What we learned from Florida baseball's series win over rival Miami

Florida baseball continued its success against state rivals under head coach Kevin O'Sullivan, winning two of three games at Miami over the weekend.

The No. 4 Florida Gators (8-3) bounced back from a 10-6 loss on Saturday to beat the Hurricanes 8-4 on Sunday behind a five-homer effort. Florida won the opening game of the series 7-3 on Friday.

Shortstop Colby Shelton went deep twice against the Hurricanes on Sunday, with Jac Caglianone, Tyler Shelnut and Ty Evans adding home runs to power UF to the win.

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With the series win, Florida improved to 41-18 against Miami in 17 seasons under O'Sullivan.

"This is important," O'Sullivan said Sunday. "It's a rivalry series. More importantly, for us, it was a chance to see how we're going to respond after a tough loss last night. Yeah, it's early, but today was a step in the right direction."

Here are three things learned from UF's series win against the Hurricanes:

Jac Caglianone is capable of carrying UF for a weekend series

Caglianone, a Golden Spikes Award candidate, showed why in a dominant weekend performance against the Hurricanes.

At the plate, Caglianone went 7-for-14 with two home runs and two RBIs, including a tape-measure shot on Sunday that nearly hit a nearby parking garage. On the mound, Caglianone was impressive, pitching six shutout innings to earn his first win of the season. The 6-foot-5 lefty maintained his control with just two walks while allowing no runs on three hits with 11 strikeouts.

"Jac on the mound, he was outstanding," O'Sullivan said. "His changeup was as good as it's been since he's been here. He swung the bat really well."

Ryan Slater is UF baseball's most reliable middle reliever

Slater pitched 3.1 shutout innings on Friday, retiring 10 straight batters to earn the win in relief of starter Cade Fisher.

On Sunday, Slater took a 6-0 lead into the eighth inning, pitching 1.2 innings before giving the ball to closer Brandon Neely, who surrendered a grand slam with two outs in the eighth inning.

UF's freshman pitchers have room to grow

Freshman righty Liam Peterson (1-1) took the loss Saturday, allowing five runs, all earned, in five innings. Peterson gave up a three-run homer to Miami first baseman Jason Torres in the first inning and a two-run shot to Miami center fielder Edgardo Villegas in the second inning. From there, Peterson settled in, throwing three scoreless innings to complete his outing.

"We got into a lot of fastball counts," O'Sullivan said. "That's what happened to Liam. He couldn't command his secondary pitches today. You get in those 2-0, 3-0 counts, you don't locate your fastball and things like that happen. The first two innings for sure."

Freshman righty Luke McNiellie and freshman lefty Frank Menendez combined to give up five more earned runs out of the bullpen.

"The seventh inning kind of got away from us," O'Sullivan said. "We hit the leadoff man in the bottom half of the order. It was just unfortunate because I did feel that if it stayed where it was, we would have a chance there at the end."

Up Next

Florida baseball hosts Florida Atlantic on Tuesday night at Condon Family Ballpark. First pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m.