And on to the championship they go.
Florida (40-20) avenged its Southeastern Conference tournament opening loss to Kentucky (35-23) by beating the Wildcats 6-5 to set up a date with LSU Sunday afternoon.
The Gators registered 12 hits Saturday — the fifth most of any game they’ve played all season. UF is now 7-4 in games in which the opponent has scored five runs.
There was a theme during this SEC tournament semifinal matchup: one team punched and the other countered.
Kentucky, with its vaunted lineup that features most prominently the nation’s home run leader in A.J. Reed, is potent in tournament situations, and it showed early.
The Wildcats got on the board in the first frame thanks to a Matt Kuhn RBI double. Kentucky brought the bats out for the next inning as well scoring two runs — one off of a sacrifice fly by leadoff man Austin Cousino and the other a single through the left side by left fielder Ka’ai Tom.
But Florida answered right back in the third with two runs of its own.
First, Florida second baseman Casey Turgeon’s RBI single scored center fielder Buddy Reed. Two pitches later, shortstop Richie Martin reached base via a fielder’s choice. Kentucky shortstop Matt Reida chose to putout Turgeon and allowed third baseman Josh Tobias to score UF’s second run of the day.
The fourth was the first of two innings in this game in which neither team scored a run, but the Gators would add to their lead in the fifth with a Harrison Bader two-RBI single to center field.
The Florida center fielder went 3-4 against Kentucky with all his hits going out to center field. At one point, he was picked off by UK pitcher Chandler Shepard, at another he hit a ground rule double, that, had the fence been just a few feet higher would have held the ball in the park and Bader may have been able to leg out a triple thanks to the cavernous dimensions of Hoover Metropolitan stadium — 405 feet to the center field wall.
In the sixth, Kentucky would take a 5-4 lead after a Cousino single and a Kuhn double. Florida’s eventual victory is the third all season the team has won when trailing after six innings — they’re 3-17 in such games.
This victory would be insured by a Bader RBI single in the seventh and a Tobias RBI single in the eighth. Kentucky’s last gasp in the ninth inning had a man in scoring position representing the game-tying run after a gutsy advance to second base by pinch runner Matt Carson on a wild pitch. It’s as far as he would get though, as right fielder Storm Wilson grounded out in the next at-bat to end the game.
Follow Richard Johnson on Twitter @RagjUF
Outfielder Harrison Bader bats during Florida’s 4-0 win against Ole Miss on March 31, 2013, at McKethan Stadium.
