Miami Baseball Falls Flat in Ohama, Drops Opener in CWS 15-3 to UF

Miami finally made it back to Omaha after what felt like a very long drought.

If they hope for more than a very brief stay, they better get it together pretty quickly.

An uncharacteristically bad start by Andre Suarez and some missed early opportunities doomed the 'Canes in an awful 15-3 loss to the Florida Gators in Omaha.

In the top of the first inning, Miami's offense wasted no time putting pressure on UF starter Logan Shore.

Ricky Eusebio was hit by a pitch to start things off.   Chris Barr followed up with a perfectly place bunt single.

2 batters later a deep fly ball by All-American 3B David Thompson got UM on the board first.

But UM squandered what could have been a huge inning, as they produced just one run despite having the bases loaded and one out.

In the third the formula worked again as Thompson again produced a sac fly, this time scoring George Iskenderian, to make it  2-0.

But again they could have scored more.

An extremely questionable balk call on Suarez, who was otherwise cruising in the early going,  would cut the lead in half the bottom half of the inning though.

Meantime Shore pitched his way in and out of trouble time and time again.

This eventually allowed the Gators, who produced a huge 4th, to take the lead.

A Brandon Lopez error led to an RBI single for Buddy Reed, and Peter Alonso added a sac fly to make it 3-2.

Dalton Guthrie added another knock to increase the lead to 2.

The wheels came off shortly after.

The hits just kept on coming and coming for the team from Gainesville.

When all was said and done Suarez would get knocked from the game in the inning, and Florida would be up 11-2 as even Sam Abrams couldn't pitch the Hurricanes out of trouble.

UF was clearly making the most of their opportunities,  the 'Canes were not.  UM left 6 runners on base through the first 4 innings.  Florida's 11 run 4th (despite just one XBH) broke the game wide open.  Their big 4th inning tied the most ever scored in an inning in CWS history.

From there it was all academic.

Miami will have to beat Arkansas on Monday to stay alive.  If they do, they likely need to come back and beat these same Gators twice after that.

Quite the tall task.