Baton Rouge, La. — The last thing a baseball team struggling to score runs and return to winning form needs to run into is a hot pitcher.
Unfortunately for No. 9-ranked Florida, that’s exactly what happened on Saturday night in front of a record crowd of 10,923 fans at Alex Box Stadium.
No. 3-ranked LSU shut out the Gators 4-0 behind a dominant pitching performance from senior Louis Coleman. With Senior Day scheduled for Sunday, Coleman hoped his last appearance at home during the regular season would be memorable.
“I wanted to go out say ‘thank you’ to the fans,” Coleman said. “I had to make sure that when I walk out there for senior day tomorrow that I don’t get any boos.”
Coleman (10-2), the reigning SEC pitcher of the week, notched his second consecutive dominant performance by holding the Gators to four hits, all two-out singles, and one walk while striking out seven batters in eight innings. Coleman has not allowed a run in his last 17 innings, dating back to April 25 against Auburn.
“I just wanted to stay down in the zone really,” Coleman said. “I wanted to try to get ahead early with the fastball early and try some sink. Later in the game I wanted to keep the same thing going. It’s a lot easier to try to throw the sinker and try to get some ground balls.”
LSU (38-13, 18-8 SEC) ended a three-series losing streak to Florida (34-17, 16-10) with the victory.
The highlight of the evening for Florida was a triple play that was turned in the second inning. LSU’s Mikie Mahtook lined out to Florida shortstop Mike Mooney, who threw to second baseman Josh Adams to catch Micah Gibbs off of the base. Adams threw to first base to retire Austin Nola, who was also running on the play.
Mahtook, an All-State quarterback in high school, got revenge for the triple play in the next inning. Florida put two runners on base with two outs in the third inning on hits by Avery Barnes and Mooney, but the rally ended when the LSU center fielder made an outstanding running catch on a line drive by Preston Tucker in the right field gap.
An inning after lining into a double play, Mahtook robbed Florida sophomore Jonathan Pigott of a double by making another running catch on a line drive.
“(Mahtook) is a heck of a center fielder,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “I guess we need to go recruit quarterbacks or go get (Tim) Tebow to come play baseball.”
“If Tucker hits that ball, two runs would score there (in the third),” O’Sullivan said. “Jonathan Pigott laces the ball in the gap to lead off the (fifth) inning, that’s probably another run (we would have scored) as the inning unfolds.”
Entering the game, Florida had only been shut out once this season, a 3-0 loss at UNF on March 24. Saturday’s loss was the first time UF has been shut out in SEC play since a 2-0 loss to Alabama on May 7, 2004.
“It’s frustrating, really frustrating,” O’Sullivan said. “I thought we had some good at bats tonight against a really good pitcher. It’s a game of inches. A couple more inches either way, we probably have three runs and who knows what happens. That’s not the way it went tonight. You just have to tip your hat to Coleman. He did exactly what he needed to do tonight, he didn’t crack and he kept pounding the zone. Mahtook is an outstanding center fielder and made two outstanding plays.”
O’Sullivan credited the LSU pitcher, but said his team needs to find a way to score runs.
“This is one of those games,” O’Sullivan said. “They have a horse on the mound, arguably their No. 1 pitcher. They probably two No. 1 (pitchers) between (Anthony) Ranaudo and Coleman.”
“Hopefully we’ll get after it tomorrow,” O’Sullivan said. “We still have a chance to get a win out of here. We need to. We need to break this losing streak, that’s three in a row now. We have to do the best job we can now. We’ve got to motivate our players, as tough as these first two games were, we have to put them behind us and go out and play tomorrow.”
Mooney accounted for one of Florida’s four base hits off of Coleman.
“His fastball, when he wanted to, he could run it away to lefties and in to righties with good sink on the ball,” Mooney said. “He came in on me a few of times and mixed it up. His slider is pretty tight. Normally, as a switch hitter, I don’t see a lot of breaking balls, but he went with slider instead of changeup. He’s just a good pitcher.”
Coleman was a 14th-round selection of the Washington Nationals in the 2008 MLB draft, but elected to return to LSU for his senior year in order to win a College World Series championship.
