Jac Caglianone 'felt good' on mound against TCU

Florida baseball star Jac Caglianone took the mound in the Gators’ win over TCU on Wednesday which advanced them to the championship series of the NCAA Tournament. Although he wasn’t too pleased with his outing vs. the Horned Frogs, his final stat line still came out pretty good: 4.1 innings pitched, just one earned run given up and four strikeouts vs. three hits for the day. Not bad, but not dominant, as Caglianone strives for.

After the game, he said he felt good on the mound but just didn’t have an A+ performance. “I felt good out there, honestly,” he admitted in the postgame. “I obviously didn’t have my best stuff today, but like Coach said, bend but don’t break.”

Caglianone went on to praise the overall team defense in the victory. He highlighted the terrific catch in center field to end the game as well as some other nice fielding moments that helped him and the pitching staff bring home the win.

“Obviously the double play, that was huge. Mikey (Robertson’s) catch was awesome. That ball off the bat, I’m sure everybody thought it had a chance to go out. And seeing him not be afraid of the wall was huge. And again saw Colby (Halter), Josh (Rivera) and Cade (Kurland) doing what they do best. Making it quick and making it easy helping me out in tough spots. That’s the way this team has played — everybody has each other’s backs. And that’s how we have gotten to this point.”

The Florida head coach, Kevin O’Sullivan, also had high praise for the defensive unit and focused his comments on the bullpen, which again stepped up against TCU when Caglianone only went half the game.

“We knew our pitching was a work in progress from when the season started, especially the bullpen side of things. But I think that just shows you kind of where we’re at with our bullpen,” O’Sullivan said of the pitching performance vs. TCU

“(Ryan) Slater comes in and gets five outs where the other night he didn’t get the results he wanted, but he’s able to move on. And to have something like (Brandon) Neely at the back end is huge. Kind of like in 17, we had the same situation when we had Michael Burn. So, it takes a collective group, and it’s not easy to get the World Series, number one. But number two, to be in a position to play for the national championship.”

Gators just a couple wins away from the national title, and they’ll get Jac Caglianone back on the mound for at least one of them.