Barco and Ficarrotta Shine in 4-1 Gator Baseball Win Against Georgia State

The Florida baseball team moves to 4-2 on the year after beating Georgia State 4-1 at home on Friday night.

Making a Statement

Georgia State came to the Florida Ballpark as a hot offensive team.  The Panthers had scored 43 runs in only five games. Florida knew it needed to shut down GSU at the plate, and that is exactly what they did.

The first batter of the game, Josh Smith, hit a triple off of Gator starter Hunter Barco and he would later score on an RBI ground out by Cameron Jones to give Georgia State the early lead. But that’s the only run they would score as Gator pitching only allowed three hits in the rest of the game.

The Gators tied the game in the bottom of the first, as Colby Halter came home on an RBI ground out by Wyatt Langford. After Jud Fabian scored on a wild pitch in the same inning, The Gators never looked back.

Langford added another run to the board after a monster home run in the bottom of the third. The bats went quiet for a while, though Jud Fabian had a huge hit in the seventh that almost fouled out, but Dalton Pearson made a phenomenal jumping catch over the wall to force an out.

The Gators last run came from Josh Rivera, after a huge home run in the eighth to put Florida up 4-1.

The Mound is What Matters

While the bats may have been slow, The Gator pitching and defense were the stars of the show.  Lefty Hunter Barco left the game after six innings, allowing one run while striking out a career high 12 batters.

Have a night.

6.0 IP
3 H
1 ER
1 BB
12 K pic.twitter.com/05CqZcPgRf

— Florida Gators Baseball (@GatorsBB) February 26, 2022

Nick Ficarrotta came to the mound in the seventh inning and proceeded to give Florida exactly what it needed. He fanned six in only three innings and allowed zero hits or runs. In all, Gator pitching struck out 18 Georgia State hitters in the contest.

The Job Isn’t Finished

Florida may have won the game Friday night, but the series is still up for grabs.  Again Florida played errorless baseball on Friday and the Gators try for a Game 2 series win Saturday at 4pm.

https://twitter.com/GatorsBB/status/1497391053892030468?s=20&t=V2FlZqjTOW6ifNltwDDK9Q