Sunshine State rivals No. 3 Florida (21-4/4-2 SEC) and No. 7t Florida State (18-6/6-3 ACC) will break from the conference grind for the third of four regular-season meetings on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at The Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville. The game will be televised live on FOX Sports Florida. The squads have split the first two encounters and will later meet in Tallahassee on April 12.
Junior right-hander Anthony DeSclafani (Freehold, N.J.) (3-0, 1.12, three saves) is set for his second start of the season and will face FSU junior righty Hunter Scantling (1-0, 1.04). Over 16 innings this season, DeSclafani has totaled 17 strikeouts and permitted two walks, while holding opponents to a .172 average. He fired four shutout innings against Florida Atlantic on Feb. 22, with three hits and three K.
Florida saw an end to its season-high 10-game winning streak with a 9-2 loss to No. 4 South Carolina last Friday before rebounding on Saturday with a 2-1 triumph. The Gamecocks overcame a 3-0 deficit with four unanswered runs to take Sunday’s finale, 4-3. Florida State dominated Wake Forest in its series opener, 12-4, before falling by an 8-0 score in game two. The Seminoles cruised to an 11-2 win in the rubber game with the Demon Deacons and is in first place in the Atlantic Division of the ACC standings with a 6-3 league mark.
This will be the fifth annual clash between the squads in Jacksonville during the regular season. Since UF claimed the initial contest with a 16-7 victory on April 3, 2007, FSU has taken the last three games: 10-2 on April 1, 2008, 3-2 in five innings due to weather conditions on March 31, 2009, and 7-2 on March 30 last season.
In the teams’ last meeting, junior Daniel Pigott (Ormond Beach, Fla.) delivered a walk-off single in the 10th inning that scored sophomore Nolan Fontana (Winter Garden, Fla.) with the winning run as UF edged No. 4 FSU, 5-4, on March 15 in front of a record crowd of 5,930 fans at McKethan Stadium. The Seminoles used a four-run third to grab the lead but were held scoreless for the final seven innings of the contest.
After DeSclafani retired the Seminoles in order to begin each club’s first extra-inning affair of the season, Fontana ripped a one-out triple into the right-field corner off FSU senior Mike McGee. Pigott (3-for-4) battled to a 3-2 count before slicing a single into center field that snapped a four-game slide for the Gators against their rivals. The game-winning hit represented Pigott’s career-best fourth RBI of the night and the junior also set a personal best with two walks.
In the initial meeting of the season, Florida State used a five-run third inning to post a 5-3 win in front of 7,869 fans at the Florida Four held at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa on March 1. After Florida pulled to within 5-3 in the sixth, FSU’s relievers retired the final 10 Gator hitters to secure the victory. Sophomore right-hander Scott Sitz worked five innings for the win, while McGee struck out the side in the ninth to pick up his first save.
Junior Tommy Toledo (Tampa, Fla.) gave up two hits and three runs, with three walks and one strikeout over 2.1 innings and was followed to the mound by junior Alex Panteliodis (Tampa, Fla.) (2.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R). Junior Preston Tucker (Tampa, Fla.) went 2-for-4 with an RBI single in the third, while Pigott and sophomore Kamm Washington (Boynton Beach, Fla.) had back-to-back two-out singles in the sixth. UF’s pitchers yielded a season-high five walks and its defense committed a then-season-high two errors.
