Ryan McGeeESPN Senior Writer Jun 24, 2023 07:00 ET7 minutes read
SEC Showdown: The endgame between UF and LSU is pretty even
SEC Now’s Todd Walker previews the Gators vs. Tigers in the MCWS Finals and explains where each team has an advantage.
OMAHA, Nebraska – LSU and Florida.
The opponents in the 2023 Men’s College World Series best-of-three finals (Saturday, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN) know each other well, but they also don’t really know it.
The standard bearer of college baseball’s modern era is undoubtedly LSU, which has won six MCWS titles but none since 2009. When the Tigers last reached the Finals, they were denied their seventh title of 2017 by…Florida.
Florida has been under discussion for the top collegiate baseball program during LSU’s title drought, traveling to Omaha for the eighth time since 2010 and making the Finals for the fourth time since 2005. Yet somehow the Gators have flown, uh, sunk under the national radar.
It’s a duel of dynasties. A program trying to re-establish its place at the top of the sport while the others struggle to remind people that they have built their own power program.
“I can definitely see the similarities,” admitted Cade Beloso, aka “Creole Bambineaux,” a fifth-year thug and spiritual “glue guy” at the LSU clubhouse. “I think you have to be equal to both be at this point and to play a national championship.”
The Tigers and Gators certainly looked alike as they trudged through the tunnels at Charles Schwab Field, aka The Chuck, for batting practice in their tunnels on Friday. What LSU head coach Jay Johnson called a “roster of real grown men,” stuffed with very big baseball players fielding a very big baseball player base. But the manner in which these cadres were sourced is as different as it is the same: huge New Age transfer portal additions mixed in with old-school native recruits.
Florida boasts ESPN.com’s third-ranked MLB draft pick in left fielder Wyatt Langford, who hit a baseball-record 456 feet in the ninth inning and defeated Virginia in the second game of the MCWS. The only players ranked above him are the Tigers. Senior LSU outfielder Dylan Crews is already considered one of the best hitters in recent college baseball history, hitting .423 on 18 home runs and 69 RBIs. Teammate Paul Skenes, who ranks second on the list of MLB prospects, was just as productive on the hill. He’s 12-2 with a 1.69 ERA and a straight SEC career strikeouts mark of 209. Next year’s MLB draft will likely be picked by Florida’s Jac Caglianone, aka “Jactani,” the Swiss Army knife of college baseball, who hits 31,325 home runs and 84 RBI while posting a 7-3 pitching record with 85 strikeouts.
“I think they were initially recognized by their offense and rightly so, they have some star power in their lineup and I think our team was like that,” noted Kevin O’Sullivan, now in his 16th season as head coach from Florida. During his tenure, the Gators never missed the NCAA tournament and made eight trips to Omaha. “Of course they had Skenes, who had arguably the best season in college baseball history. But we still have Brandon Sproat (8-3, 127 Ks) who came back to school and we have Hurston Waldrep (a Southern Miss). Transfer, which is 10-3), of course, and Jac. So I think the biggest similarity I see from the outside is the improvement with their bullpen over the year and I think the same could also be said about us too.
Both teams are supported by a few Generation Johnson players who grew up in the world of West Coast Ball in California, Nevada and Arizona. Growing up heart and soul in the Sunshine State, O’Sullivan still drew on the teachings of his mentor Bob Shaw, an old-school former big league player who played for the Detroit Tigers in the World Series and an American Legion World Series won as head coach with O’Sullivan as his catcher.
LSU and Florida are both members of the SEC, the league that has produced the last three MCWS champions (8 of the last 13), had at least one team in 13 of the last 14 Finals, and will have both teams in the Finals this weekend for the fourth time since 2011. But even though they’re league mates, when these two titans of college baseball meet on Saturday night on the sport’s biggest stage, it will be the first time they’ve met since March 27, 2022 — a lapse of more than 30 years 454 days.
They’re so unknown that when Tre’ Morgan was asked to rate his Florida opponents on Friday morning, he politely shrugged and passed the task on to teammate Crews, who only knew about the other squad when he went to the LSU folk heroes He is a Florida native who grew up playing with a group of Gators as a youth league player.
To be clear, none of this was a diss.
“We’re focused on our side of the group and the opponents that we know we’re going to see when we get here,” Johnson explained, saying his team is loaded with binders full of information about Stanford, TCU and Wake Forest as well the other teams coming to Omaha have their side of the CWS schedule. They also had “three empty binders and one that said Florida 2022 waiting to see who we hope to face if we make it to the finals.”
Florida also admitted that it did not begin extensive research into cover series about LSU. But the Gators, who lost 3-0 in the first six days of the MCWS — resulting in two days off — watched the Tigers as baseball fans as they sat in the stands Thursday night at the epic semifinals that saw the LSU Wake Forest defeated eleven innings to advance.
“It’s been great watching me as a baseball fan because all of these games have been so great, including the ones we’ve been to. I’ll never forget this week, the rest of my life,” said Florida catcher and host BT Riopelle, referring to the fact that nine of the 13 MCWS games played to date have been decided by two runs or fewer. All three of the Gators’ wins were one-run wins. “But as great as it was, it’s almost time to think about all of this.”
Riopelle’s comment set a tone on Friday that was broadly shared by all teams. Amazement and entertainment are not the goals. Being in a dog poo on either Sunday afternoon or Monday night is that. Because of this, both teams appeared very easygoing during Friday’s practice sessions at the Chuck.
“Coach has always preached treating every game as if it were a league game, even if it’s a midweek game in March,” Crews said. “The idea is that when we achieve our ultimate goal of playing in a championship game, it feels normal. Every trip is a business trip. But now we’re here, in this game, so it feels like a business trip.”
LSU will have to continue without Skenes, who pitched eight shutout innings Thursday night unless the championship series reaches a Game 3 on Monday night, and even so, he likely won’t be ready for another long start. Florida’s employees are rested, but it’s their biggest bats that need to wake up. Cade Kurland, Langford and Caglianone, who came to Omaha after hitting 66 homers and 216 hits combined, battled at The Chuck with a combined 4-for-38 record. That’s a batting average of .105.
“There’s a real shift that needs to be made here at this stadium, a big place where runs and extra base hits can be hard to come by,” O’Sullivan said. “But we’re both in the same boat. So add that to your similarity list.”
It’s a long list. And at the top of that list is a similar goal: Win the 2023 Men’s College World Series.
“You want to play against the best,” Morgan said as he made his way to field practice. “I think whenever we finish here, no matter which team wins, nobody can doubt that we did it.”