Florida Uses Mental Fortitude To Overcome Obstacles, Advance At Men’s College World Series

OMAHA—A familiar tenant among coaches is the need to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Florida this season has seemingly mastered that skill.

The Gators have 21 come-from-behind wins, including their 6-5 victory Friday against Virginia to open the College World Series. They’ve overcome injuries—both freak and more ordinary, the loser’s bracket of the Gainesville Regional, early season bullpen issues and more. They fought through that all to win more than 50 games for the first time since 2016, the SEC regular-season title and reach Omaha.

Florida’s resolve was tested again Sunday at Charles Schwab Field in its winner’s bracket game against Oral Roberts. The Gators never trailed, but they did have to overcome some new obstacles—some of them self-inflicted—to start the tournament 2-0 and move one win away from playing for the national championship. They fought through all the challenges, not the least of which was the Golden Eagles, for a 5-4 win.

ORU will now face TCU in an elimination game Tuesday afternoon. The winner of that game on Wednesday will take on Florida.

The game started strongly for Florida, as righthander Hurston Waldrep continued his sizzling performance of the last month. He struck out 12 batters in six innings and held the Golden Eagles to one run on seven hits and three walks.

Since his abbreviated start against Vanderbilt a month ago—a lengthy rain delay limited him to just one inning—Waldrep has been outstanding, looking very much like a top-10 draft pick. In five starts, Waldrep has struck out 50 batters in 32.2 innings and limited opponents to eight runs (seven earned) on 26 hits and 11 walks. On Sunday, Waldrep ran his fastball up to 97 mph and mixed in both his typically devastating split-changeup and a premium slider that has become a plus pitch for him in the second half of the season.

With Waldrep mowing down hitters, Florida was able to build a 5-1 lead. But he crossed the 100-pitch mark in the sixth inning and so the Gators went to the bullpen to start the seventh. With Waldrep out of the game, ORU went to work.

In the seventh inning, ORU scored two runs on an inside-the-park home run from Matt Hogan. He drove the ball off the left field wall, with the bounce getting past Tyler Shelnut. Wyatt Langford, coming over from center, tracked the ball down but didn’t pick it up cleanly and that gave Hogan just the break he needed to motor around the bases. It was just the second inside-the-park homer in CWS history and the first since Tennessee’s Chris Burke (who was calling Sunday’s game for ESPN) hit one in 2001.

“Matt’s swing was big,” ORU coach Ryan Folmar said. “I think just as big as the swing was the way he’s running around the bases, the way he hustles, the way he plays. And I think that’s contagious throughout our team. I think all of them have that.”

With ORU fighting back, Florida had to dig deep. Closer Brandon Neely came into the game in the seventh for the second straight game and rolled a grounder to get out of the inning.

In the eighth, however, Florida found new challenges. Neely got two quick outs before an error gave ORU a baserunner. After a single, ORU had runners on first and second when catcher BT Riopelle fired a pickoff attempt behind the runner at first. The play was close and led to a review, before the runner was ultimately ruled safe. Riopelle went out for what would turn into a very consequential mound visit, as it was Florida’s sixth of the game. When Neely eventually walked the hitter at the plate, loading the bases, coach Kevin O’Sullivan came out of the dugout for a visit of his own.

But once O’Sullivan crossed the foul line, the umpires ruled that Florida had to change pitchers. The Gators had lost count of the number of mound visits they had taken Sunday and, by rule, after a team has made six visits (by players or coaches), any further visit triggers a pitching change.

“It was totally my mistake, and no one feels more terrible about it than I do,” O’Sullivan said. “But at the same time, it’s like a player that has a bad game or gives up a run there in the ninth or something, extra innings. You’ve got to move from it.

“But I told the team, I apologized to them at the end of the game. They just said they had my back.”

Florida didn’t have any pitchers loose, as it was expecting Neely to finish the game. Freshman lefthander Cade Fisherscrambled to start getting loose as the confusion was sorted out in the infield, before he was motioned in from the right field bullpen. He got extra time on the game mound but it was still a tight situation to get thrown into with the bases loaded, two outs and Florida clinging to a two-run lead.

Fisher, however, was unfazed.

“Before the first pitch, I looked around, everybody was on their feet,” Fisher said. “I took a deep breath and just tried to focus on the situation.”

He got Justin Quinn, ORU’s two-hole hitter, to fly out to Langford in left field. Langford pumped his fist three times, as fired up as anyone could be for a routine fly ball.

ORU still wasn’t done, however. The Golden Eagles loaded the bases with one out in the ninth on Fisher. He got a ground ball for the second out of the inning, scoring a run, before a fly ball to center field ended the game.

Fisher earned his second save of the season and first since March 3 against Miami. He’s been a go-to arm for the Gators of late, however. As Florida was fighting out of the loser’s bracket in regionals, he threw seven strong innings in an elimination-game win against Texas Tech and then fired two scoreless innings against South Carolina in super regionals.

The freshman is quickly becoming one of the top options in tight moments for the Gators.

“He’s such a levelheaded dude,” first baseman Jac Caglianone said. “You never see him spike up or get too in his emotions or anything like that. He’s pretty much stone cold all the time.”

Through it all, the Gators held their focus. Freshman Luke Heyman said they simply have no other choice but to push through and stay locked in.

“I feel like you’ve just got to be able to move on from those,” he said. “If you let that hang in the back of your mind, it’s not going to put you in the position to have success for the next couple of plays that are coming your way.

“I think you’ve just got to be able to move forward on those because you know the ball is always going to find its way back to you. So, being able to forget about that is going to put yourself in the best situation to be successful.”

Florida is now one win away from playing for the national championship. ORU or TCU will have to beat the Gators on consecutive days to advance to the finals, while Florida will need just one win Wednesday or Thursday—and it will have the advantage of a rested bullpen and the ability to go to Caglianone, its normal No. 3 starter.

While the Gators are in the driver’s seat, they know the job’s not done yet. And after everything they’ve been through this season, their mental fortitude is ready for this moment.

“We’ve got to keep our edge,” O’Sullivan said. “We haven’t done it yet. So, sure, we’re one game away from the finals, but we’ve still got to play one more game. So, they’ve just got to stay the course and what we’ve done the entire year and don’t take anything for granted and be ready to go on Wednesday.”