![Florida has a mound conference during the 2026 NCAA Baseball Championship Gainesville Regional championship baseball game at Condron Family Ballpark in Gainesville, FL on Monday, June 1, 2026. Troy beat Florida Sunday they played a winner take all game Monday. Troy won 10-2. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,x_0,y_0,w_2641,h_1485/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/ImagnImages/mmsport/213/01ktdck64hmr2jp5p0fw.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 Monday, June 1, 2026. Troy beat Florida Sunday they played a winner take all game Monday. Troy won 10-2. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]")
Florida’s season came to a crashing halt on Monday against Troy as Florida’s pitching staff imploded. There were a myriad of other issues throughout the season, but the collapse of Florida’s staff was front and center as to why the Gators were eliminated.
The starting pitching from that fateful game on Monday is now off to the transfer portal, and in a lot of ways, the fact that he is leaving helps explain why Kevin O’Sullivan had to make a change to his coaching staff heading into the offseason.
Cooper Walls transfers and David Kopp is fired from Florida
Two notable tidbits of news dropped on Friday:
- Cooper Walls is set to hit the transfer portal
- Pitching coach David Kopp was fired by the Gators
Walls transferred in from Hawaii and had a great fall camp that earned him the role of Florida’s Sunday starting pitcher to begin the season. He quickly lost that role to Russell Sandefer and was relegated to either coming out of the bullpen or being the midweek starter.
Over the final 13 games prior to the NCAA Tournament, Walls made a total of three appearances for 4.2 innings with four earned runs against.
But after not being used at all during the SEC Tournament and in any of Florida’s first three NCAA Tournament games, Walls got the nod for the winner-take-all game on Monday under the justification that he was the only main arm Florida had comfortable starting the game.
29 pitches and two earned runs later, Walls got the hook.
So, how does Walls falling apart lead to pitching coach David Kopp losing his job?
Well, it’s not so much Walls himself but rather what Walls symbolized within Florida’s staff.
Walls came to Florida as the 2025 Big West Freshman Pitcher of the Year and had an ERA south of 4.00 when he showed up to Gainesville. Perhaps he wasn’t ready for the jump to the SEC, but on paper, he should have been able to hold Troy in check.
But it wasn’t just Walls who had a bad weekend, as almost everyone on Florida’s staff faded down the stretch. Aidan King racked up plenty of accolades but was very mortal in his last three starts. Liam Peterson looked like he was turning things around, only to continue his trend of disastrous postseason starts. Ernesto Lugo-Canchola was the 2025 D2 Baseball Pitcher of the Year, only to get tagged by Troy in back-to-back high-leverage situations. Joshua Whritenour didn’t give up a run in his first eight appearances of the year, only to end the year with three earned runs each against Georgia, Rider, and Troy.
We can go up and down the line, but what developed over the weekend was a feeling that Florida didn’t have a single arm it could lean on to make it to Super Regionals.
Thus, something had to change, and that something was O’Sullivan making a move with Kopp.
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