Through eight innings, it looked like the No. 9 Gators were going to coast to a stress-free win in their SEC opener at Alabama on Friday night.
They led 6-1, and, after receiving a dominant eight-inning start from Hunter Barco, they handed the ball to Nick Ficarrotta, one of their most trusted relievers. This game felt over at that point.
Then UF’s pitching and defense melted down and almost gave the game away. The Crimson Tide scored three runs off of Ficarrotta, one of them unearned, and put the potential winning run on base with one out against Blake Purnell.
At that point, this game started to feel eerily similar to some of the late-game collapses that the Gators suffered in 2021. Gators fans were probably anticipating something disastrous happening.
This time, though, there would be no devastating loss. Purnell induced a 6-4-3 double play to secure the Gators’ 6-4 win and register his first career save.
“We just didn’t pitch like we had been the entire year,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “I know it’s on the road, but that makes no difference. We left a lot of runs on the board. We made a baserunning mistake on a ball hit to the outfield. We had a leadoff double with Colby [Halter] there in the eighth, and we have two, three and four coming up, and we go down looking twice [against] a left-hander who’s throwing 83-84.
“The value of a run has got to be understood. The score honestly should’ve been 9-1 going into the ninth.”
All nine Gators recorded a hit, led by BT Riopelle’s 3-for-5 showing and Josh Rivera’s 2-for-5 effort. Riopelle and Jud Fabian each clubbed home runs.
Entering Friday, the Gators (14-4, 1-0 SEC) had only scored two runs in the second inning all season, which was their fewest in any inning by a margin of nine runs.
So, naturally, they exploded for four runs in the second to take a commanding lead. Kendrick Calilao and Rivera hit back-to-back singles through the left side of the infield off of Garrett McMillan to lead off the frame. Kris Armstrong laid down a sacrifice bunt to move them both into scoring position.
Up stepped freshman Deric Fabian for his first SEC plate appearance. He lined a first-pitch slider into right-center field to score a pair of runs.
Two batters later, his brother, Jud, stroked a home run that just cleared the right-center field wall to make it 4-0.
Riopelle led off the next inning with a no-doubter over the wall in right to extend the lead out to five runs.
That would be the only scoring until the seventh. With a runner on third and two outs, Rivera hit a slow roller toward second off of reliever Brock Guffey. Second baseman Bryce Eblin charged the ball but didn’t field it cleanly, which allowed Rivera to be safe at first and the runner to score to make it 6-0.
Meanwhile, Barco continued his strong early season play by striking out 10 batters and giving up just four hits in his career-high eight innings. He didn’t allow a runner to make it past first base until Andrew Pinckney crushed a homer to straightaway center to lead off the eighth and get Alabama (12-7, 0-1) on the board.
“He was good, and he did a really nice job of getting the leadoff hitters – the leadoff hitter of the game got on, but, other than that, he controlled the inning,” O’Sullivan said.
The nightmarish ninth inning began when Zane Denton lined Ficarrotta’s first offering into center field for a single. Ficarrotta hit Tommy Seidl with a pitch to put two runners on but temporarily settled down to get Drew Williamson to pop out to short. Will Hodo came off the bench and pulled a poorly located 2-2 pitch into right field to load the bases with one out.
On Ficarrotta’s next pitch, Owen Diodati hit a sharp ground ball to the right side. Halter, the second baseman, laid out for it and stopped the ball from going to the outfield. However, he had no chance to throw out Diodati at first, which allowed one run to score easily. Then Halter made the situation worse by fumbling the ball on the exchange, which prompted Seidl to round third and head for the plate.
Once again, Halter had no chance to get Seidl out. He gunned the ball toward the plate anyway, and it sailed well over Riopelle’s head. The crazy play cut the lead to 6-3 and put two more runners into scoring position with still only one out.
O’Sullivan called on Purnell to put out the fire. Instead, he hit Pinckney with a 2-2 pitch to load the bases and put the potential tying run on base.
Then Purnell settled down and did what he was supposed to do. He got Eblin to hit a routine groundball to third base. All Deric Fabian had to do was either step on third base or make the throw to first to get the second out. Instead, he tried to go for the double play. His throw to second was late, and Halter’s return throw to first was also not in time. That made it 6-4 and put the Gators in a dire situation.
Two pitches later, Purnell got Jim Jarvis to ground into the double play to end the game and allow Gator Nation to take a collective exhale.
O’Sullivan certainly wasn’t pleased with the way that they ended the game, but he also knows that momentum doesn’t necessarily carry over into the next game. If they put up three runs in the top of the first on Saturday or get six or seven really good innings out of Brandon Sproat, it will be as if the ninth-inning meltdown never happened.
“They have momentum, but we have momentum, too,” O’Sullivan said. “We won a ballgame on the road in the first SEC road game. It wasn’t drawn up in the ninth like we wanted, but, at the end of the day, Blake was put in a really tough spot and had to make a pitch, and he did.”