Florida 2025 SEC Baseball Tournament Exit Interview

(On3.com photo)

By Jake Mastroianni

SEC Tournament Results: W, 11-3 vs. South Carolina; L, 3-1 vs. Ole Miss

Record: 38-20

There is not a coach in the country who does a better job of keeping his team poised through the struggles than Florida head coach Kevin O’Sullivan.

For the second straight season, his team found themselves in a huge hole due to a lot of key injuries, and yet he never panicked and was able to get the team back on track.

It’s a long list of significant injuries for the Gators this year, including top of the order bats like Cade Kurland (14 games played), Kyle Jones (4 games), and Colby Shelton (45 games).

And then to top it all off, on the final weekend of the regular season, they lost their team leader in catcher Luke Heyman for the rest of the season with a broken forearm.

On the mound, the formula was working perfectly early on with Liam Peterson, Pierce Coppola, and Jake Clemente in the weekend rotation.

Coppola went down during his third start of the year and is just now starting to ramp back up. Peterson missed a start at the beginning of SEC play. And Clemente got moved to the bullpen.

Freshman Aidan King stepped up in a huge way with a 2.76 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, and 72 strikeouts in 65.1 innings. He and Peterson form one of the best 1-2 punches in the country.

Clemente moving to the bullpen filled a huge need for the Gators, to go along with Luke McNeillie and Alex Philpott.

While the Florida pitching staff finished the regular season 13th in ERA, that line is very deceiving. Once Sullivan figured out the pieces, the pitching staff became one of the best in the country.

The bats finished with the sixth-best batting average in the conference, which was a huge weakness for them in 2024 despite all of the power. This year’s group was able to do both hitting .295 and slugging .503 as a team.

Bobby Boser, a transfer from South Florida, became a huge stabilizer atop the batting order, hitting .330 with 67 runs scored, 12 doubles, 16 home runs, 61 RBI, and 18 stolen bases.

Freshman Brendan Lawson quickly figured things out in the SEC, hitting over .300 with 12 doubles and 9 home runs to help support a veteran group with Brody Donay, Luke Heyman, and Shelton before the latter two went down.

What’s next

With 16 conference wins and an RPI at 16, Florida is on the bubble to host a regional, but that is unlikely. Instead, some unlucky one-seed will have to deal with one of the hottest teams in the country.

There is a chance Colby Shelton could be back for regionals, which would be huge for the offense after just losing a veteran like Heyman.

But once again, Sully has a group of arms that he can do battle with, and he’ll lean on them heavily in the postseason as he tries to make another run at Omaha.

Head Coach Kevin O’Sullivan on facing a lot of hardships this year after Tuesday’s win over South Carolina:

It's just one of those things that everybody has to deal with injuries, but when you lose your catcher and then your shortstop in Colby who we hope to get back for the regionals, and Cade Kurland who's one of our leaders for the entire year, you lose Kyle Jones for the entire year who played maybe three or four games, you're losing the whole middle of your defense, four of your top five hitters arguably, but then guys keep stepping up just like Hayden Yost steps up today and everybody else steps up, and it's been that type of year for us.

We never want to use it as an excuse. There's a standard at Florida and we just had to persevere through it. We still have a long ways to go, but certainly we put ourselves in position not even just to get in the tournament, but we're in discussion to host. We'll see what we need to do. It's been a lot of fun. It really has.

But they've got bigger goals ahead of them, so hopefully we can stay healthy just enough to put out a lineup.

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