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On To The Supers! Florida State bats come alive in 12-4 win over UCF

On3 imageby:Corey Clark•06/02/24•

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Max Williams celebrates his home run in Florida State's 12-4 win over UCF in the Tallahassee Regional finals. (Courtesy of FSU Sports Information)

A turnaround season for the ages has now officially turned into a super one.

The Florida State baseball team, thanks to its 12-4 win over UCF in the championship game of the Tallahassee Regional on Sunday night, will be hosting an NCAA Super Regional for the first time since 2017.

The Seminoles went 3-0 on the weekend to improve to 45-15 on the season. They are now just two wins away from a return trip to Omaha.

Their opponent for next weekend will either be No. 9 national seed Oklahoma or UConn.

While Sunday’s final score looks like it was a laugher, it was anything but for the first half of the game.

The Florida State offense, which has been one of the best in the country all season, had been shut down for the first four innings by the Knights. Going back to the fourth inning of their 5-2 win on Saturday night, the Seminoles had scored zero runs on just three hits in the previous nine innings against the UCF staff.

And Central Florida, thanks to a two-run homer in the top of the first inning, had a 2-0 lead on Florida State midway through Sunday’s Regional championship tilt.

Then came the bottom of the fifth inning. Which is when the bottom fell out for the Knights.

Moments after the “Animals of Section B” finished singing, “O Canada,” the rally started. And it didn’t finish until 13 Florida State batters came to the plate, two hit homers, three others got hits, four more walked and another reached on an error.

When the dust finally settled, the Animals had sung twice, and the Seminoles had put up a nine-spot on the stunned Knights.

It was the biggest inning of the year for the potent Florida State offense. And it started harmlessly enough with a grounder to second by Jaxson West. But when the throw was errant and got past the first baseman, West raced to second.

And the Seminoles made UCF pay for the miscue. Boy, did they make them pay.

After a Max Williams strikeout (his inning wasn’t over, however), Cam Smith drilled a 3-2 pitch over the screen in right-center to tie the game at 2-2. It was his second straight game with a homer against the Knights, and his 16th of the season overall.

James Tibbs then walked. Marco Dinges followed with a single to left, and then Jaime Ferrer ripped a two-run double down the left-field line.

All of the sudden, an FSU offense that had produced nothing in its last nine innings against the Knights’ pitching staff had come alive.

After a groundout and a walk, West came up again with the bases loaded and delivered a clutch two-out, two-strike, two-run single to center field.

Williams then came up again, this time with two runners on, and he scorched a three-run homer to dead center field. He knew it was gone off the bat. So did just about everyone else inside Dick Howser Stadium. It traveled 431 feet and had an exit velocity of 110 miles per hour.

By the time the inning was over, UCF had used four pitchers, Florida State had a 9-2 lead, and the Seminoles were 12 outs away from a spot in the Super Regionals.

Connor Hults, who took over for starter Conner Whitaker (4.2 innings pitched, two runs on three hits), got out of a bases-loaded jam in the top of the fifth and then allowed single runs in both the sixth and seventh innings.

The lefty reliever wasn’t dominant by any means, but he kept the Knights from having a big inning after FSU grabbed the lead. And the Seminoles’ offense got those runs right back in the bottom of the seventh with three runs on just one hit.

Lodise scored on a wild pitch, Dinges drove in another run with an infield RBI single, and then another run scored on a catcher’s interference with the bases loaded.

*Talk about this story with other die-hard Florida State baseball fans in the FSU Baseball Forum*

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