut things down to give Florida any kind of hope of coming back.
Florida’s season on the line on Monday
The benefit of Regionals is that a team does have to get beaten twice to get knocked out. The concern heading into Monday’s winner-take-all affair is how Florida is actually going to piece together nine innings from its pitching staff.
Cooper Walls started the season off as the Sunday starter, but he has seemingly been relegated to the shadow realm, as he wasn’t used at all during the SEC Tournament and hasn’t been used once this postseason.
The most realistic pathway is piecing together Caden McDonald, Jackson Barberi, and Luke McNeillie to eat up the bulk of the innings, with Ricky Reeth and Joshua Whritenour capable of taking an inning each.
There really is no excuse if Florida can’t get the job done, especially with the massive opportunity that is in front of them. The winner of Florida and Troy gets the winner of Jacksonville State and Little Rock at Super Regionals. The winner of that Super Regional would open in Omaha with either West Virginia, Kentucky, St. Mary’s, or Cal Poly as No. 1 overall seed UCLA was eliminated.
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