Despite not winning their conference tournament, the Gators received some good news Monday.
No. 4 Florida (42-15) received the No. 3 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament and will host Florida Atlantic (35-22), Oregon State (31-22) and Bethune-Cookman (35-20) in the Gainesville Regional this weekend.
“We kind of figured we would be one of the eight (seeds), and I think that was our goal in the beginning of the season so we can host regionals and super regionals,” coach Kevin O’Sullivan said.
UF will begin play Friday at 7 p.m. against Bethune-Cookman in McKethan Stadium.
The Gators hope they fare a little better in the regional than they did in the Southeastern Conference Tournament, in which they were eliminated by Alabama (37-21) Saturday.
Despite conference officials’ decision to shorten each of the day’s games to seven innings because of weather and time logistics concerns, it felt like the game still wasn’t short enough for UF, which likely had a national seed locked up before the tourney.
The Gators, which had been on the road for 11 days, fell 5-2 to crowd-favorite Alabama in the shortened game, eliminating them from the double-elimination tournament.
Alabama pitcher Adam Morgan thrived off UF’s inpatient approach at the plate. He benefited from six first-pitch outs and 12 fly ball outs.
After giving up six runs in his first appearance against Florida on May 7, the left-hander lasted the full seven innings Saturday and only allowed two runs.
“He pitched up and down in the zone and mixed his pitches well,” senior Matt den Dekker said. “We didn’t adjust and hit a lot of fly ball outs and gave him too many easy outs.”
But UF pitcher Tommy Toledo didn’t help his own cause against the Crimson Tide.
The redshirt sophomore threw a pickoff attempt over first baseman Preston Tucker’s head in the first, allowing Alabama’s Josh Rutledge to advance from first to third. The shortstop later scored an unearned run off a sacrifice fly to give his team the early 1-0 lead.
Toledo, who made just his fourth appearance Saturday since returning from injury, continued to struggle from there until he was pulled in the fourth after pitching UF into a 5-0 deficit. He conceded five runs and allowed eight base runners in 3.2 innings of work.
“I don’t think he got hit awfully hard,” O’Sullivan said. “There were a couple of things that occurred during the game that happened because he hasn’t been out there in a while, but I’m encouraged with the way he threw the ball.”
The five-run deficit was too much for Florida to overcome, despite an encouraging performance from the bullpen.
The most impressive outing came from reliever Nick Maronde who had given up six earned runs in his last 2.2 innings before Saturday, when he struck out the side in the fifth.
The Gators even made some light of the left-hander’s control issues with a sarcastic applause from the dugout after Maronde threw seven straight strikes.
“We’ve been working awfully hard with (Maronde),” O’Sullivan. “He’s very talented and it’s not unusual that a good player goes through some tough times. That’s a huge, huge positive for us going into next weekend.”
The bullpen’s performance kept the game within striking distance, but UF’s offense could not figure out Morgan.
