A late surge by Florida in the seventh inning fell short as the Auburn baseball team held on to upset the No. 19 ranked Gators 7-4 Friday, May 10 at McKethan Stadium in Gainesville.
The game was Auburn's fifth straight victory and third conference win in a row, improving the Tigers to 30-19 on the season and 10-15 in the SEC.
"I thought our guys did a really good job and managed to come up with some really big hits," Auburn Head Coach John Pawlowski said. "Ryan Tella with the three-run home run and (Dan) Glevenyak hits a double into the corner. I feel like this club is playing with a lot of confidence now and good things are happening. We have to clean up a few things, we made a few mistakes defensively, but we overcame those. When you are playing better you find a way to do that."
With the game still scoreless in the fourth, a three-run homerun over the right field wall by Ryan Tella set the momentum for Auburn. After Dan Glevenyak singled to second base and Jordan Ebert walked, Tella stepped up and hit his second homerun of the season.
"I got down 2-2 and I just remember today in BP I was missing a few balls and (hitting coach Gabe Gross) pulled me aside and told me to put my foot down to give me a pause and give me a little more reaction to the outside too," Tella said. "Gabe told us that all balls die in center but carry to the corners."
In the fifth the Tigers increased their lead when Glevenyak drove in two runs with a deep double to right field followed by an RBI single from Ebert to give Auburn the 6-0 lead.
Starter Conner Kendrick controlled the game for the Tigers, pitching a shutout until the seventh inning. He finished the game allowing one earned run off of seven hits and threw four strikeouts before being replaced by Trey Cochran-Gill.
After pitching for two batters, Cochran-Gill was quickly replaced by Terrance Dedrick to finish the seventh and close the game. Dedrick finished with four strikeouts in the two final innings and stopped the Gator's chance at a comeback, denying them any hits or runs.
Florida had only four hits in the first six innings of the game until the Gators capitalized off of Auburn errors scoring four runs, three of which were unearned. The inning started with a ground ball to shortstop by Zack Powers that was overthrown by Glevenyak, advancing Powers to second. Three singles later, the Gators had scored four runs and cut Auburn's lead to just two.
Dedrick stopped the Gator comeback retiring three of four players in the eighth and striking out two of three in the ninth with the final out coming from a pop fly to right field.
The Tigers can gain their fourth series victory of the season by beating Florida Saturday, May 11 at 6 p.m.
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