Gators Baseball Escapes Kennesaw State With Sweep
Desperation hit Gators baseball when first baseman Ethan Surowiec jumped for a ball in foul territory, out of his grasp, in No. 12 Florida’s 12-9 win against Kennesaw State on Sunday. The sophomore came up empty-handed.
With two outs at Condron Family Ballpark, Florida should’ve been able to move on quickly — at least that had been the thought process throughout the nightmare fifth inning. Time and again, the third out evaded the Gators (7-1).
Florida troubles started long before reliever Ernesto Lugo-Canchola stepped on the mound with the Gators leading 4-3, but the issues worsened when the lefty threw two wild pitches. One scored a run. The other, capping off what should’ve been a third-out strikeout, put the runner on first. An errant throw over the head of second baseman Colton Schwarz by catcher Cole Stanford advanced the runner on third.
“Are you blind?” a fan in the stands yelled after the Stanford throw. In a game that felt closer to trench warfare, Florida and Kennesaw’s main issues were self-inflicted, walking in and out of jams while struggling to make plays defensively.
“Got punched in the mouth a little bit early there,” sophomore reliever Jackson Barberi said. “And, we scored every inning after the first inning, like we were down three nothing. And then after that, we put up runs every single inning. So just fighting back and then adding on, it was big for us.”
The Gators’ two-out fifth inning marched on. Lugo-Canchola walked two batters, one on a time-clock violation. Florida righty Ricky Reeth, who took over, walked another to put the Owls (3-3) up by one, 5-4. So, the Gators went with Jackson Barberi, who finally struck out a Kennesaw State hitter despite dealing with a 100-degree fever in the days prior.
The damage had been done. By the end of the game, Florida burned through five relievers in an equal number of innings. The bullpen walked six, allowing five hits and three earned runs. Before Sunday, the Gators’ pitchers only walked six batters in the last seven games.
Before the fifth, starter Cooper Walls’ afternoon lacked consistency. He struggled through the first frame, where the Owls scored all three of their runs. While his pitch speed didn’t vary much, Kennesaw State laced the ball through gaps in the infield and under Surowiec’s diving glove. When the ball did have some pop off the bat, it found empty grass down the first baseline, the 15 miles-per-hour wind pulling it from any outfielder’s grasp.
“It’s just hard for pitchers to grip the breaking balls,” UF coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “And it was really both teams today. Both teams struggled a little bit throwing strikes and commanding their secondary pitches. So I’m going to just chalk it up to that, because we’ve been throwing the ball really well.”
Last Sunday, Walls could get away with groundouts and forceouts on the basepath. This time, he had to work in the box. Walls threw five Ks, and his strike percentage lingered around 63%. Even at his best, the righty seemed a bit shaky. A Kennesaw runner, Jackson Chirello, advanced to scoring position on a wild pitch (Jackson would later score, bringing the run total to three). But after the first, Walls settled down, completing four innings before the Gators pulled him.
“I started off, obviously, pretty bad,” Walls said, ” But after that, I feel like I competed, [gave] the team what we needed to be successful in the game, but didn’t start off great.”
The Gators, though, inflicted equal damage on Kennesaw State’s pitchers. Righty Cole Royer entered the game with a 1-0 record and a 0.00 ERA. He left with a 6.75 ERA. Florida pushed across two runs in the second with a Surowiec RBI double, and Royer was pulled.
Reliever Daniel Powell worked himself into a jam in the fourth inning, loading the bases with a walk, a hit-by-pitch and a single.
Kyle Jones hit a sac-fly to give the Gators the lead, 4-3, but the Owls quickly pulled Powell before any more damage could be done. Kennesaw State’s reliever Jayden Summerville struck out Brendan Lawson, who ended the inning on a whiff to the Owls’ dugout’s cheers.
Lawson’s disorganization mirrored the Gators’. Florida pushed across runs with its nine mostly timely hits. The Gators batted .857 with runners in scoring position and less than two outs. But the team couldn’t find a consistent rhythm until the sixth. There, Surowiec collected three of his four RBIs on a groundout to second and a single.
“I thought our situational hitting was outstanding today,” O’Sullivan said. “Obviously, Ethan had a couple of really big hits for us.”
Lest anyone think the chaos was over, Lawson found himself in a seventh-inning rundown after collecting an RBI single.
In most situations, the shortstop would’ve been out, having overrun first base and trapped in no man’s land between second. Not during Sunday’s matchup. Jones, who stood on third and took a few steps toward home, lured Kennesaw State’s first baseman’s attention away from Lawson. The sophomore scrambled to second. Jones himself scored on an error when the Owls’ first baseman overthrew third base.
“To get an early season sweep against, my opinion, a regional Type Team, you gotta feel good about that,” O’Sullivan said. “Good teams figure out a way to win, even when you don’t play as well as you should. And that was obviously a good example of what today was like.”
Still, no play was as indicative of the game as the pop fly that flew to Kennesaw State’s Trenton Lyons in the sixth inning. The softly hit ball soared into the outfield, where Lyons stood underneath, glove open. When it hit his hand, the ball plopped out, landing softly in the grass. No out. Because even when everything seemed to be going right, chaos still won.
The Gators host FIU (6-2) for games Tuesday (6:30 p.m.) and Wednesday (6 p.m.) with coverage on SEC Network+ and ESPN 98.1-FM/850-AM WRUF.
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