Link Jarrett on Carson Dorsey: 'It was time for him to deliver'

Florida State coach Link Jarrett knew it was time for Carson Dorsey to deliver in a big spot. And boy did he in the opening game of the NCAA Regional against Stetson.

In the 7-2 win Friday, Dorsey threw a career high 8.2 innings and allowed just one earned run with seven strikeouts. Dorsey walked off with a standing ovation in front of the home crowd following 121 pitches on the mound.

Jarrett felt his lefty had the stuff to do it despite some recent rough outings.

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“Well, he’s a tough guy,” Jarrett said. “And we knew that and it was time for him to deliver. And we’ve seen him deliver when we needed it before. He’s pitched well against some really, really good teams, and probably had his best performance of the year today. He’s pitched against some tough, tough teams, and has answered for us and we thought it lined up. 

“We know our personnel better than we know anything about what’s going on in this and we thought this was the right maneuver, to let somebody that’s tough and ready to go and in some cases, maybe wanted to go out there and kind of flip the script for what happened the last couple of times out. And it was in his hands and he absolutely delivered the goods.”

Florida State is now 7-2 this year when Dorsey starts on the mound. 

“I mean, it means a lot that they still have trust in me after a couple bad outings,” Dorsey said. “But it’s also good for myself to know and I knew that I had to stuff to be able to do that.”

After a 1-2-3 first inning from Dorsey, Max Williams hit a lead-off home run in the bottom of the inning against former Seminole Dylan Jacobs, his 10th of the season and second lead-off homer. Daniel Cantu followed with a solo home run in the bottom of the second inning, his eighth of the year.

Stetson got on the board on the strength of three hits, but an RBI double ended with Jaime Ferrer throwing out Kyle Jones at the plate as the tying run. Ferrer hit an RBI single in the bottom of the inning to get the run back.

FSU added two more runs in the seventh inning, loading the bases with no outs before an RBI groundout from Cantu and a sacrifice fly from Lodise.

Dorsey powered through his previous high of 6.0 innings pitched, returning for the seventh and eighth innings to raucous cheers from the Howser faithful. Dorsey needed just six pitches to get out of the eighth inning and was pulled from the game only after a two-out single in the bottom of the ninth.

Florida state is back in action at 5:00 p.m. ET against UCF in the next game of the Regional.