Butterflies, nerves, jitters — whatever you want to call them.
Something got to freshman right-hander Luke McNeillie Wednesday night. The freshman didn’t make it past one inning of work for the second consecutive start.
The Knights were dialed in on his pitch arsenal early on and tacked on four runs in the first inning.
“This is freshman stuff, this is just young pitcher stuff,” said Gators head coach Kevin O’Sullivan disappointingly. “Some of these guys got to figure it out.”
The Central Florida Knights’ first-inning lead was too much for the No. 4 Florida Gators baseball team to overcome. UCF (9-1) defeated Florida (8-4) 9-6 at Condron Family Ballpark.
O’Sullivan alluded to just one weakness on his roster during the preseason: middle relief. Florida will be largely reliant upon half a dozen freshman arms until a few names solidify roles and find their footing.
“Everything is on the table right now,” O’Sullivan said bluntly. “At some point, you have to make decisions based on how people perform. And that’s it.”
The Gators haven’t won a game where their opponent scored first. So, when the Knights tacked on four runs in the first inning, it made it that much harder for Florida to get it going.
McNeillie retired former Gator Matt Prevesk for the first out of the contest. But things quickly got out of hand when the freshman surrendered back-to-back hits to put runners on the corners.
McNeillie then gave up an RBI single. Two pitches later, UCF freshman center fielder Andrew Williamson blasted a three-run home run to put the Knights up 4-0.
The muddling start for Florida’s freshman righty looked nearly identical to his collegiate debut against the Stetson Hatters on Feb. 27.
In less than an inning, McNeillie surrendered five runs on four hits, two hit batters and a walk. He only mustered two outs before being pulled by O’Sullivan.
“What you’d like to see is when people have a tough outing, then they have the ability to bounce back,” the Gators head coach said. “It might be a little bit of a roller coaster, but they show the ability to put a tough outing or start behind them and move onto the next one. We just haven’t been able to do that quite yet.”
McNeillie recorded only one more out on Wednesday.
O’Sullivan elected to pull the freshman after he allowed his first two runners of the second inning to reach base. In 1 2/3 innings pitched this season, McNeillie has surrendered nine runs, nine hits and has a 19.89 ERA.
“We can’t keep going to the bullpen so early all the time,” O’Sullivan said. “It just puts too much pressure on everybody else.”
Florida’s bats got off to a hot start with a solo home run by junior first baseman Jac Caglianone. In the third inning, Caglianone added another run with an RBI single, and the junior completed his trip around the bases with an RBI groundout by sophomore shortstop Colby Shelton.
Florida tacked on three more runs with a solo home run from designated hitter Brody Donay and a two-run shot from Shelton.
However, the scores weren’t enough as the Gators’ relief pitching struggled to contain the Knights’ bats.
Florida freshman pitcher Alex Philpott was solid in relief but got into trouble in his third inning of work. Back-to-back doubles plated two runs for the Knights, and UCF added two more in the sixth inning off of Gators freshman relievers Grayson Smith and Robert Satin.
Florida has lost every game it has scored less than seven runs.
The Gators will return to action with a weekend series against the St. Mary’s Gaels at Condron Family Ballpark. The series will kick off at 6:30 p.m. Friday. The game will be broadcast on SEC Network+.
Contact Luke Adragna at ladragna@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter @lukeadrag.
Luke Adragna is a third-year journalism student and the Florida Gators football reporter at The Alligator. He is a cat ethusiast and completes the NYT Daily Mini in less than a minute each day.
