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Florida State Seminoles stay perfect beating Florida Gators at home

Untitled designby:Nick de la Torre•03/12/24•

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The biggest crowd ever for a game between Florida and Florida State at Condron Family Ballpark watched, essentially, the Gators play the same game they have nearly 16 times this season. Florida’s pitching staff struggled to find the strike zone and allowed 12 runs aided by nine walks in a 12-8 loss to the undefeated Seminoles.

“Let’s just call it what it is. I mean it was a clean first, then Neely you know, had a clean ninth. Other than that there is a lot of mess in between,” Kevin O’Sullivan said after the game. “It’s no secret, we had three innings again with three runs and then another one in the eighth with two runs and we just can’t stop the bleeding when it seems to happen, and it wasn’t even the top four hitters in the lineup that hurt us. I know [James Tibbs III] had the three-run homer, but you know it was the bottom three. They got on base I think ten times. Once again we gave them ten free passes or so.”

The Gators sent freshman Alex Philpott to the mound and the right-hander put up a zero in the first frame on just 13 pitches. Philpott surrender a one-out infield single and then walked the next two batters to load the bases. Florida State would score three runs in the second inning, chasing the freshman from the game after just 1.2 innings pitched.

The Noles would four more runs over the next two innings before the Gators’ bats got going. On a 2-1 offering with the bases loaded, senior Dale Thomas drove a sacrifice fly to left-center to bring in Colby Shelton. Later in the inning, sophomore Cade Kurland launched a grand slam home run to left field to bring the Gators within two, 7-5.

The bullpen couldn’t hold the lead, a theme of the early season. Florida State posted three more runs in the sixth and two in the eighth on their way to a 15th win on the season.

Notes

  • Tuesday night’s official attendance was 8,142, marking the fifth-largest crowd in program history and the biggest ever against Florida State.
  • In the ninth inning, Evans hit Florida’s first inside-the-park home run since Brian Ogle accomplished the feat vs. Purdue on March 12, 1997.
  • Kurland hit his third-career grand slam for Florida’s first of the season in the fourth inning.
  • Blake Purnell pitched a scoreless seventh inning.
  • Heyman and Shelton moved their on-base streaks to 16-straight contests.
  • Florida fell to 127-132-1 all-time against Florida State, including 66-50 at home
    • The Gators are now 35-20 vs. FSU under head coach Kevin O’Sullivan (18-4 at home), having won 22 of the last 27 meetings.
    • Florida had its four-game winning streak in the series snapped.
  • Florida dropped to 43-11 at home since the start of 2023.
  • Dating back to last season, Florida is 32-9 in regular season non-conference games and has won 23 of its last 29 such contests.

Quotes

On his thoughts on the game…
“We got beat in every phase. We got beat on the mound. Their hitters did a nice job, they ran the bases aggressively. They played clean defense. We got beat, really that simple.”

On the pitching…
“Let’s just call it what it is. I mean it was a clean first, then Neely you know, had a clean ninth. Other than that there is a lot of mess in between. It’s no secret, we had three innings again with three runs and then another one in the eighth with two runs and we just can’t stop the bleeding when it seems to happen, and it wasn’t even the top four hitters in the lineup that hurt us. I know [James Tibbs III] had the three-run homer, but you know it was the bottom three. They got on base I think ten times. Once again we gave them ten free passes or so. I mean we kind of scripted it before the game. We sat right in here and said okay, this is what we expect Alex (Philpott) to do and three innings max, and we get an inning and two-thirds and then we tried to follow a freshman with an older guy to kind of stop the bleeding. We brought the two lefties in, they went left, right, left at the bottom and turned the lineup back over to another left-hander. So we tried to set up everything perfectly for them. We tried to use, you know tried to be careful about who we brought in, in the middle of an inning. So it was all scripted, but obviously it didn’t go the way we wanted it to.”

On his message to the team…
“Not much right now. I’m going to sleep on it and we will practice tomorrow and we will go through it. Tonight is not the night to go through it. There are so many things that I’ve got written down that continue to happen, and you know the bottom line is we put ourselves in really poor situations and a lot of it is self-inflicted. We’re going to have to fix it, or you know somehow figure it out. But at some point, the players themselves are going to have take some sort of accountability with what’s going on, but it’s disappointing, honestly.”

What’s up next for the Florida Gators?

No. 4 Texas A&M comes to Gainesville for a three-game series against the Gators for SEC Opening Weekend (Friday, March 15 – Sunday, March 17). All three matchups will stream on SEC Network+. The Aggies beat Sam Houston State on Tuesday night to remain undefeated. The Aggies and Seminoles are the only two remaining undefeated teams in the country.

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