Gators, Cavs to play decisive third game

OMAHA, Neb. – It took just three batters for Virginia to jump to the same 1-0 score they used to defeat Florida on Monday, but they final outcome in today’s game was nowhere in the neighborhood as the outcome from a few days ago.

The Gators earned their 21st first come-from-behind victory of the season and their third double-digit run game of the series as they doubled up the Cavaliers for a 10-5 victory. The win earned Florida the opportunity for one more rematch with Virginia, with the winner of the impromptu irregular three-game series getting a chance to play for their school's first national title on Monday.

The Gators’ offense scored in clusters, which has been their modus operandi while in Omaha. For the fourth time they plated at least four runs in an inning – an accomplishment the other seven clubs had done only three times combined.

“We have a tendency to have big innings,” Florida Head Coach Kevin O’Sullivan said after the game. “In order to have big innings you have to have a consistent lineup, one through nine, and not necessarily is it the first four, five guys in your lineup but the guys that hit seven, eight, nine. I think we're getting a lot of contributions up and down the lineup and it just allows us when we get things rolling in an inning to build some big innings.”

The first scoring outburst was started by Dalton Guthrie and Ryan Larson who tallied back-to-back singles. A Harrison Bader grounder scored Guthrie and brought Richie Martin to the plate. The Gators’ shortstop had been hitting the ball hard, but had been held hitless against Cavalier pitching. Martin was able to punch an opposite direction double to right that scored Larson and ultimately gave the Gators the lead for good.

The hit was Martin’s second big opposite field hit in Omaha, who had deposited a home run into the visiting team bullpen against Miami earlier in the week.

“I struggled the first two games, but that's baseball,” Martin explained in the postgame presser. “It's going to go like that. But I just stuck with my approach. The first two games I hit a few balls on the barrel. But it was just unlucky. Stick with my approach and (it) happened to work out today.”

The Gators upped the lead to 4-1 and chased Nathan Kirby from the game before he was able to get nine outs. Kirby, who was a supplemental first-round draft selection by the Milwaukee Brewers in last week's MLB draft, looked good early, but it became evident that he wasn’t performing at 100 percent. He had't pitched in over two months as he had strained a left lat muscle and then received a double whammy as he contracted mono to lengthen his time off the diamond.

Without that, the decision to start Kirby in such a marquee game was a bit of a controversial choice. Virginia Head Coach Brian O’Connor defended his decision during the postgame press conference.

“I had made the decision in the middle of this week,” O’Connor explained. “One, we're 2-0 and we're here to try to win a national championship. Certain guys are going to have to rise up for that to happen. I also made the decision that Connor Jones would not throw a third time here. So in no way was I going to pitch him today and then bring him back potentially on a Wednesday. So once that decision was made, (I) just felt like this was the right move, and I was really confident that Nathan would get us off to the right start and a handful of guys would have to do the job out of the pen.”

Virginia’s Alec Bettinger was able to come in and withstand the Gator horde temporarily, but it wasn’t long before Florida was rounding the bases once more.

An atypical, uneven pitching performance by the Cavs allowed the Gators’ scoring faucet to be turned on once again. Florida was able to juice the bases thanks in part to an HBP and a walk. An up-the-middle Mike Rivera single then started the scoring explosion. A bases-loaded walk and fielder’s choice scored two runs. Bader and Martin then followed with back-to-back singles for another pair to push the sixth inning total to five.

O’Sullivan praised his offense’s ability to pile up runs and give his staff some breathing room.

“I think anytime you have opportunities to score, you've got to take advantage of it,” the Gator skipper explained. “And we knew Virginia's hitters weren't going to go away. We knew the game was a long way from being over. But you play good teams this time of year, you get a couple of cracks to have some opportunities to drive runs in. Bases loaded, nobody out. We needed to take advantage of that opportunity.”

Virginia would threaten in the seventh and eighth and were able to run their total to five, but the damage had already been done. The Gators made the final out and finished with a 10-5 win.

The Florida victory created a winner-take-all matchup scenario Saturday night. The winner will face Vanderbilt for the 2015 College World Series title.



Buehler's Day On

Although the rust wasn’t quite as thick as with Virginia’s Nathan Kirby, Commodores Head Coach Tim Corbin had a somewhat similar situation with his own recent first-round draft selection. Walker Buehler, chosen by the Los Angeles Dodgers 24th overall in the MLB First Year Player Draft, hadn’t pitched in a game in nearly three weeks, but he got the nod to take to the mound Friday night against TCU in an attempt to send Vanderbilt back to the College World Series Championship Series.

