Kevin O'Sullivan shares emotions of making it back to College World Series final

With a win over TCU, Kevin O’Sullivan and the Florida Gators advanced to the final of the College World Series for the third time since O’Sullivan started coaching at Florida.

Ahead of the final, O’Sullivan shared his thoughts and emotions on making it back to the final.

“Well, you learn a lot from all of them,” Kevin O’Sullivan said. “2011, I think we played South Carolina, had a bases loaded nobody out in the ninth and didn’t score. It seems just like yesterday.”

Kevin O’Sullivan took over as the head coach of the Gators in 2008, immediately going to the NCAA Regional. By 2011, he took Florida to the College World Series final against South Carolina, losing. In 2017, the Gators made the final and won it all.

“And in ’17, we lost this game and had to come back with Alex Faedo as you remember in the second game to get to the final series, and then we got a great performance by Brady Singer and obviously Tyler Dyson came up huge for us in the second game, but it’s not easy to get to this point,” O’Sullivan said.

“It’s just not. I know I’ve overstated it, say it over and over, but we just played three one-run games and they’re all nail-biters down to the end. So, I mean, there’s a lot of things that have to go right.”

In many ways, Kevin O’Sullivan sees similarities between this year’s team and the 2017 team.

“This team is different than the ’17 team in a lot of ways, but in the most important ways for me are very similar. Starting pitching, the ’17 team was outstanding. I feel like our starting pitcher has pitched the best they have all year. We had Michael Byrne at the end and we have Brandon Neely at the end. I don’t think we made an error in ’17, out here in five or six games where we played, and we’re playing really good defense right now. Knock on wood,” O’Sullivan said.

“There are some similarities, but like I said, just excited for the guys, our staff, everybody that’s involved. Like I said, it takes a whole group of people to get to this point, not just the players or coaches. There’s a lot of people behind the scenes from people on our staff to the managers, you know, that stay up and clean the uniforms until two o’clock in the morning. So, it’s a really good feeling for how those guys experience this.”

Florida is waiting to find out who their opponent in the final is going to be. It comes down to the winner of the LSU–Wake Forest game on Thursday night.

Kevin O’Sullivan praised the Florida bullpen

One key reason for Florida’s success has been the team’s bullpen success. Kevin O’Sullivan knows this and praised the unit for their efforts in Omaha.

“I don’t know if you could say not overly stressed. We were in a one-run game. But it takes a collective group to get to this point. Just like Michael [Robertson] hasn’t played a lot, then he makes the great catch in center field. Ty [Evans] has really gotten hot for us down the stretch here. Colby Halter was out of line for some time, and now he’s back in the line-up. So it really does take the collective group,” O’Sullivan said.

“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. [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 Neely at the back end is huge. Kind of like in 17, we had the same situation when we had Michael Byrne. 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.”