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Friday, March 29, 2024

Florida named No. 4 national seed in NCAA Tournament

<p>UF's JJ Schwarz rounds third base during Florida's 12-5 win against South Carolina on April 11, 2015 at McKethan Stadium.</p>

UF's JJ Schwarz rounds third base during Florida's 12-5 win against South Carolina on April 11, 2015 at McKethan Stadium.

The Southeastern Conference title game was over, but the players still stood on the field in Hoover, Alabama, clad in white SEC champion T-shirts.

Queen’s "We are the Champions" played on the loudspeakers as players and coaches, one-by-one, spoke about the victory.

"It’s just a surreal moment," JJ Schwarz said.

"Oh man," Peter Alonso said. "It feels really good."

Now, Florida will start preparing for the NCAA Regionals, where it will host Florida A&M, South Florida and Florida Atlantic this weekend as the No. 4 national seed.

"You know, I put so much hard work and effort into this craft of baseball," an emotional Buddy Reed said after Florida’s 7-3 win over Vanderbilt. "It’s a blessing."

After dropping the tournament opener, the Gators won four consecutive games to win the SEC Tournament and justify their stake as a national seed.

The celebration continued that night and likely into the bus ride home on Monday morning.

"The way we pulled it out today, even through the rain delay, it was great," Reed said of the game, which lasted nearly six hours from start to finish following two rain delays. "It shows we got a lot of fight in our club."

The scene in Hoover was quite different from last year, when Florida lost to LSU in the SEC Championship.

In 2014, UF didn’t have the trio of freshman that it does now, including tournament MVP Schwarz, who finished with 10 hits and six RBIs while accounting for five of UF’s 36 runs during the tournament.

"This is awesome. It’s such an honor to win this thing," Schwarz said.

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"You know, to be able to play this well with all these great teams in this tournament ... It’s really big going into regionals. We needed this win."

Florida will have home field advantage throughout its Regional and Super Regional bracket, should the Gators advance.

The winner of the Gainesville Regional will face the winner of the Tallahassee Regional in a Super Regional next weekend. The eight Super Regional winners advance to the College World Series.

The road to Omaha, Nebraska, will likely go through at least one of those three teams.

"We’re going right back to the grind," Reed said. "Baseball is constant, it’s all about repetition. And that’s what we’re gonna do."

Coach Kevin O’Sullivan will enter his eighth-straight NCAA tournament in as many years and will look to advance to the Super Regionals and College World series for the first time since 2012.

"I feel good," O’Sullivan said after Sunday’s win. "I think we’re swinging the bats well, we’re playing great defense and we got all of our pitching in."

And while they did celebrate, Florida’s players, especially those who experienced an early exit in last year’s Regional round, are far from satisfied.

"The end goal is obviously Omaha," junior Danny Young said.

"The key to getting to Omaha is getting hot at the right time, and I think if you’ve watched us play throughout the past couple weeks, and especially this tournament, we’re all getting hot and I think we’re gonna make a deep run."

A GatorZone video contributed to this report.

Follow Ian Cohen on Twitter @icohenb

UF's JJ Schwarz rounds third base during Florida's 12-5 win against South Carolina on April 11, 2015 at McKethan Stadium.

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