Baseball rallies for key win

Brandon McArthur's improbable journey continues to roll on.

Florida's senior first baseman added to his Gator legend Thursday night when he broke a 6-6 tie with a two-out, two-run home run in the eighth inning to lift Florida to an 8-6 win over No. 13 Vanderbilt at McKethan Stadium.

"I'm on cloud nine right now," said McArthur, who has been playing with a ruptured right anterior cruciate ligament since April 2. "I don't know what to say."

Two batters before McArthur's heroics, fellow senior Bryson Barber launched a two-out, two-run home run off the right field foul pole that tied the game at 6-6.

"We're seniors," Barber said. "It's our time to step up and we did."

Senior Josh Edmondson (4-3) retired Vanderbilt quietly in the ninth as Florida won for the first time in 15 games this season when trailing after seven innings.

"We've been waiting a long time to get a win like this," Gator coach Kevin O'Sullivan said. "It's a great start to the series."

The win moved Florida one step closer to earning one of eight berths in next week's SEC Tournament. The Gators (32-20, 15-13 SEC) are now two games ahead of ninth place South Carolina, which lost to Tennessee, 13-2, Thursday and fell to 13-15 in the SEC.

Florida can clinch an SEC berth with a win over Vanderbilt when the series continues tonight at 6:30, or with another South Carolina loss. The Gamecocks' loss meant that Vanderbilt (37-16, 15-12) clinched an SEC Tournament berth in spite of the loss.

O'Sullivan said he is only worried about what happens at McKethan Stadium.

"We've got to win the series," O'Sullivan said. "We're not going to worry about the other scores. We're not going to back into it."

It seems that McArthur won't let them. Playing in what is likely his last series at home, McArthur opened the game with an RBI triple in the first inning.

"I was hoping he was not going to leg out that triple," O'Sullivan said. "We've told him that before. But that's the competitor he is."

McArthur, though, would hurt his team when he committed a fifth-inning error, which led to two unearned Commodore runs. It wouldn't matter.

With Vanderbilt leading 6-4 in the bottom of the eighth and Clayton Pisani on first, Barber launched a pinch-hit home run off Vandy's Russell Brewer (4-2) to tie the game at six. The home run nearly hooked foul before clanging off the foul pole.

"I was leaning toward it to make sure it went fair," Barber said.

Avery Barnes (4-for-5) then singled to bring up McArthur. Surely, no one expected McArthur to launch one over the left field fence. He entered the game with one home run on the season and six in his career.

Of course, the home run didn't shock the Gators. McArthur is now hitting .400 since rupturing his ACL.

Now, the Gators have much more breathing room with two games to go in the season.

"A game like that kind of loosens us up a little bit," O'Sullivan said. "There's a lot of pressure on us this weekend. We needed this."

Notes

O'Sullivan said he had junior Patrick Keating, Saturday's scheduled starter, warming up in the bullpen in the ninth. O'Sullivan said he would have used Keating had David Macias reached with two outs in the ninth. O'Sullivan also said he might use Keating in relief today, then patch his staff together on Saturday. ... Florida center fielder Matt den Dekker extended his hitting streak to 11 games with a first-inning single.