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Cade Kurland hits walk-off HR to cap Florida’s sweep of Dayton
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Cade Kurland did not start Florida’s series finale against Dayton, but that did not stop him from having a monster game. Kurland hit 2 home runs on the day, including the game-winner to give Florida a walk-off via run rule.
Kevin O’Sullivan’s Gators were comfortably ahead 10-2 in the bottom of the 8th inning. Kurland came to the play with 1 on and 2 outs. He decided the Gators did not need to play the 9th.
With a 2-run blast, his 2nd dinger of the day, Kurland made it 12-2. The 10-run lead ended the game via run rule.
Kurland entered the game as a pinch hitter in the 5th inning. In 3 at-bats, he would finish as Florida’s RBI leader with 4 on a pair of 2-run homers in the 7th and 8th innings.
It was another strong day on the mound for Sully’s squad.
Pierce Coppola improved to 2-0 on the season with another solid outing. The 6-8 redshirt junior left-hander went 5 innings, allowing 2 earned runs on 3 hits and 1 walk, striking out 8 of his 19 batters faced. Coppola threw 74 pitches with 54 going for strikes. His ERA is 1.80 through 2 games.
Luke McNeillie and Aidan King provided 3 scoreless innings in relief.
The Gators won the first 2 games by scores of 13-1 (Friday) and 11-1 (Saturday). Up next, Florida hits the road to face Stetson on Tuesday (6:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+).
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
