Advertisement

No. 1 Florida baseball tops visiting USF 11-4

 
Published May 11, 2016

GAINESVILLE — Buddy Reed likely didn't expect much when the ball left his bat.

With Florida trailing USF 4-2 in the bottom of the sixth Tuesday night, the Gators' lefty lofted a fairly routine — though slicing — fly ball to leftfield.

USF's Cameron Montgomery appeared to have things under control at first. Then he looked confused. Then the ball was on its way to the wall. One run scored, and another in the same inning tied it. In the next frame UF, ranked No. 1 by Baseball America, scored the go-ahead run to take the lead and piled on from there.

And what had once looked like a possible upset of the Gators by the unranked Bulls had turned into a 11-4 UF rout.

Gators starter Scott Moss entered with a team-leading 0.68 ERA, but it rose to 2.20 as three earned runs in the first propelled USF (21-27) to a 3-0 lead.

But Bulls starter Michael Clarkson didn't fare much better. The Oldsmar native allowed two earned runs in the bottom of the first, accentuated by Plant High product Peter Alonso's RBI double off the leftfield wall. Alonso went on to drive in three runs on three hits with a walk.

Clarkson was able to settle down, though. At least until the sixth, when the two unearned runs tied the score.

The loss was USF's fifth consecutive overall. Florida (41-8) won its sixth in a row over the Bulls.

Penn State case: Pennsylvania prosecutors are dismissing as unreliable allegations that two assistant coaches at Penn State witnessed former assistant Jerry Sandusky having inappropriate or sexual contact with children in the late 1980s. Solicitor General Bruce Castor said investigators found the reports to be third- and fourth-hand and weren't valuable to prosecutors.

Tennis: The host Saint Leo women won the South Region 1 final, 5-2 over West Florida. The Lions reached the 16-team Division II championships, May 18-21 in Denver and face Indianapolis on May 18 in the first round.

Volleyball: Florida's Rhamat Alhassan and Alex Holston and Florida State's Nicole Walch were named to the 19-player training camp roster for the U.S. national team in preparation for the Pan American Cup. The final roster will be named in June for the event, which is June 30-July 11 in the Dominican Republic.

Basketball: Former FSU center Adut Bulgak, drafted last month by the WNBA's New York Liberty, was one of 24 players invited to the Canadian national team camp to determine the team's roster for the Summer Olympics. … Rex Hughes, who coached at Kent State and was an assistant at USC and UNLV as well as in the NBA, died of cancer Monday in Nipomo, Calif. He was 77.

Information from Times wires was used in this report.