Florida Baseball played FSU on national television. Both teams did not have fun.

A once hopeful season for Florida Baseball has officially reached an inflection point. The Gators have struggled all season long with midweek games but had been rock solid in weekend series, and prior to this past weekend had just to drop a three game weekend series.

After getting swept by lowly Missouri over the weekend, Florida saw its ranking tumble; either a sense of urgency was going to inspire the Gators to a big week, or Florida was about to descend into a lost season of sadness and despair.

Juding by last night, Florida is far closer to option B than they are option A.

Florida Baseball: It Will All Be Over Soon

Kevin O'Sullivan has seemingly tried to give anyone with an arm and five fingers a chance to showcase they can be a viable midweek starter and/or a reliable option out of the bullpen. Yet after the Gators started out with homeruns from Cade Kurland and Jac Caglianone, Ryan Slater was tagged for six runs, five earned, without getting a single Seminole hitter out.

From there, Fisher Jameson, Alex Philpott, Robert Satin, and Grayson Smith all gave up at least two runs en route to allowing FSU to score 19 runs in just five innings.

But we are also at the point of the season where fingers can't just be pointed at the inability to get people out. Florida loaded the bases with no outs in the top of the second inning, with the score still 6-2, a brief glimmer of hope of turning it into a slugfest.

But much like against Missouri when they also had bases loaded with no out, Michael Robertson grounded into a fielder's choice, Kurland fouled out on the first pitch, and Caglianone flew out to end the inning.

In fact from the time Florida loaded the bases, the next nine hitters all proceeded to get out.

The end result wasn't the worst beatdown in Gator history, but it was close. Florida's season isn't lost yet, but the upcoming series against South Carolina feels like a do-or-die moment. At 17-15 on the season and 6-6 in SEC play, Florida still has Vanderbilt, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky on the horizon, all of which are in the top ten teams in the latest D1 Baseball Top 25 rankings.

"The bottom line is this: we're going to continue to work at this thing as hard as we ever have, but we've got a lot of decisions to make moving forward and some different things. Obviously, we've got a long part of the season left. But, this is disappointing."

- Kevin O'Sullivan

The prospect of a top eight seed is probably out the window, but if Florida can rally and win four of the last six series in SEC play it could squeeze in as a top 16 seed and still host regionals. If the Gators break even, it probably will have to hit the road given the midweek struggles the club has had.

But the Gators have had far too many nights like last night to continue to bury one's head in the sand and channel one's Bob Marley to pretend that every little thing is going to be alright without improvements going forward.