Canes swept away by Florida Gators

The No. 2 Florida Gators (6-1) took the series finale 6-2 over the No. 17 Miami Hurricanes (2-4) to sweep the series Sunday.

It was the same formula used to win the first two games of the year, stellar starting pitching, and some timely hitting.

Jackson Kowar(2-0, 1.59 ERA) went 5.2 innings scattering 4 hits, and 3 walks giving up only one run. He struck out 7 on 89 pitches.

“I started off pretty well, and I had a couple of rough innings there in the middle, but I was kinda able to bear down and limit the damage and keep us in the game,” said starter Jackson Kowar on his outing.

The bats did finally wake up a little bit for the Gators, as they scored 6 runs, with 5 different players driving those runs in.

“I thought today was our best day offensive day obviously,” said head coach Kevin O’Sullivan, “seven of our nine starters got hits…I thought Jackson did a really nice job.”

The Hurricanes offense was powered by one bat, as two solo home runs by Romy Gonzalez both off Jackson Kowar were the only runs the Canes managed all weekend.

After the his first solo shot in the top of the 4th, the Gators found themselves trailing for the only frame of the weekend as they opened up the scoring coming back with a 3 run inning with RBIs from Christian Hicks, Nick Horvath and Dalton Guthrie.

The Gators used some traditional station to station baseball as three sacrifice flies were responsible for half of their output coming from Hicks, JJ Schwarz, and Nelson Maldonado all in separate innings.

Nine hits from the Gators was their highest total of the weekend, and Dalton Guthrie lead the way with three hits in four at bats and drove in two runs.

“We still got some work to do,” said Guthrie, “but its to see we can break through and do some damage, but we still have work to do.”

Kevin O’Sullivan echoed his shortstops comments on the weekend.

“It was a great weekend but we still have a lot of stuff to work on,” said O’Sullivan.

The weekend attendance record was broken for a three game series, as 16,807 people flocked to McKethan Stadium to see the Gators sweep the Hurricanes for the first time since 2012.

Florida has now won 26 of the last 32 contest against Miami, establishing their dominance over their rival in recent years.

The Gators will be back in action with two midweek games against UCF. Tuesday at home and Wednesday in Orlando, before welcoming Columbia to McKethan Stadium for a weekend series.

Freshman Nate Brown will get the start Tuesday on the mound.

Matt graduated from high school from Providence School in Jacksonville, Florida where he won a State Championship in baseball. After two years of playing college baseball at Valdosta State University, he jumped at the chance to transfer and be accepted to his lifelong dream school, at the University of Florida where he is currently a Junior Business major. He is very passionate about all Gator sports with Football, Baseball and Basketball topping the list. Currently he serves as a practice player squad member for the Women's basketball team at UF. Favorite all time Gator is Danny Wuerffel.