Live Updates: Florida baseball vs LSU Tigers in College World Series final

OMAHA, Neb. — The Florida baseball team is playing for its season on Sunday afternoon at 3:00 pm. The Gators will send Hurston Waldrep to the mound

Florida and LSU meet on Sunday afternoon at 3 ET in Game 2. If LSU wins, the Tigers are national champions. If Florida wins, the teams will play Game 3 on Monday night at Charles Schwab Field. The Gators will send Hurston Waldrep to the mound. The right-hander is 3-0 in the NCAA Tournament with a 0.86 ERA.

“Anytime that guy gets on the mound is a great advantage for us. Ultimately we have to go out and execute. I think execution is the most important thing. You can throw out all the talent and throw out everything else. All that matters now is if you execute and make the pitch when it matters — or the at-bat when it matters or the defensive play when it matters.”

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Lineups

Will be posted when available

Game 1 Recap

LSU defeated Florida 4-3 in Game 1 of the best-of-three College World Series championship series on Saturday night in Omaha. Tigers designated hitter Cade Beloso snapped a 3-3 tie with a home run off UF closer Brandon Neely to lead off the top of the 11th inning.

The Gators trailed 2-0 before tying the game in the fifth inning on Cade Kurland’s RBI grounder to second. The Gators took a 3-2 lead in the sixth on a two-out solo home run from catcher BT Riopelle. LSU answered in the top of the eighth on a Tommy White solo home run off lefty Cade Fisher, who was otherwise unscathed in 3 1/3 innings in relief of starter Brandon Sproat. However, the Gators squandered some scoring opportunities late in the game and struck out 20 times.

Game 1 quotes

Florida baseball manager Kevin O’Sullivan

Opening statement…
“Well, it was, obviously, a well-played game. We got off to a tough start on the mound. We ran into a lot of offensive counts. But Brandon was able to pitch his way out of it. Obviously, his pitch count got up there. I thought Cade came in and did an outstanding job. Obviously, he made that one mistake on the 0-2 count, but other than that he pitched great. And I thought Brandon pitched great. It came down to one pitch. Offensively, we struck out 20 times tonight. They only walked two. I just think our swings were a little bit big tonight. And we’ve handled the moment really well. Tonight, offensively I think we kind of got caught up in it a little bit and that kind of resulted in the strikeouts. But with that being said, we got Hurston going tomorrow, and we’ll do everything we can win tomorrow and force a Game 3. That simple.”

On the team bounding back tomorrow…
“Yeah, I think it’s hard right now. Once they go back to the hotel, get a shower, get something to eat – we’ll have them ready to play tomorrow. This team has shown fight the entire year. We’ve had a situation in Regionals we had to win three in a row, and we were able to do that. We’ll need some other guys to step up in the pen. But we certainly feel confident that they will. We’ve got a bunch of guys that have not even stepped on the mound yet. But they’ll be ready to play tomorrow.”

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