Florida baseball walks off Kentucky in dramatic series opener

Posted on by GoalVerseNews

The Florida Gators pulled off a miraculous comeback Friday night to take the series opener against the Kentucky Wildcats, 7-6.

Kyle Jones delivered the final blow with a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth, but there were plenty of other heroes on offense. The Gators trailed 6-1 going into the bottom of the eighth, but a five-spot in the penultimate frame shifted the momentum. The home fans were rewarded on a night that started three hours late due to rain and carried into the early hours of the next morning.

“I was trying to simplify,” Jones said in a post-game interview on the field. “I was getting beat earlier in the night. Just trying to get something out front and try to win that for the team… I feel like that shows a lot about the team and who we are. Obviously, with the rain delay, we could’ve come out flat, but we have life and got it done.”

Lawson headlines 8th-inning heroics for Florida

Coming into the eighth inning, Florida was 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position. That all changed with Lawson at the plate and the bases loaded. Lawson had been Florida’s best hitter in the first half of the season, but he’s been off his game for nearly a month. Gator Nation has been waiting for him to find his rhythm again, and this might be the turning point.

Lawson lined one into the left field corner to clear the bases, along with some help from an error by the defense. It ended up a double with Lawson moving to third on the error, which proved critical just moments later. N Adcock lost his handle on a pitch, and Lawson came across home plate standing up. Tie ball game.

Of course, none of this would have happened had Cade Kurland not reached on a wild pitch third strike with two outs. Kurland was also responsible for the only Florida run through the first seven innings. He homered in the bottom of the third after Kentucky took an early lead.

Karson Bowen also gets some recognition for driving in the first run of the inning, with a groundout to shortstop and Caden McDonald on third base. Bowen doubled in the ninth as well, ultimately scoring the winning run.

Aidan King is human after all

Aidan King allowed a season-high five earned runs over 6 1/3 innings. He wasn’t off his game, but Kentucky got to him in the third and fourth innings for three of those runs. Timely two-out doubles plated runs in each frame, but King faced the minimum in four innings.

The last two batters King faced barreled it, so Kevin O’Sullivan decided to pull his ace at 93 pitches in the seventh. Had Florida been in the lead, O’Sullivan likely would have let King stay out there. He’s had no problem doing so over the past couple of weeks. Burning out your best arm while down three isn’t wise, so it was the right call given the situation.

What wasn’t a good call was bringing in Schuyler Sandford for his first SEC appearance. Three more base hits snuck through the left side and made it a 6-1 game. At least Sandford was better in the eighth, working around a one-out single.

After the game was tied back up, Sully turned to his closer, Joshua Whritenour, in the ninth. Whritenour faced four batters and worked around a two-out hit batter with relative ease.

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This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Florida baseball completes comeback vs Kentucky with walkoff

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