Everything Kevin O'Sullivan said after the Florida Gators' 4-3 loss to LSU

OMAHA, Neb. — The brand of baseball in the SEC is power pitching and power hitting. All of that was on display Saturday night between the Florida Gators and LSU Tigers. Kevin O’Sullivan’s ballclub fell short in the first game of the College World Series final, losing 4-3 to LSU in extra innings.

The Gators will play Sunday afternoon with their backs against the wall, needing to win to keep its season alive.

O’Sullivan spoke to the media following the game, breaking down what went wrong and where his team must go from here.

Kevin O’Sullivan’s opening statement

Well, it was, obviously, a well-played game. We got off to a tough start on the mound. We ran into a lot of offensive counts. But Brandon was able to pitch his way out of it. Obviously, his pitch count got up there.

I thought Cade came in and did an outstanding job. Obviously, he made that one mistake on the 0-2 count, but other than that he pitched great. And I thought Brandon pitched great. It came down to one pitch.

Offensively, we struck out 20 times tonight. They only walked two. I just think our swings are a little bit big tonight.

And we’ve handled the moment really well. Tonight, offensively I think we kind of got caught up in it a little bit and that kind of resulted in the strikeouts.

But with that being said, we got Hurston going tomorrow, and we’ll do everything we can win tomorrow and force a Game 3. That simple.

On the offense

Well, I think it was a combination of things. We had a game plan coming in. And he threw good. I mean, it’s really that simple. But from our standpoint, when you look back, there were some swings with two strikes that were maybe a little bit too big, swings that we hadn’t taken in the past or in a while.

But I thought we took some fastballs on the outer half of the plate, early in the count, to get us behind the count. He threw just enough breaking balls to keep us off his fastball. And we chased a bunch of up fastballs and he pitched really good.

But in games like this it comes down to one at-bat, one pitch. They walked two guys in 11 innings. We walked eight. And it’s part of it. It wasn’t our best night, but we played 11 innings and lost by a pitch on a 1-0 count.

And we didn’t play our best baseball, but the message tomorrow is, you know, we’ve got nothing to lose at this point. We’re in the College World Series and playing in the Finals. We lost by a run. Everybody’s disappointed, but we can’t let this leak into tomorrow.

Gators pitching moving forward

(Cade Fisher) was throwing them all good. It’s one pitch. I mean, when you strike out five over three and a third, walk nobody. It’s one pitch an 0-2 count that no one feels worse than he does.

But it’s our job to make sure he’s focused tomorrow. That’s part of the game. Sometimes it comes down to one pitch. But I mean Cade knows what he’s doing. We wouldn’t be here right now without him. We’ll boost up his spirits tomorrow and get him ready to go.

On Brandon Sproat’s performance

The bottom line is he left and kept us close within one swing at bat. Certainly, I hoped he would have gone deeper in the game. But the other guys did pick him up.

When you lose games by one run or win games by one run, it comes down to one this or that. But in this situation, there was quite a few things that led us to this point right now.

So we’ve had a lot of good fortune and the ball that Wyatt hit, if it’s over his head or five more feet to the left to right, we’re in a different position. But it is what it is. We got outplayed tonight. It’s our job to make sure these guys are ready to go tomorrow.