“Hopefully we hit tomorrow’s guy a little bit,” Mooney said. “We came here wanting to win the series. But now we have to come away with one. We’re not in any way down or doubting ourselves. We’re playing a good team. We know every game is going to be a battle, we just have to come out and win tomorrow.”
The Gators maintained a two-game lead in the Southeastern Conference East division despite the loss because second-place Georgia lost for the second-consecutive night against Vanderbilt. Florida is still mathematically alive to win the SEC, something the players are aware of if they can avoid a loss on Sunday.
“We can’t get swept here,” Mooney said. “That gives LSU all kinds of leverage in the conference. We have to come out and focus and go home with one (win), then we have Kentucky next weekend to deal with.”
The Gators turned two double plays and the triple play in the game, a sign that the defensive woes from earlier in the season are in the past.
“Our defense lately has been playing a lot better, but earlier in the season it was really bad,” Mooney said. “Lately, we’ve been doing alright. Yesterday, it hurt us with the two runs early. The defense is there, it’s going to keep us in games, we just have to score.”
Florida starting pitcher Anthony DeSclafani (5-2) worked four innings, allowing seven hits and three earned runs. LSU junior Ryan Schimpf opened the scoring with a solo home run into the left-field bleachers during the first inning. Junior Blake Dean followed with a double to left center, moved to third on a groundout by sophomore DJ LeMahieu and scored on a wild pitch.
“The pitchers did well,” Mooney said. “It’s a good-hitting LSU team and we held them to four runs, one of them was unearned. DeSclafani has been lights-out the past couple of times out. He came out and gave up a couple early, but settled down. Tony (Davis) came in and shut the door. Jeff (Barfield) came in and got some outs, the unearned run was the only blemish on him. The pitchers are fresh. We didn’t use many in the midweek game or this weekend. They will be ready for tomorrow as long as we put some runs up, we’ve only put up one so far, we have to help out our pitchers.”
Despite the offensive struggled, O’Sullivan repeated what he said about pitching from behind in the count after Friday’s loss.
“What’s frustrating is five of the eight leadoff guys got on tonight,” O’Sullivan said. “Anthony was throwing about fifty percent on first-pitch strikes. We battled from behind, we made pitches when we needed to, but that score could have been a lot worse than 4-0. On a positive note, we made some pitches, but you have to pitch from ahead and get leadoff hitters. When you put leadoff hitters on in five of the eight innings, you’re just asking for trouble.”
O’Sullivan stressed the importance of playing well in all three phases of the game in order to win in a hostile environment.
“We need to get something going offensively, we need to pitch well and we need to continue to play good defense,” O’Sullivan said. “The crowd will be excited. This was a big weekend coming into this series, so I don’t expect anything different from the crowd tomorrow.”
Davis pitched three shutout innings for the Gators, allowing only two hits and a walk, to quiet the powerful LSU lineup.
“I just wanted to keep them from scoring runs,” Davis. “That way we could try to put some on the board and come back.”
“With (Coleman) throwing like that, he’s giving them momentum,” Davis said. “We’re trying to stabilize that and swing the momentum our way.”
Davis said the Gators will not dwell on the loss overnight and will be ready to play on Sunday.
“We just have to try to come out tomorrow and get a big win,” Davis said. “Everybody’s mad, but as soon as we get back to the hotel and wake up tomorrow, we’re going to put that behind us and still come away with the win. That’s what’s important in the SEC.”
Davis lowered his ERA to 2.67 in what was his 24th appearance of the season.
“I’m just trying to do whatever I can to help the team win,” Davis said. “I know I’ve had some different roles, but I’m just trying to come in and throw strikes. I gotta give a lot of credit to Sully for straightening my game out mentally and physically and everything. I have to give him a lot of credit.”
The Gators and Tigers will complete the three-game series tomorrow at 1 p.m., live on Cox Sports. LSU will be sending sophomore righty Austin Ross (5-5, 4.88 ERA) to the mound against either Nick Maronde (2-1 4.00) or Alex Panteliodis (4-5, 4.15).