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Florida pitcher Hurston Waldrep throws against South Carolina in the first inning during Game 2 of the Gainesville Super Regional on Saturday in Gainesville. (JOHN RAOUX/Associated Press)
GAINESVILLE — Hurston Waldrep had 13 strikeouts over eight scoreless innings, Colby Halter had three RBIs and Florida beat South Carolina 4-0 Saturday to sweep the best-of-3 Gainesville Super Regional and advance to the College World Series.
Florida (50-15), which has won five games in a row, earned its first CWS berth since making four straight trips to Omaha from 2015-18.
"This was the most awesome thing I could ever dream of," Waldrep said. "This crowd, this team, this is amazing. This is what you play college baseball for. This is why you come to this level."
Waldrep (9-3), who had his sixth game this season with at least 10 strikeouts, gave up just three hits.
"He was outstanding," Florida head coach Kevin O'Sullivan said. "I mean his line and the performance speaks for itself. Really pleased with Brandon(Neely) to be able to come in and get the last three outs. He's been extremely selfless this entire year. Taken on a role after starting last year and now he's taken to the closer role. Hurston came here for a reason and he wanted the opportunity to put is in position to go to Omaha and he certainly pitched as good as he has all year long."
Josh Rivera went 3 for 5 with a double and an RBI for the Gators and BT Riopelle, who went 0 for 2, walked twice and scored twice.
South Carolina (42-21) swept three regular games against the Gators in the regular season by a combined score of 25-10 but managed just four runs in back-to-back losses at the super regional.
The Gamecocks had just one runner move beyond first base, when Ethan Petry reached and advanced to second on an error in the bottom of the fourth before back-to-back groundouts ended the inning.
The start of the game was delayed by nearly 3 hours due to inclement weather.
"First off, just want to congratulate South Carolina on a great year," O’Sullivan said. "They put themselves in a position that we all want to be in. They've got a really good lineup and when (Jack) Mahoney pitched the first inning, I thought it was going to be a really low scoring game and it certainly turned out to be that way. Obviously, disappointing for them, but they had a great year.
“As far as getting back, I'm just kind of taking it all in right now. Honestly, I'm kind of projecting my feelings towards this staff, players, everyone that's involved. It takes a group effort to get to this point. We'll take a day or two to regroup. Just happy to have the opportunity to experience this. The thing is that we put ourselves in a position, getting to Omaha is goal number one, but we feel like we have a team that can potentially do some special things in Omaha. We'll figure out who we play the first game and go from there."