Florida baseball head coach [autotag]Kevin O’Sullivan[/autotag] elected to move left fielder [autotag]Wyatt Langford[/autotag] up to the top of the order and drop second baseman [autotag]Colby Halter[/autotag] to the sixth spot in the order. The move paid off and helped the Gators’ offense get back on track on Friday as Langford went two for four with a home run and two RBIs and the team pushed across nine runs in a 9-2 victory versus Kentucky at Condron Ballpark.
The Gators still had pitcher [autotag]Brandon Sproat[/autotag] replacing ace [autotag]Hunter Barco[/autotag] who was ruled out on April 20 indefinitely with elbow discomfort. He recorded another strong outing like he did last weekend versus No. 1 Tennessee. He went 5 1/3 innings while only allowing five hits, three walks, no earned runs and five strikeouts.
Florida wasted little time attacking Wildcats’ starter Mason Hazelwood. Langford took him yard to open the ball game.
The Gators then wouldn’t notch another hit until the fifth inning when shortstop [autotag]Joshua Rivera[/autotag] doubled to left field. Three-straight singles followed Rivera’s double to increase their lead to 2-0. In the next at-bat, Hazelwood plunked right fielder [autotag]Sterlin Thompson[/autotag] to walk home a run. Florida tacked on two more runs later in the inning via sacrifice flies from center fielder [autotag]Jud Fabian[/autotag] and first baseman [autotag]Kendrick Calilao[/autotag].
Florida added on three more runs in the sixth inning and one more in the eighth. Kentucky broke the shutout when it blasted a home run off of reliever [autotag]Blake Purnell[/autotag] and smacked another one in the bottom of the ninth to get to the final score of 9-2.
The Gators did a great job of not fooling around with this unranked Kentucky squad and proceeded to set the tone for the rest of the weekend. Florida and the Wildcats return to Condron Ballpark for Game 2 on Saturday at 6 p.m. EDT.
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