Florida beats LSU for first title.
OMAHA, Neb. — Maybe this wasn’t Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan’s best team, but it’s his first national championship team.
A year after the Gators went two games and out at the College World Series with a team seeded No. 1 and loaded with high draft picks, they completed a sweep of SEC rival LSU in the finals with a 6-1 victory Tuesday night.
Florida (52-19) scored four runs in the eighth inning to pull away and, for the first time in the program’s 103-year history, it will take the championship trophy to Gainesville.
LSU (52-20) lost for the first time in seven appearances in a championship game.
“Just a gritty group. That’s all I can say,” said O’Sullivan, the 10th-year coach who had brought the Gators to Omaha six of the past eight years.
The Gators came into this game with no everyday player hitting .300, and they were ranked 227th out of 300 NCAA Division I teams with a .258 batting average. The pitching overshadowed all shortcomings, and the Gators ended up with the No. 3 national seed after sharing the SEC regularseason title with LSU.
Florida was in the CWS for the 11th time and had been swept its two previous finals appearances, in 2005 and 2011.
O’Sullivan got creative for the final game, sending freshman Tyler Dyson to the mound for only his second start and calling on Jackson Kowar, who would have been the Game 3 starter, to finish the game.
Dyson held LSU to three hits in six innings after being staked to an early 2-0 lead when LSU, one of the best fielding teams in the nation, committed three errors the first two innings.
Things got interesting after Michael Byrne relieved Dyson in the seventh. LSU pulled to 2-1 and would have tied it if not for Jake Slaughter being called for runner interference at second base for sliding into shortstop Dalton Guthrie’s leg as he threw to first for a double play.
The next inning LSU had runners at the corners, but JJ Schwarz threw out Kramer Robertson at the plate and Zach Watson, the Tigers’ hottest hitter in the CWS, flew out.
Jared Poché (12-4), the Tigers’ all-time wins leader, took the loss in his last start.
“I don’t think anybody thought we would get to this point,” O’Sullivan said. “In mid-March we were hitting about .230 as a team. They kept working and believing, and I told them before the season started that we had what it took, the ingredients, to pull this thing off.”