Gator Baseball Hosts Florida Gulf Coast Tonight

The Gator baseball team, ranked No. 17 by Baseball America, kicks off a series against Florida Gulf Coast tonight.

The Gators are coming off of an 8-7 loss in the 12th inning to Georgia Southern on Wednesday.

FGCU is coming to Gainesville with a 2-1 record after beating St. John’s last Friday and Sunday, and losing to Notre Dame in the 10th inning on Saturday.

Gulf Coast coach Dave Tollett discusses his 2013 squad.

Florida has issues of its own, especially defensively where it made six errors in its loss on Wednesday.   Gator head coach Kevin O’Sullivan talks about some of the things the team needs to work on to improve.

The Gators have used 14 pitchers already this season. Half of them are freshmen, consisting of six true freshmen and one redshirt freshman.  Pitching has been a positive for the Gators early in the year.

With a 3-2 record, Florida second baseman Casey Turgeon says it’s just early in the season to judge anything.

In this matchup, Florida hits .282 as a team compared to .262 for the Eagles but the Eales have committed just two errors on the year compared to 15 for Florida.  The Gators have taken six of the seven meetings with FGCU, including a sweep last season in March.

Starting on the mound for the Gators Friday is right hander Jonathon Crawford, who will face the Eagles’ righty Ricky Knapp. Crawford totaled 4 strikeouts and a walk in 3.2 innings last Friday in Florida’s season opener against Duke. Knapp pitched six scoreless innings with five strikeouts to collect the win in FGCU’s season opener against St. John’s last Friday.

The Gators tenative lineup for tonight is as follows:

You can hear all the action of tonight’s game on our station with live coverage beginning at 6:55pm.  First pitch will be thrown at McKethan Stadium at 7pm.

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