Florida Gators On The Diamond: Sometimes You're The Broom, Sometimes You're The Dirt
Updated: Apr 3, 2021
In life, sometimes you’re the hammer and sometimes you’re the nail.
In the Southeastern Conference during the spring athletics season, sometimes you’re the broom and sometimes you’re the dirt.
Florida baseball plays 30 conference games, while the Gators’ softball program battles a 24-conference game slate. With all conference series coming in three-game increments, the goal is to take two out of three games for each conference opponents. Simply put, in SEC play, baseball should look for at least 20 wins, while softball should have its sights set on winning at least 16 in-conference matchups.
It goes without saying that sweeping conference series can be the key to quickly bolstering a program’s SEC standing. Yet, in the same merit, getting swept can cause a dramatic fall from grace.
The Gators’ diamond teams spent last weekend apart.
Tim Walton and Florida softball stayed home on Hull to host the LSU Tigers, while Kevin O’Sullivan and the boys of spring took a northward jog up to Columbia, South Carolina to pay the Gamecocks a visit.
While UF’s softball facility, Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium, stayed bustling all weekend, Florida baseball’s mecca, Florida Ballpark, saw a somber weekend of silence.
And the teams who call those stadiums home echoed those sentiments.
The No. 5-ranked Florida softball team went on to sweep the No. 11/13-ranked LSU Tigers in dominant fashion. Meanwhile, the No. 5-ranked Florida baseball team was swept by the 25th ranked South Carolina Gamecocks.
Sometimes you’re the broom
Anytime a college softball game gets the bid at an evening ESPN slot, chances are it’s a highly anticipated matchup.
And there’s nothing like a top-15 matchup between two storied SEC programs.
LSU waltzed into Gainesville after being regarded as the second-best team in the SEC during the preseason. The Tigers had a conference record of 4-2 when they first stepped foot onto the University of Florida’s campus.
By the time they were heading back west to Baton Rouge, the Tigers had a losing SEC record in tow.
LSU head coach Beth Torina was no stranger to the Gainesville. The head of the Tigers’ program, in her 10th year, pitched for Florida from 1997 to 2000 and helped the Gators to a SEC Championship in 1998.
But despite knowing the ebbs and flows of SEC softball and the importance of coming away with wins on the weekend, Torina and the Tigers simply couldn’t find answers against the Gators.
But to be fair, Tim Walton’s Gators were asking some tough questions. I’m not sure if answers even existed to the problems Florida softball was causing for the Tigers.
The Gators tallied 31 hits on the weekend, including 12 in each of the last two games on Saturday night and Sunday morning. The Gators also hit .414 as a team in the final two contests against the Tigers.
And while Florida had contributions coming from all nine spots in the lineup, the Gators’ leadoff hitter had as good as a weekend as anyone in the country.
Few, if any, players in the country are playing as well as Florida softball’s Hannah Adams.
The senior leadoff hitter and second baseman’s weekend got off a little slow behind a 1-for-3 performance from the plate on Friday night. However, Adams’ lone hit on Friday scratched two Gators across the plate en route to Florida’s opening 5-0 win of the series.
On Saturday, however, Adams’ evening would go flawlessly.
A 4-for-4 outing from the batter’s box, coupled with perfect fielding stats had head coach Tim Walton gushing at the game’s end.
“What you see in the game is what you see in practice,” Walton said of Adams. “She is as consistent, as steady… she’s very little emotion, she’s not very dramatic… she’s just really consistent.
“I get a chance to coach her every day. She’s by far one of the best players on this team and in the country. She’s so consistent and she’s grown a ton. And she makes me look like a good coach on defense because she does a good job quarterbacking the defense now… she’s as steady as you’ll see every day.”
In addition to Adams’ contributions on Thursday, two other Gators made good use of their air time on ESPN.
Jaimie Hoover and Kendyl Lindaman, who both returned for their fifth year of eligibility in 2021, each launched two-run home runs in the first inning, putting an early end to LSU pitcher Ali Kilponen’s outing.
Florida picked up right where it left off despite an 11 a.m. start on Sunday.
Four Gators recorded multi-hit performances on Sunday, including Cheyenne Lindsey, who tallied a career-best five RBIs.
Lindsey, who went 2-for-4 on the afternoon, got her day started in the third inning after smacking a Shelbi Sunseri offering to the left-field wall, good for a bases-clearing double. Later in the fifth inning, Lindsey cranked another Sunseri offering — but this one cleared the wall, good for a two-run home run.