Buehler didn’t pitch in the Super Regionals as he is third in the rotation and wasn’t needed. His teammates had held Illinois to only a pair of runs in the two-game sweep which sent Vanderbilt to Omaha so Buehler was left unneeded on the bench.

Even during his last appearance back on June 1, it would be a bit of stretch to call that outing a competitive performance. In that game, an NCAA Regional contest against Radford, the Commodores erupted like a volcano in a seventh-grade science fair for 20 runs in the first five innings. Thus Buehler was able to pitch confidently and effortlessly against the Highlanders. Before that, he last saw action way back on May 23rd in the SEC Tournament against Texas A&M – and that was an abbreviated performance as he only pitched four innings. You have to go all the way back to May 16th to find an occasion when he pitched over five innings in a game.

Going into the game, the time off didn’t weigh on Walker’s mind and he wasn’t worried about his ability to throw strikes.

"You try to stay on the same routine and throw week-by-week as you would if you threw (in a game)," Buehler said before taking the mound against the Horned Frogs. "Actually, I don't think pitching (in games) changes your routine at all."

In what would ultimately be labeled as a rested and not rusty performance, Buehler only allowed four hits (all of which were singles) in 6 2/3 innings. He retired the first 10 hitters he faced and didn't allow a run until the seventh inning. He struck out eight Frogs while only issuing a single walk. All night long he got ahead of batters and the only time TCU threatened early he and his teammates were able to eliminate the threat by earning an inning-ending double-play.

“He pitched very, very well,” Corbin said of Buehler. “He pitched very well tonight, especially being that he hadn't pitched in almost more than half a month. I thought he was right on point. You never know what's going to happen when a guy has that much time off. I felt like he went early and often, and those were six of the most impressive innings I had seen him pitch.”

The Commodores had won their two previous CWS games this spring, but had only scored five total runs in the victories. Nonetheless, Vanderbilt did not have a problem scoring runs against the vaunted TCU pitching staff which was second in the nation in ERA.

Bryan Reynolds had three hits and drove in the first two Vanderbilt runs with a pair of seeing-eye singles. Number 1 draft pick Dansby Swanson, who was voted the Most Outstanding Player of the College World Series last year, scored to increased the lead to 3-0 after earning his first knock of the CWS.

In the first inning there was an extremely scary moment. Vanderbilt’s Rhett Wiseman attempted to lay down a sacrifice bunt but instead got drilled by a fastball. The pitch hit Wiseman in the Adam’s apple and left him gasping for breath. It seemed remarkable that he could stand, but after a delay he took his base and continued playing. In the fourth inning, Wiseman got even with the baseball as he crushed one over the TCU bullpen to increase the Commodores' lead to 5-0.

When asked about the HBP after the game, Wiseman stated there was never a moment he considered coming out of the lineup.

“College World Series, baby,” Wiseman joked, “(You) would have to kill me to take me out of that game. I think that's probably what I said to you (to Corbin), I'm not coming out of this game, especially that early in the game. But it's easy going back out there following Walker's lead on the mound. He's just so effective and bringing everyone that plays behind him into the game and brings so much energy to the table that by the third inning I had forgotten about the neck and was back in the game.”

In the fifth inning TCU’s Head Coach Jim Schlossnagle pulled out all the stops in an effort to keep the Frogs in the contest. He sent ace Preston Morrison to the mound to quell the Vanderbilt scoring, but the All-American promptly gave up a triple to Reynolds who was brought home during the next at-bat by a Will Toffey single.

After upping their lead to 7-0, John Kilichowski came in and pitched the final 2 1/3 scoreless innings to eliminate TCU. The Frogs suffered both of their CWS losses at the hands of Vanderbilt.

Wiseman beamed as he spoke on his team’s accomplishments after the final out.

“It's so special,” Wiseman explained, “I mean, you walk around the locker room right now, everyone's fired up. I think some guys, I mean, when you look at it, I guess I find so much excitement out of it because the guys that weren't here last year, especially the guys that were on the team that were red-shirted, that's where I get even kind of choked up talking about it like just for them to be able to get back here after hearing about what it was like last year, and sometimes you're around these guys and you don't even want to really talk about it because you feel so like they've missed out on it and just to get back here for those guys is what's so special.”

The Commodores are now riding an eight-game winning streak that dates back to May 24th in the SEC Championship Game. In that contest they fell to Florida, the team that is hoping to face them once again by virtue of defeating Virginia Saturday night.