Florida could not hold off Tennessee on the baseball diamond Sunday as the Volunteers completed the weekend series sweep with a 7-4 win and advance to 20-0 on the season.
While a sweep is deflating, there’s no reason to believe that Florida is anything but a top-10 program after this weekend. Tennessee has all but solidified itself as the top team in the country and is playing like a club with its sights on back-to-back national championships.
Florida had opportunities to pull ahead in all three games this weekend, but Tennessee got to the bullpen repeatedly. The Gators took their first lead of the weekend in the fourth inning on Sunday, with a four-run outburst. Ty Evans doubled down the left-field line to drive in two and take the lead, and Luke Heyman blooped one into right field for another RBI. The final Gators run of the day came on a first-and-third play where Heyman took off and got in a rundown long enough for Evans to score from third.
Playing with a lead was refreshing after a rough first two games, but Tennessee started chipping away at the three-run margin immediately. Florida starter Jake Clemente left the game in the bottom of the fourth after hitting the first batter of the inning and walking the next. Midweek starter Billy Barlow came out for some high-leverage relief and walked the first two batters he saw, the second of which scored the second Vols run of the day; the first came off the bat of Dean Curely the inning prior on a groundout to third that scored Jay Abernathy.
Gavin Kilen homered to right field in the bottom of the fifth to give Tennessee three straight innings with a run, and Cannon Peebles gave the Vols the lead in the sixth with a two-run double for the first crooked number for Tennessee on the day. Reese Chapman hit a two-run homer off Alex Philpott in the eighth after a quiet seventh. The three-run lead was more than enough to put away a Florida team that only had one hit over the final four innings.
The Gators had a chance to tie things up in the ninth with two on and no outs, but the wind killed a Landon Stripling fly ball to right, and Heyman and Hayden Yost struck out swinging to end the game. It looked like Yost might have held up, but the umpires were not kind to Florida all weekend.
Clemente’s start is a bright spot in the loss, even if he gave up two runs — remember, one of those is on two walks from the relief man. Florida’s Sunday starter looked solid in his return from injury, though, striking out three and walking one over three innings.
The Gators get two midweek games against Jacksonville and Florida A&M to get right before a three-game series at home against another top-5-ranked SEC program, the Georgia Bulldogs.
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