Kevin O'Sullivan stresses Florida's need for depth

Florida skipper Kevin O’Sullivan recognizes depth played a big role in the Gators’ season that’s brought them to Omaha, Friday’s victory over Virginia was a microcosm of that.

O’Sullivan’s squad pulled out a nail-biting victory over the Cavaliers to get their first win at the 2023 Men’s College World Series, and the Gators manager waxed poetic about his team to the media afterwards. Performances from some unexpected places have propelled Florida, and O’Sullivan recognizes that.

“You have to have special performances from people you don’t expect. It happens all the time in any sport,” stated O’Sullivan. “But Dale had a good at-bat and played good defense. Colby, I don’t want to forget about him. He drove in the first run of the game, had a good two-strike approach. Line drive over shortstop’s head.

And like I said, Ty, if you’re going to have a chance to do something special at the end of the year, things like this happen. Now, we’ll enjoy it tonight, but we’re playing obviously a really good Oral Roberts team on Sunday night. But the goal is to try to win the first two games. Now we’re in position to hopefully do that. But you’re not always going to get the best performances from your best players, so other people have to pick them up. It just worked out the way it did tonight.”

Kevin O’Sullivan and the Gators’ depth has brought Florida this far, and he’s hoping it can end with a title in Omaha in 2023. Time will tell, but their journey continues against Oral Roberts on Sunday.

Kevin O’Sullivan details Florida’s ability to come back in games

Continuing, Kevin O’Sullivan also explained that the quick strike ability of the home run is such a key part of the team’s offense and ability to stick around in games.

“We had a chance to hit the ball out of the yard,” O’Sullivan said the 6-5 victory. “One swing of the bat, you can hit a two-run or a three-run homer, feel like you can get back. Not like we had to string together three, four, five hits in an inning to score. It was really important.”

Two-way star Jac Caglianone leads the nation in homers with 31 four-baggers but he isn’t the only player in the Gators lineup with big-time pop at the plate.

Potential No. 1 pick Wyatt Langford has hit 19 homers, shortstop Josh Rivera has 17 home runs and catcher BT Riopelle also has 17 homers.

In total, the team has 132 homers in 66 games this season, which is third-best in Division I. But that ability wasn’t able to come into play until later in Friday’s game because of the wind at Charles Schwab Field during the games.

In the end, Florida pulled off the come back later in the inning when Luke Heyman hit a sacrifice fly.

“I think the wind was blowing in seven, eight miles an hour,” O’Sullivan said. “All of a sudden…the flags, they weren’t moving, felt like, okay, if we can get a walk here and we can get back to the top of the order because every time we could flip the lineup over and get back to the top, we feel like we have a chance to score that inning. That’s how it worked out tonight.”

On3’s Peter Warren contributed to this article.