After losing to Mississippi State in heartbreaking fashion Saturday, Florida knew it was in for another dogfight with its season on the line Sunday.
When the Bulldogs (38-25) scored three runs in the top of the seventh inning to take a 6-4 lead, it looked like the season for the Gators (50-17) was all but over – the momentum was gone.
But junior right fielder Preston Tucker changed the game with one swing, sending a three-run bomb over the center field wall in the bottom of the seventh to put Florida up 7-6.
“Everyone was kind of questioning whether or not we could come back,” Tucker said. “I got a changeup I could hit and put a good swing on it … I think it really changed the momentum and we carried it on to the next inning.”
Florida would go on to win 8-6, clinching a return trip to Omaha for the College World Series in back-to-back years for the first time in school history.
Finally, a season-long goal had been reached.
While the 3,812 fans erupted as junior right-handed pitcher Tommy Toledo (W 6-3, 3.41 ERA) threw a 2-2 pitch to Saturday’s hero Nick Vickerson for a fly ball to end the game and seal the Gainesville Super Regional, a handful of Gators were already thinking about the next step.
Now that the Gators are in Omaha, they want to make a run.
“We knew it was going to be tough, we knew it was going to be a battle every day, but we knew that wasn’t the final goal,” Tucker said, minutes after the team dogpiled on the infield following the final out. “We’re going to enjoy it today, but we’re not going to be celebrating until we win it (all).”
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After beating Miami in a thrilling 4-3 game that lasted 10 innings to win the 2010 Gainesville Super Regional over their heated in-state rivals, Florida was headed to Omaha for the first time since 2005.
Kevin O’Sullivan had helped take the program to the top level of college baseball in just his third year as head coach.
Florida’s players were excited and eager to play in their first College World Series.
But they weren’t ready.
The Gators were shelled in their first game by UCLA, as the Bruins destroyed then-sophomore lefty Alex Panteliodis on their way to an 11-3 win.
Florida fell to the loser’s bracket, where in-state rival Florida State waited for them in an elimination game.
After ending Miami’s season just a week and a half earlier, Florida saw its season shatter as the Seminoles upended the Gators 8-5.
“I think when we got to Omaha last year we were kind of overwhelmed,” Tucker said. “No one on the team had been there, so I think we were excited and everyone wanted to win, but we were a little young and inexperienced and weren’t ready for it.”
And while the team that celebrated on the field just hours ago is still young, it’s come a long way since last year.
This Florida team is ready to go war when it steps off the plane in Nebraska.
Seasoned by experience and hardened by heartbreak, the Gators want to make sure this season doesn’t end like the last.
After rebounding from a heartbreaking loss to Mississippi State on Saturday and bouncing back to beat the Bulldogs in a come-from-behind thriller Sunday, Florida knows it can expect more nail-biters in the next few weeks.
“It’s going to happen in Omaha,” Tucker said. “We know there’s not going to be any gimmes, we know that every team is going to compete down to their last out. We know we can be in this situation again, so we just take what we’ve learned from it and hopefully repeat it.”
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It’s not just Florida’s team that has grown and developed over the course of the past year.
The Gators’ coach has, too.
After Vickerson blasted a two-run shot to beat Florida in the bottom of the ninth inning on Saturday, forcing a third game in the NCAA Super Regional, O’Sullivan was distraught.
His team had been right on the verge of clinching a spot in Omaha – literally a few pitches from sealing the deal and making it official.
With Vickerson’s swing, suddenly all the momentum in the series had swung Mississippi State’s way.
As calm and collected as he’s been throughout the season, O’Sullivan was rattled.
That’s when Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan, with two national championships and a wealth of experience under his belt, stepped in to help.
Donovan reached out to O’Sullivan to give him some advice, telling him to get hold of himself and be the leader his team needed.
“For lack of a better term, I had my head in my rear end last night,” O’Sullivan said. “I needed to pick myself up, because the players are going to look to me.”
Not sure what to do, O’Sullivan heeded Donovan’s advice.
“We never meet as a team after a loss,” he said. “Billy thought it would be a good idea to get the team together last night just to see my face for 10 minutes. That’s what we did. It doesn’t work all the time. You’re rolling the dice because you’re doing something that you don’t normally do all year. I took his advice, and I met with the team last night at 7:30 for 10 minutes – short and sweet. I think it helped them, just moreso to know that yesterday is gone, it’s over with and we’ve got to move forward.”
And, just like his team has done all year long, O’Sullivan met the challenge when the pressure and expectations were monstrous.
He stepped to the plate and hit one out of the park, guiding his team to Omaha, where it will have a chance to win the program’s first national title.
For O’Sullivan, now a fourth-year head coach, the past year – and the series with Mississippi State – has been just as much of a learning experience for him as it has been for his team.
“Going back to last night, I probably learned more about coaching in the last 24 hours than I have in the last four years,” he said. “It took a lot of restraint, it took a lot of thinking. I had to think through the words, I had to try to do the best job I could. Everything was lined up for this team to lose today.”
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While last year’s team looked shell-shocked in Omaha, there was a different feel about the Florida team that stared down a 6-4 deficit in the seventh inning Sunday and didn’t flinch.
The Gators had been there before.
