Florida avoids elimination with a 17-2 beatdown over Fairfield

With their backs against the wall and their season on the line, Florida avoids elimination with a 17-2 beatdown of Fairfield. Florida would stay alive after dropping its regional opener on Friday, using an offensive explosion to breeze past the four-seeded Stags. 

After scoring six runs in their first game, the Gators scored 17 runs on 16 hits and walked 11 times, only striking out 10 times. With the win, Florida has now won seven consecutive regional elimination games. If they want to keep things going, they will have to win two more on Sunday.

“Lot of them have been here before,” said assistant coach Chuck Jeroloman. “They know how to play when their backs are against the wall.”

Despite the final score, this game started as a clean, old-fashioned pitchers duel in the first Conway Regional elimination game.

Both starting pitchers, Aidan King and Bowen Baker, held these powerful offenses in check. Through the first three innings, there were almost as many double plays hit (3) as there were hits (4).

Bowen had struck out five of the first 12 batters he faced before the cracks in the dam started to show. With one out in the fourth, Blake Cyr broke the scoreless tie with his second homer of the regional to give Florida a 1-0 lead.

Although they scored only once in the inning, Florida was starting to figure something out against Baker.

Right after Matthew Bucciero tied the game up with a moonshot over the batter’s eye for Fairfield, the Gators started to break it open in the fifth. The inning began with a Justin Nadeau double, which turned the lineup back over to the top for Bobby Boser to launch his 18th long ball of the season and give Florida a 3-1 lead. 

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“Blake’s [Cyr] homer was big, but Bobby’s [Boser] was the home run that allowed us to get a deep breath,” said Jeroloman. “Let us take off from there.”

The Gators kept it going with the next two reaching base for Cyr to stay hot with an RBI single, pushing the lead out to 4-1. Florida added one more on a Hayden Yost fielder’s choice to not only make it 5-1 but knock Baker out of the game. 

Home runs kept coming in the sixth with a Brody Donay 434-foot two-run bomb onto a building behind Springs Brooks Stadium that put this one nearly out of reach at 7-1. Already up six, the Gators broke it wide open with an eight-run eighth inning that made it 15-1.

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Five of the first seven hitters reached by error, walk, or hit-by-pitch, which scored two runs before they recorded a hit. The first hit of the inning was a two-run single from Brendan Lawson, who finished the day with a career-high five hits.

Jeroloman credits the time off in between the SEC Tournament and now as a way for Lawson to reset. Allowing him to get back to his regular-season form.

“[Lawson] was able to get that time off after Hoover, and he recharged his batteries,” Jeroloman said. “We’ve now been seeing the player that we saw all season prior.”

A bases-loaded walk brought in another run before Cyr struck again with a two-run single that made it a 13-run game. Cyr went 3-for-5 with a home run and a team-high four RBIs. Yost hit an RBI single that pushed the lead to 15-1 and capped off a nearly 40-minute inning. Two more runs scored in the ninth thanks to some sloppy Fairfield defense.  

Meanwhile, King kept rolling, providing Florida with much-needed help on the mound, something it did not get on Friday. The freshman showed again why he has been counted on all season with another great showing. Outside of the home run in the fourth, King did a great job of throwing strikes and not wasting pitches.

Of his 94 pitches, 59 were strikes, which resulted in strikeouts and easy outs. A good example was right after the long eighth inning, King came out and retired the side in order. He tried to come out for the ninth, but head coach Kevin O’Sullivan went with Felix Ong instead, who closed things out.

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King’s final line on the day was eight innings, four hits, one run (earned), two walks, and seven strikeouts. 

“Aidan [King] gave us the opportunity to get our feet under us offensively, stayed in control all ballgame. Type of performance we needed,” said Jeroloman. 

King’s outing also preserved all of Florida’s arms in the bullpen, which is super critical for teams trying to work through the loser’s bracket. 

“For [King] to give our bullpen a rest is what you have to do to win a regional out of the losers bracket,” said Jeroloman. 

As stated above, Florida must win not one but two games tomorrow to force a winner-take-all game on Monday. The Gators’ first game will be at noon ET against the loser of East Carolina and Coastal Carolina. Big lefty Pierce Coppola (3-0, 1.86 ERA) takes the mound for Florida, looking to replicate King’s start.