While college baseball’s reputation is for high-scoring games and lots of long balls, the Florida Gators won their first national championship with solid fundamentals. Pitching, defense and base-running all played pivotal parts of Florida’s season, none more important than in the two wins over LSU in the national title round in Omaha.

A combination of Alex Faedo and Brady Singer as back-to-back starters proved too much for LSU, previously undefeated in the CWS championship round.

“I’m so happy for our players,” Gators head coach Kevin O’Sullivan said after the 6-1 win and a two-game sweep of LSU. “It’s all about them for all of their hard work. We always knew there’d be one first team (to win it) and I’m glad it was this one. This is a gritty group.”

It was pretty routine to start for Florida, bottom of the first with runners on first and 3rd, JJ Schwarz singled to left to score Deacon Liput to give the Gators a 1-0 lead.

In the bottom of the 2nd, Nick Horvath scored from second on a Liput single up the middle to give them a 2-0 lead.

Holding a 2-1 lead in the top of the 7th, LSU put runners on 1st and 3rd with no outs. Michael Papierski hit a grounder to second and Florida turns the double play with the tying run apparently scoring from 3rd. But LSU’s Jake Slaughter was called for interference at second base, sending the runner back to third. Slaughter didn’t slide directly into the base and the second base umpire called interference immediately. Call it a bad rule or a bad call but the rule was enforced and Florida got out of the inning with a one-run lead.

Again in the 8th, LSU had runners on the corners but first baseman JJ Schwarz fielded a ground ball flawlessly and threw out Kramer Robertson at the plate who was going on contact to maintain the 2-1 lead.

Adding four insurance runs in the bottom of the 8th, the Gators took a 6-1 lead to the ninth inning. Jackson Kowar got the final out and Florida won their first national baseball championship, joining just a handful of schools who have won national titles in football, basketball and baseball.

And the Gators are loaded for the future with Freshman pitcher Tyler Dyson and starter Brady Singer coming back next year. Dyson went six innings in the deciding game giving up three hits and just one run in only his second start as a collegian. Singer is considered the best player in college baseball returning for 2018 and could easily be the top pick int eh MLB draft next year.

“We always thought we had a shot with our class,” said the CWS Outstanding player, pitcher Alex Faedo. “(Pitching) has been the bread and butter this year and the hitters showed up here (In Omaha) to get us enough runs.”

Standing in the back of the “media lounge” (a euphemism for the eating room) behind the Norm Carlson Press Box at Florida Field two years ago, Will Muschamp was introduced to the Gator Nation as their next head football coach. The anticipation was thick and exciting.

Muschamp had been the “coach in waiting” at Texas and was long considered the next great head coach ever since he took his first assistants job. Everybody knew he was intense and demanding. He wanted to win, knew winning from his days as a player at Georgia and as an assistant under Mack Brown.

Gator fans seemed to be anxious to move on from the Urban Meyer era as well. Meyer won, but did it ungraciously and he never embraced being a “Gator.” The fact that he quit the year before only to be talked out of it seemed to wring any enthusiasm out of his final season.

The media was upbeat about the Muschamp hiring as well. After years of Steve Spurrier’s entertaining relationship with those covering Gator football, Ron Zook was fine but no fun and Meyer was so condescending and imperial that the scribes and radio/tv types were ready for him to leave town.

Florida athletics has always had a difficult relationship with the media in general. For years the football program underperformed and was always considered a “sleeping giant” in Bear Bryant’s words. It gave those close to the program a little bit of a complex. Saying the program was under more scrutiny than any other because of the number of newspapers, radio and TV stations, access was fairly limited. While a bit of hyperbole, there’s no question that interest in Florida football was (and is) high in all four corners of the state.

Muschamp was introduced and took the podium as the young, energetic up and coming coach that he was. Fans wanted to embrace him. Heck, the media wanted to like him. (On a side note, covering a big-time college football team is different than covering just about anything else. Most of the “reporters” are either school graduates or fans. Mostly young and eager, sometimes coaches take advantage of that and run roughshod over the ones just trying to do their job.) So as Muschamp began his nearly 19 minute opening statement (the joke was he didn’t take a breath) we heard a lot of the high-minded, motivational things that made him the premier candidate for a big college football job.

Then he said something like, “No matter what you all think here, we’re going to do it our way.”

What?

It was such an upbeat occasion that it didn’t quite register that Muschamp was outlining his idea of what the media’s role would be surrounding his program. He was throwing down the hackneyed gauntlet that they were the team and you’re not. OK, no problem. It’s not going to be the backslapping Charley Pell relationship or the Spurrier show we could look forward to every week. Muschamp’s closing of practices and cut-off of training camp followed his model to the chagrin of reporters and fans alike.

There’s no question there’s a learning curve for assistants who are elevated to the top job in that environment. And give Muschamp credit for adapting a bit, creating a laugh or two during the season and starting to sort out how this coach/media relationship works. That’s why it was almost amusing when after a big win over FSU and the conclusion of a fantastic one-loss season nobody outside of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium expected, Muschamp said, “We didn’t prepare any differently. I know it disappoints you all but we didn’t put this one on the mantle and stare at it for 364 days.”

What?

Disappoints us?

I don’t know of any vendetta somebody has for the Gators head coach. Maybe he uses some imaginary slight or perception of what people think he’s doing as motivation. A lot of people do that to fuel their intensity. Muschamp’s intensity is already legendary. His ability to transform Florida into a contender in one year will be studied by other coaches looking for his secret. He’s a fabulous coach, no question. A bit of work on his public persona and “legendary” is probably in his future.

Nobody’s out to get you Coach. In fact, most of ’em are rooting for you.

I remember watching the NCAA selection show one year when JU was going to get a bid. They drew Temple in the first round in Dayton. Not bad I thought, until then-coach Bob Wenzel came on the news and complained loud and hard about being the 8th seed. He talked about how hard the 8-9 game was and how unfair the committee had been to the Dolphins. And he was right. But the Sun Belt Conference got no respect and the committee was making it tough on JU. Just an early example of how things can either go your way or not in the bracket.

This year’s 65-team field isn’t the best 65 teams in the country, but rather a cross section of representatives from different regions and conferences. Three-quarters of the teams are from east of the Mississippi. Duke seems to have the easiest road to the final four, with Alabama looking like their only obstacle to get to Atlanta.

Cincinnati’s road looks hardest. Nine of the 16 teams in the West probably have a legitimate shot at winning that region. It’s also where the most unfair seeding happened, with Gonzaga being placed at #6.

How is that important?

In the second round, they’ll face Arizona, a game that should be somewhere closer to the Final Four instead of the second round. Florida will have a tough time. Playing Creighton in Chicago, and then facing Illinois in the United Center, right in the Illini’s backyard. If they get by that, either Stanford or Kansas will be waiting.

Georgia’s road could be a little smoother with Texas Tech, NC State and U Conn looming on the horizon. There will be upsets but I’ll stick with the four teams who should have been the #1 seeds: Maryland, Duke, Kansas and Oklahoma to get to the Four.

Duke and Kansas will be there, I’m taking Oklahoma because they’re hot, and Maryland, because I went there. I think that’s the same kind of logic the committee used anyway. I’ve only got one suggestion that people come up with every year. Put everybody in the tournament. That’s right, all 200+ teams get a chance. I know the conference championship tournaments give teams a shot, but just extend the NCAA’ s by two rounds, give a few teams a bye to even the number of teams out and let it be a free-for-all. The ultimate outcome won’t change. Parts of the current tournament format are unfair, but one thing never changes; to win it all, you have to beat everybody who’s put in front of you. Do that, and you deserve to be called a champion.