“When we played Vanderbilt at Vanderbilt, things didn’t really go our way,” Tucker said. “But we had a couple big swings late, and it kind of gave us confidence to know that we really play well late in the game.”
That’s one of the biggest things that’s changed about Florida this year. With leaders on the team like Tucker and sophomore catcher Mike Zunino, the Gators are much better equipped to come from behind.
Florida’s players described Mississippi State as a “scrappy” team before this weekend’s action began, but the same thing could be said of the Gators.
“Obviously we’re going to win some ball games and lose some ball games, but we’re going to battle through it like we did this weekend,” Tucker said. “I think coming from behind today – not only today but in Regionals and in the SEC Championship – shows a lot about our team.
“That’s one thing that I think we didn’t have last year that we’re starting to get the feel of is scoring runs late in ball games and coming up in the clutch.”
Come up in the clutch Florida did.
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Energized by O’Sullivan’s impassioned speech to the team, Florida came out firing on all cylinders in the early going against Mississippi State.
“To lose like that on your home field, and just be left on the field, you start to feel down, you almost feel like you lost the series right there,” Zunino said. “Coach O’Sullivan did a great job getting us together and refocused. I thought the whole team was refocused.”
It showed right from the start Sunday.
Zunino launched a two-out solo home run to left-center field to give Florida a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning.
In the bottom of the second, junior left fielder Tyler Thompson singled to left with one out and junior designated hitter Daniel Pigott and redshirt sophomore Vickash Ramjit followed him with back-to-back homers to extend the lead to 4-0.
Meanwhile, Panteliodis cruised through the first three innings, sitting down nine of 10 batters on just 24 pitches.
But Mississippi State answered the call in the top of the fourth inning, just like they did Saturday, clawing their way back in the game thanks to Vickerson.
“We knew that they weren’t going to lay down at all,” Zunino said. “We knew it was going to be a fight.”
In the top of the fourth, Vickerson launched a three-run home run after the Bulldogs banged out back-to-back singles off Panteliodis, cutting the lead to 4-3.
The Florida bats went quiet in the middle innings after Mississippi State went to the bullpen, as the Gators managed just three hits from the third to the sixth innings.
The Bulldogs capitalized on a huge momentum swing in the top of the seventh, after Florida reliever Nick Maronde gave up a two-out double.
O’Sullivan decided to put Toledo in the game to work out of the jam, but it backfired when he gave up two walks and two singles to allow the Bulldogs to score three runs and take a 6-4 lead.
Florida picked itself up off the mat and threw the knockout punch right away in the bottom of the seventh.
After back-to-back walks to open the inning, Mississippi State brought in closer Caleb Reed, who was one of the stars in Saturday’s win over Florida.
Zunino advanced the runners to second and third with a sacrifice bunt, setting up Tucker’s go-ahead blast to center field.
“He’s an extremely good pitcher, great competitor,” Zunino said. “We knew we were going to see him again sometime today. Tucker was able to get a pitch he could handle and put a good swing on it.”
Pigott added a crucial run in the bottom of the eighth on his second solo home run of the day, a towering leadoff shot over the center field wall.
Toledo came in and slammed the door shut in the top of the ninth, sealing a trip to Omaha and setting off a raucous celebration.
“It’s unbelievable,” Toledo said. “To see my teammates run out there like that, there’s no better feeling than just to go back to Omaha. That was our goal, and we worked together and played a great game today.”
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Florida entered the season with lofty expectations and a ton of pressure. That’s part of what made Sunday’s win over Mississippi State so sweet.
The Gators have weathered the storm.
Now they can write “College World Series 2011” on the schedule in ink, with their trip officially booked.
When expectations are so high, they’re often hard to meet. But Florida is right on schedule. They’re right where they want to be after withstanding the pressure perfectly.
“I think we’ve kind of embraced the target on our backs,” Tucker said. “We know that we have the tools to win a lot of ball games. We’ve got a real deep pen, we’ve got a lineup that can hit up and down and our starting pitching is some of the best.”
And, while Tucker said he’s already focused on the next task at hand, O’Sullivan is making sure to savor the moment.
That’s something he thinks he didn’t do last season, and it’s a mistake he won’t make again.
“Last year, going for the first time as a head coach, it’s kind of a whirlwind,” he said. “You don’t really take a step back and take a breather and really appreciate what your team has accomplished.”
With the target squarely on Florida’s back all season long, what Florida has done – winning a regular-season SEC title, an SEC Tournament title and advancing to Omaha – is thoroughly impressive.
One year the wiser, O’Sullivan assured everyone after Sunday’s win that isn’t lost on him.
“As we were going through the season this year and as we were going through the postseason, it becomes obvious that it’s very, very difficult to get to Omaha,” he said. “No team is going to go quietly in this tournament … You take a step back and you take a breather and just enjoy the moment a little bit more.”
For Florida, this trip is about proving this team isn’t the same one as the one that was the first to exit the College World Series last year.
“We were sort of content with just going last year,” Zunino said. “It was such a big step, at least for me, knowing that we could get there and being young.”
Florida’s players have said it all year long: Getting to Omaha isn’t the goal.
Winning in Omaha is.
“This year we definitely know that we have business to take care of,” Zunino said. “We can’t be satisfied with just making it here. We’re hoping to make a run for it.”