A strong effort from Florida’s pitching staff coupled well with it’s dominant at-bats.
Elizabeth Hightower went the distance both on Friday and Sunday, while Katie Chronister and Natalie Lugo split Saturday’s action.
The Tigers scattered three hits against Hightower on Friday night en route to the junior’s fifth complete-game shutout of the season and her third straight against a SEC opponent.
LSU managed a total of just eight hits and three runs against Hightower, who hurled 203 pitches over the weekend.
The Gators’ three wins over the weekend came on the heels of a heartbreaking midweek loss to No. 22-ranked UCF last Wednesday. From Orlando, the Knights walked it off against the Gators to the tune of 8-6.
“I told our team very bluntly that on that Wednesday, UCF outplayed us in every facet,” Walton said following the series sweep on Sunday. “And when you do that… you’re not going to win.
They hit the ball hard. They pitched when they needed to pitch. They made some defensive plays. And they got the game-winning hit.
“We’re not just Gators and we’re gonna win. But we gotta know we’re gonna win. We gotta play with the edge. We gotta play with that confidence. Because teams aren’t going to roll over. We get everybody’s best shot. Every single game we play, we get their best.”
And the key to overcoming that is countering your opponent’s best with your best.
“When we hit like we did (this weekend), we’re going to be tough.”
Sometimes you’re the dirt
Tim Tebow hadn’t yet won the Heisman Trophy the last time the South Carolina Gamecocks swept a series out from under the Florida Gators. The year was 2006.
Florida baseball has been swept just seven times in the last decade, with the last coming at the hands of Georgia early in the 2019 campaign.
But that changed over the weekend after the Gamecocks humiliated the unanimous preseason No. 1 over the weekend.
Florida’s weekend got underway with a 14-inning barnburner that ended in the Gators losing the five and a half-hour affair 9-8.
Florida head coach Kevin O’Sullivan had to dig deep into his bullpen through the lengthened contest. Five different pitchers took the mound on Friday night, with Tommy Mace getting the start.
Mace coughed up four runs on 10 hits in four innings of work, while Trey Van Der Weide, Franco Aleman, Christian Scott and Ben Specht combined for the remaining 10 innings of action and gave up a combined 10 hits and five runs.
And the pitching staff’s performance didn't get any better as the weekend progressed.
Jack Leftwitch went on to hit six batters in his 4.2-inning outing on Saturday and Hunter Barco gave up four earned runs in five innings during his sweep-saving opportunity on Sunday.
"Just disappointed with our starting pitching," Kevin O'Sullivan said following Florida’s loss on Saturday. "We've gotta go deeper into games. It's just really that simple.”
And though Florida’s pitching staff has been the whipping post for criticism all season, it was far from the reason the Gators dropped three straight to the Gamecocks over the weekend.
Florida centerfielder Jud Fabian, who is highly regarded to be a top MLB prospect, had a humbling weekend.
Eyeing five-run deficit in the top of the eighth during Sunday’s game, Fabian came to the plate with two runners on and one out. He had an opportunity to put a weekend of bad baseball behind him.
Instead, he added to the worst type of streak a baseball player can have.
Another swinging strikeout tallied his 13th at-bat without a hit and his 11th strikeout of the series.
Initially, Fabian’s struggles throughout the opening games of the 2021 season could (and often were) attributed to the rust that comes with being away from the diamond for nearly a year. But now, 25 games into the season, the centerfielder’s continued slump is drawing concern.
Fabian’s strikeout rate had crept up to 46%. His 45 strikeouts on the year lead the nation.
But perhaps the most alarming issue many media members and fans have picked up on is the lack of intensity coming from the team. It seems as though members of the Gators baseball team dwell on less-than-great outings, whether it be in the field, on the mound or in the batter’s box.
A short term memory doesn’t exist in Florida’s dugout.
Instead, when a pitcher is yanked from the mound, his walk back to the dugout is pathetic. And once he reaches the bench, it’s as if no one would touch him with a 10-foot pole.
Florida baseball was the dirt last weekend. And the Gamecocks slowly swept them into a nice pile before getting them into the dustpan and disposing of them on Sunday.
Things aren’t good at the Florida Ballpark. And while there’s lots of baseball to be played, the Gators can’t afford to be the dirt much longer.
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