Gator baseball team sweeps No. 5 Vanderbilt in home series finale, 6-2

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) - It was Senior Day at Condron Ballpark for the Florida baseball team. Florida’s “two-way” player gave the seven seniors a memorable afternoon and swept No. 5 Vanderbilt, 6-2 as they are the lone team at the top of the conference.

It was also Mother’s Day as Jac Caglianone (5-2) pitched 6 2/3 innings, surrendered one hit off one earned run, a walk and rang up nine batters tying his career high.

Head coach Kevin O’Sullivan said about Caglianone’s performance, “We ask a lot of him. It’s 90-plus degrees outside today and he’s doing two-way, and he gave us over a hundred pitches. We couldn’t ask for any more from him.”

Florida’s pitchers combined for a record of 3-0 this weekend with a 0.72 ERA and 27 strikeouts in 24 innings.

For the third day in a row, The Gators (40-12) set the tone with a homer. In the bottom of the first inning, runner is on for Wyatt Langford as he hit a two-run shot for a 2-0 lead. Florida put up another run off a bases loaded situation for Luke Heyman. Heyman with the sacrifice grounder to bring home Caglianone, 3-0.

In the next two innings, the Gators added two more runs off Langford’s RBI double in the fourth inning and BT Riopelle’s RBI single in the fifth inning, 5-0. In the top of the seventh inning, the Commodores (36-15) put one on the board off Troy LaNeve’s RBI single, 5-1. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Langford ended the day with his second jack of the day to put this game away.

O’Sullivan said about the sweep, “I don’t care who you sweep, but that team in the other dugout is pretty darn good. They can swing the bats, we just did a good job this weekend pitching-wise. I think the key to this weekend was keeping Enrique (Bradfield Jr.) off the basepaths. It was just one of those weekends… Sometimes it’s not who you play, it’s when you play them, and we played pretty darn well this weekend.”

It is the first time since 2018 that Florida swept Vanderbilt.

They will end the regular season on the road at Kentucky next Thursday. First pitch is at 6:30pm.

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