For five innings, it felt like it was just a matter of time until the Gators would break things open against High Point. Liam Peterson was dealing, and Florida just needed to get its own bats going. Even going into the 7th inning, it still felt like Florida wasn’t in danger of dropping the opening game of the series, even though things were tied.
But Florida managed to turn a molehill into a mountain as everything went south after an overturned call, and the end result was a 7-2 defeat to High Point in game one of this weekend’s series.
Florida losses to High Point to end winning streak
The good news is that Peterson didn’t allow a hit through five innings. The bad news is that he ran into trouble in the 6th inning, and that ended his night. After a walk and a single to open the 6th, Peterson handed the ball off to Russel Sandefer, who promptly walked a guy to load the bases.
A wild pitch scored a run, and then, because everyone else advanced, a groundout to second enabled a second run to score, and Florida was behind 2-1.
Brendan Lawson tied things back at 2-2 with a home run in the bottom of the 6th, and Jackson Barberi entered in the 7th to pitch with bases empty and one out. Barberi walked a guy, then struck out a guy, and thought he had the third out on a bang-bang play at 1st base.
Upon review, the High Point runner was safe, and it’s from there that the wheels completely fell off. High Point scored three runs in the inning, all with two outs, to take a 5-2 lead.
The Gators had a baserunner in the 7th, 8th, and 9th but otherwise didn’t threaten. High Point tacked on two more runs for the 7-2 win.
All good things come to an end
After the game, Kevin O’Sullivan made it clear that while a single loss to end a 13-game winning streak isn’t cause for alarm, he also made it clear Florida was outplayed on Friday night:
“We got exposed a little bit tonight, to be quite honest with you. We haven't played very many teams that exposed us on the base paths like they did tonight, so we gotta do a better job of holding runners at second. We got exposed in the bunt game, so we gotta do a better job with that and obviously, walking seven guys… We've been playing so good, there's no reason to throw up any red flags.”
To O’Sullivan’s point, it’s not the time to hit the panic button after one loss. It is worth keeping in the back pocket, though, because to this point, Florida’s 2026 season has mirrored its 2025 season. For as much as we all remember the 1-11 start in SEC play, Florida as a whole started last year 16-2.
It was during the slump last year that Florida looked like a bad travel-ball team that never practiced fundamentals.
So we’ll see if Friday night was just a bump in the road or foreshadowing of things to come. Game two against High Point is slated to start at 4 PM.