USF reigns in the rain to put Miami baseball on the brink of elimination
With the NCAA Gainesville Regional No. 1 seed Florida Gators losing their elimination game early Saturday and the No. 2 seed University of Miami entering the later game in the winners’ bracket, the Hurricanes had everything aligned perfectly. Everything, that is, except for a rising South Florida Bulls team and torrential rain in the fourth inning that made it impossible for UM fielders to see the ball but for some reason didn’t compel umpires to call for a weather delay with the at-bat Bulls leading 3-1.
After that, everything pretty much fell apart for Miami, which lost 10-2 to No. 4 seed South Florida (30-27) and entered the losers’ bracket. Miami (33-20) is now one game from elimination when it meets No. 3 seed South Alabama (34-21) at noon Sunday. The South Alabama Jaguars are the team UM beat 1-0 Friday night in its opener.
South Alabama also is the team that on Saturday absolutely pounded the Gators 19-1, UF’s second largest margin of defeat in program history, to eliminate the No. 15 national seed Gators at their home field. South Florida had defeated UF in the regional opener early Friday.
The Canes must now win three games in a row — two on Sunday and one Monday — to win the regional and advance to a super regional. One more loss will end their season.
“Tough game,’’ UM coach Gino DiMare said, expounding that the easiest route to win a regional is to win three straight. “That’s not going to be the case now.
“At the end of the day it doesn’t matter, [as long as] you [can] get through and be a regional champion. They’re not going to ask you, ‘How many games did it take you to do it?’ We’ve just gotta find a way to do it. It’s gonna be harder, no doubt. It’s not the route we wanted to go, but we better have that mentality if we’re going to get through this.”
Back to Saturday’s UM defeat: The Bulls had gone ahead in their eventual five-run fourth on RBI-singles by Nelson Rivera and Nick Gonzalez. That was it for UM starting pitcher and eventual loser Jake Smith (5 earned runs on 5 hits and 3 walks in 3 1/3 innings), who was replaced by reliever Andrew Walters. Then the rain began to fall hard. Walters walked Carmine Lane, the first batter he faced, to load the bases for Riley Hogan, who hit a routine fly to left-center that was completely lost amid the driving rain and dropped onto the ground to score Rivera and Gonzalez and put USF ahead 5-1.
The umpires reconsidered — DiMare visibly livid at what transpired just moments before — and halted the game at 8:07 p.m. with one out, USF runners on second and third and the rain still pounding. The game resumed at 9:29 p.m. after Walters, who was replaced by Alex McFarlane, had thrown just nine pitches.
“Jake wasn’t sharp, no doubt about it,’’ DiMare said. “Just one of those nights where it was tough and the pitch count was up. Once we fell behind there, of course the rain thing got a little of messy.“
USF, whose players gleefully danced in their dugout throughout the night, went on to score another run in the fourth on a wild pitch by McFarlane, and led 6-1, then got two more in the fifth on another RBI-single by Rivera and an unearned run on a double play that followed an earlier UM throwing error by first baseman Alex Toral.
The Bulls scored a run in each of the seventh and eighth innings, after UM scored one on a bases-loaded sac fly in the seventh by Yohandy Morales.
Once again the Canes, who scattered eight hits, could could barely put together runs.
“If there was a magic thing obviously I would have waved it a long time ago,’’ DiMare said. “Hitting is a contagious thing. The problem is we’re not hitting with guys in scoring position. We left 10 guys on base. We’re leaving too many guys on base.
“Gotta get the leadoff guy on base, that helps. That’s a good recipe for scoring runs. You gotta be good at situational hitting and of course when you get guys in scoring position, you gotta knock them in…The game got away from us. Guys kept battling. I got no problem with that. We certainly would like to score more runs. I’m hoping it’ll click. It’s going to have to click here soon.”
USF’s Logan Lyle (5-1) earned the victory.
At 6 p.m. Sunday the Bulls will meet the winner of Sunday’s early UM-South Alabama game. A South Florida victory would give USF the regional title and send the Bulls to a super regional next weekend.
This story was originally published June 5, 2021 at 11:07 PM.
