Florida coach Kevin O'Sullivan explains pitching plan, mindset for rest of regional final

Florida is facing Oklahoma State in a winner-take-all game in the Stillwater Regional of the NCAA Tournament. The winner of Monday’s contest will advance to face Clemson in next week’s super regionals, while the loser will have their season come to an end.

Gators coach Kevin O’Sullivan spoke with ESPNU during the game about his team’s mindset heading into the final innings.

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“Well, I think from a pitching perspective, early in the year you try to let guys work through some difficult situations and hope they learn from them,” Kevin O’Sullivan said. “Now it’s you’ve gotta have more of a quicker trigger, so to speak. So there’s a bit more urgency, obviously. But throughout the year, you try to give guys some opportunities to maybe work through situations a little bit more than obviously a one-game series like it is today.”

Florida jumped out to a 2-0 lead against the Cowboys and still leads 3-2 in the top of the sixth inning.

The Gators used two pitchers to get through 5 2/3 innings and both pitched well.

Florida redshirt freshman Jake Clemente held Oklahoma State to one run in 3 1/3 innings, while freshman Frank Menendez allowed one run in 2 1/3 innings of work.

Both Gators pitchers allowed plenty of base runners, but time and time again they worked out of trouble. O’Sullivan is proud of the way his young pitchers battled.

“I think we’ve gotten as much as we probably would’ve expected out of Jake [Clemente] and Frankie [Menendez]. Obviously we’ve pitched with a bunch of traffic on the bases today, but they made some big pitches when they needed to,” O’Sullivan said. “I think the at bat with [Zach] Ehrhard there with the bases loaded was huge to keep him in the yard. And Frankie threw some really good changeups.

“I think [Ehrhard is] sitting close to .500 versus lefties, but we’ve got to get some mileage out of [Menendez]. We’ve got Fisher Jameson down there, who we’ve used quite a bit and we’ve got [Luke] McNeillie down there, but that was a big inning for him to get out of it.”

Ehrhard, who has 24 doubles, 14 home runs and 56 RBIs, came to the plate with the bases loaded and one out in the fifth inning. He did hit a sac fly to bring a run in and cut the Florida lead to 3-2, but O’Sullivan was pleased with the fact that he didn’t do more.