Kevin O'Sullivan breaks down Jac Caglianone's struggles on the mound in Game 3 loss

In game three of the College World Series Final, Florida head coach Kevin O’Sullivan turned to his two-way star, Jac Caglianone. Unfortunately for the Gators, Caglianone wouldn’t make it out of the second inning.

After the game, O’Sullivan broke down the struggles that Caglianone had on the mound.

“I don’t know,” O’Sullivan said. “His bullpen was really good before the game. I thought our team was in a really good place. I thought BP was good. And that was good. They were loose.”

In the bottom of the first inning, Florida spotted Caglianone two runs. Despite that, he fell apart in the second inning, giving up six runs and only getting one out. Momentum had completely swung LSU’s way in the game.

“Put two on the board the bottom half of the first. Wyatt, again, hits another home run. I thought the dugout was electric. And then all of a sudden, you know, we had four walks and I think two hit-by pitches in the first two and two-thirds innings. And then we had to go to the pen earlier than we wanted to,” O’Sullivan said.

“Honestly, I think after his first I thought he was going to be dialed in. Don’t really have an answer other than we lost control of the strike zone.”

O’Sullivan admitted that Florida consistently didn’t get enough out of the team’s starters, not just Caglianone, which hurt the team’s chances at a comeback.

“If you look at the last three games we played here, we may not have gotten as much out of our starters that we probably needed to, quite honestly,” O’Sullivan said. “We had to go to our pen in the fifth, in the third, and now today the second.”

Another problem that O’Sullivan said contributed to the loss was that LSU had seen a lot of Florida pitchers and knew what to expect from them while at the plate.

“When you start using the same pitchers in the multiple games in the same weekend, so to speak, a three-game series, you kind of get exposed a little bit. And I think we probably flirted with a little bit of fire with that,” O’Sullivan said.

“And knowing that today, if that did happen where Jac kind of lost control of the strike zone and we had to go to the pen early, that was probably not going to be in our best interests, quite honestly. So there was a lot of things that factor into it. But I just think we just didn’t command the ball as well as we should have or could have.”

Jac Caglianone reacted to breaking the single-season home run record

In the College World Series, Jac Caglianone reached 33 home runs on the season. That’s a new single-season record. However, he tried to avoid thinking about that leading into his Game 3 start.

“The record’s cool and all but the biggest thing on my mind is winning tomorrow,” Caglianone said. “You can’t — like Wyatt [Langford] said, you can’t take any of these runs into tomorrow. It’s a fresh ball game. And hopefully, our bullpen keeps doing what they’re doing, and I think we’ll be fine.”