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In front of their largest home opening crowd ever, the top-ranked Florida Gator baseball beat the Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles 4-2 on Friday night in Gainesville. The win improves Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan’s opening day record to 8-1.
Florida opened up the scoring in this one in the second inning. Pete Alonso scored on a sacrifice fly from Mike Rivera. The Eagles would tie things up at one in the fourth on a fielders choice. The Gators were unable to turn an inning ending double play causing Tyler Selesky to score from second.
Mike Rivera would give the Gators the lead again with a towering solo homer to left field in the bottom half of the fourth. The Gators extended their lead in the fifth inning to 4-1 with a pair of sacrifice flies from JJ Schwarz and Peter Alonso.
On the mound for the Orange and Blue was Logan Shore who picked up his first win of the season after giving up just one run through five innings. Shore also struck out six batters while giving up only three hits. Kirby Snead came on for relief in the sixth and went on to throw three scoreless innings and struck out a career high four batters. Shore says he has improvements to make but is happy with the performance.
Dane Dunning came on in the ninth for the final three outs. He gave up a sacrifice fly but managed to still record the save clinching the Gator win 4-2.
Head Coach Kevin O’Sullivan liked what he saw from his team on opening night.
Junior lefty AJ Puk takes the mound for the Gators tomorrow and will go up against right-hander Sterling Koerner. First pitch from McKethan stadium is set for 4 p.m and you can hear the game live on ESPN Gainesville/95.3 FM at 3:55 pm.
