Florida baseball’s Brendan Lawson made a prediction that a walk-off was coming – the only problem was that he was wrong.
Just before Lawson stepped to the batter’s box with the Gators tied with Rider 7-7 in the bottom of the ninth inning, he turned to Blake Cyr to give his bold forecast.
“I’m going to get on, and you’re going to end the game,” Lawson said.
Four pitches later, Lawson unknowingly hit a game-winning home run over the center field wall.
“As soon as I hit it, I just put my head down running out of the box,” Lawson said. “I could hear (First base coach Mike) Rivera yell, ‘Get up.’ So I looked up, and right before I touched first base, I thought it was gone.”
After the late heroics, Cyr approached Lawson and said, ‘Man, you didn’t even give me a chance.’”
Lawson’s long ball was one of six to be hit in the final two innings of the Gators’ 8-7 win in the regional.
“Well, I take blood pressure medicine, so I try to stay as calm as I can,” said Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan when asked about the late-game pressure. “It was a little nerve-racking because I know how things can get like that. I have seen so many games and have been doing it for so long that it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Rider comes in and beats us if we don’t play well.
“They almost did it.”
Florida (40-19) held a 4-0 lead and was on cruise control heading into the top of the eighth inning before the Broncs dramatically changed the flow with a game-tying grand slam with two outs. Then two at-bats later, Rider hit a 2-run homer to take the lead.
Both of those long balls came against UF’s hardest-throwing relievers, Jackson Barberi and Joshua Whritenour. According to Rider coach Dr. Barry Davis, the reason for the lineup’s late success is that his hitters adjusted to working deeper in the count.
“I think the philosophy here is that when you are behind, a lot of times we won’t take a strike,” Davis said. “We had a 1-1 two times when we got too aggressive and swung at the breaking ball out of the zone.
“You’ve got to be comfortable there. If you get to 2-0, then take. We took a lot of 3-1 pitches that were balls or even strikes, and you see more pitches than you have a chance. They have to come in there. Once you get into a situation where one swing makes a difference, now you kind of take the bat and give them the green light a little bit.”
Luckily, Florida, which has struggled this season to respond late in games, had no issue coming together.
Caden McDonald hit a solo homer to narrow the score, followed by a 2-run homer by Cade Kurland to retake the lead.
“It was not fun in the top of the eighth,” said Florida starting pitcher Russell Sandefer, who covered 5.2 innings and gave up only two hits. “Everybody was thinking, ‘Wow, that just really happened.’ Our team responded very well. It’s very easy when a moment like that happens to crawl into a ball and let the game take over. I was incredibly proud of how we responded to that.”
Yet Rider went yard again off Whritenour from a full count at-bat to tie the game in the top of the ninth inning before Lawson’s late moment.
“Everybody’s in this tournament for a reason, Rider’s in this tournament for a reason,” O’Sullivan said. “They took two or three of our best arms, and they battled. So, I tip my cap to them.”
Reach Florida Gators writer Andrew Abadie at AAbadie@usatodayco.com or on X (formerly Twitter) at @AndrewAbadie. You can also find him on Facebook at Andrew Abadie Sports Reporter or on Instagram @andrewabadie_sports.
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: How Florida baseball pulled off its late comeback against Rider
Reporting by Andrew Abadie, Gainesville Sun / The Gainesville Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
