Florida Baseball Hosts Jacksonville In Mid-Week Match Up

After a sweep of Arkansas over the weekend, the Florida Gator (33-5, 11-4 SEC) baseball team will host the Jacksonville Dolphins (22-13, 4-2 Atlantic Sun) on Tuesday for a mid-week match up. This is the second meeting between the two schools this season; they previously met in Gainesville back on April 5th where the Gators won 7-2. Freshman Nelson Maldonado homered and drove in thee runs in that game powering the Gators to their 28th straight win at McKethan Stadium.

The Gators are coming off a road trip where they finished 4-0. They swept the series against FSU this season with a win in Tallahassee last Tuesday 8-2 and followed that up with a weekend sweep over the Razorbacks in Arkansas. This was the Gators’ first sweep of Arkansas since 2001.

Florida is off to their best start in school history at 33-5 and currently have the most wins in the nation. They are still ranked number two in the nation behind Miami, but are number one according to RPI. In the SEC East the Orange and Blue are tied for first with South Carolina at 11-4.

Freshman right-hander Jackson Kowar (3-0, 3.41) will take the mound for the Gators making his sixth start of the season. Last time he got the start was against Florida state where he gave up just one run on three hits, while striking out seven batters. The Gator pitching staff as a whole this season has been knocking teams out with punch outs. Florida leads the nation in strikeouts (405), strikeouts per nine innings (10.6) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (4.35). Jacksonville sends redshirt junior left-hander Casey Kulina (2-0, 2.45) to the rubber.

Pete Alonso is coming off a productive weekend at the plate and will look to keep the momentum going. Alonso was 4 for 11 with five RBI’s, four runs, and three walks. Dalton Guthrie has been a spark for the Gators this season as well batting .355 and he leads Florida with 20 multi-hit games. If the Gators can score in the first inning they can almost guarantee a win; the Orange and Blue are 15-0 when scoring in the first inning and 22-1 when scoring first in the game.

After this mid-week match up the Gators welcome the Georgia Bulldogs to McKethan Stadium for a Thursday-Saturday series. Head coach Kevin O’Sullivan knows these next few games will be a challenge for his team.

First pitch on Tuesday is set for 7 P.M. but you can tune into ESPN Gainesville 95.3 at 6:55 to hear the call with Jeff Cardozzo and Steve Russell.