Jonathon Crawford made people forget Sunday in a hurry.
In his first outing of the season, a loss to Cal State Fullerton, the sophomore right-handed pitcher faced seven batters and allowed four runs on five hits and a walk.
On Tuesday night, Crawford returned to the mound in a starting role against UCF and showed the promise Gators coach Kevin O’Sullivan talked about during the preseason.
“He’s got too good of an arm, he’s too talented and I’ve seen it enough in practice in the fall and the spring to believe and to know it’s going to show up,” O’Sullivan said.
Crawford held the No. 19 Knights (3-1) hitless through 4.1 innings and finished a five-inning outing in which he said “everything” was working for him with four strikeouts, two hits and no runs, getting the decision in an eventual 8-0 victory for the No. 1 Gators. Before Tuesday night’s game, Crawford had only thrown a total of four innings in his brief career as a Gator. Coming out of Sunday, his ERA was listed at 108.00.
“There were obviously probably some questions coming into it, but he did his job and he did what we expected him to do,” senior right fielder Preston Tucker said.
Offensively, runs came early and often for Florida (4-1), which was swept by UCF in a pair of midweek games last season. After getting a rare start in center field, senior Daniel Pigott opened the gates in the first inning with a 1-1 shot to left that bounced out of the vastly vacant student-section bleachers.
The Gators would go on to score five runs in the first three innings, highlighted by a three-run third in which Casey Turgeon rounded out the scoring with an RBI single to right. The freshman second baseman has now hit in each of the five college games he has played and said there are no nerves.
“It’s a ball and a bat, man,” he said. “I’m having fun up there. That’s what it’s all about.”
Florida’s second and final home run of the night was a historic one. Tucker stepped in to lead off the fifth and lined a first-pitch fastball to right that was barely high enough to be his third homer of the year. It gave Tucker career RBI No. 214, tying the school record held by Brad Wilkerson.
“I barreled it up and hit it as hard as I could,” Tucker said. “I don’t know where it went, maybe I’ll go look for it later.”
With Pigott and Tucker’s home runs, the Gators have now hit seven long balls on the season, all of them solo shots. Florida’s offensive prowess Tuesday came despite stranding 13 runners on base, including three straight innings of leaving the bases loaded.
After Crawford’s stellar starting debut, relievers Daniel Gibson, Bobby Poyner and Ryan Harris combined to close Florida’s first shutout of UCF since 1977. Gibson was especially impressive, pitching two innings of one-hit ball.
“They battled and they’ll get better as they go along,” O’Sullivan said of his less-heralded relievers.
In his first start as a Gator, sophomore Jonathon Crawford tossed five scoreless innings while striking out four and allowing just two hits. Florida beat UCF 8-0 on Wednesday.
