Florida Baseball Drops Sunday Game, Series To Arkansas

To win baseball games, teams need to score runs. Florida baseball is not currently very good at that. Because of that, the Gators dropped their 10th game of their last 20 on Sunday, falling 2-1 to Arkansas in 10 innings.

Florida scored its only run of the game in the bottom of the eighth, and it came on an RBI groundout by Preston Tucker with the bases loaded and one out. Mike Zunino followed Tucker with another groundout, and that's the story of how the reigning SEC Player of the Year and Florida's career RBI leader only managed to tie a baseball game after being handed a bases-loaded, one-out situation.

Florida starter Jonathon Crawford allowed two hits and a run in the top of the first, but settled down as the day wore on, going 4.2 innings and striking out six while allowing just three hits. The typical Gators bullpen studs acquitted themselves nicely, too, with Steven Rodriguez combining for 4.1 innings of scoreless work and six strikeouts, but Johnny Magliozzi yielded two runs and got one out in the top of the 10th, giving Arkansas its final 3-1 advantage.

Florida tried to respond in the bottom of the 10th with Taylor Gushue, Justin Shafer, and Jeff Moyer. That didn't work.

The Gators scored just five runs in their weekend series with the Razorbacks, and their talented offense is firing blanks at just the wrong time: SEC co-leader (tri-leader, actually) Kentucky welcomes UF to Lexington beginning on Thursday, and Florida could leave the Bluegrass State with a .500 record in conference if its bats don't make the trip.