Knights defeat No. 5 Florida, sweep Gators series

The Knights had faith in Joe Rogers on Wednesday night.

The closer entered the game with the bases loaded in the eighth and promptly gave up a grand slam to No. 5 Florida's Preston Tucker. After that, he struck out four in 1-2/3 innings to hold on to an 8-6 UCF victory and the series sweep in front of a record crowd at Jay Bergman Field.

"There's nobody in the country I want on the mound rather than that guy, period," said head coach Terry Rooney. "He wasn't coming out of the game, I can promise you that."

UCF (24-14) beat Florida (28-10) April 5 in Gainesville in Game One of the two-game series. The Knights hadn't swept a series against the Gators since 1990.

The Knights started the eighth inning leading 8-0 when D.J. Hicks, the sixth of seven UCF pitchers, gave up four hits, including a two-run home run, plunked a batter and left the bases loaded for Rogers. The southpaw gave up a grand slam to his first batter and a deep double to his second before he caught the next two swinging and ended the inning.

"That grand slam was rough," Rogers said. "I left up a hanging, breaking ball and good hitters are going to take advantage of it and that's what he did. I just tried to keep my composure, just go pitch-to-pitch and try to go after the next guy and kind of stop the bleeding."

With the tying run at the plate in the top of the ninth, Rogers struck out the last batter.

"We always have faith in Joe and to end it like that was incredible," said third baseman Derek Luciano.

Starter Chase Bradford (3-1) pitched two scoreless, hitless innings and retired all six batters that he faced to earn the win. Rooney stuck with his plan, though, and pitched by committee.

Alex Besaw, Brennan Dobbins and Bryan Brown each pitched a scoreless inning of relief while Nick Cicio threw two scoreless innings. Bradford, Dobbins, Brown and Cicio all faced only the minimum.

Florida's Tommy Toledo (2-3), the first of eight Gators on the mound, got the loss.

UCF scored seven of its eight runs with two outs.

The Knights put their first run on the board in the second when Travis Shreve singled in Erik Hempe. They added two in the third when Chris Taladay hit a two-run single to score Beau Taylor and Ronnie Richardson.

Taladay picked up another RBI in the fifth when he singled in Richardson, who hit a leadoff-double down the left-field line. The left fielder scored on Luciano's single.

The Knights continued their hit-brigade with Hicks' leadoff home run in the seventh and Jonathan Griffin's single. With two outs, Luciano hit his fourth home run of the year.

"They were giving me good opportunities to drive guys in," Luciano said. "Other guys were getting on base and giving me better pitches, so I've got to give the credit to them."

Luciano finished the game 2-for-4 and Taladay went 2-for-5, and each of them had three two-out RBI. Taylor finished the night 3-for-4.

The Knights travel to Memphis for an important Conference USA series this weekend.

"We've got to play well in conference," Rooney said. "I think we've established ourselves in the non-conference games. We've had, I guess you could call it several marquee wins, so to speak. We beat Rice twice on the road, we just swept Florida, we beat Stetson. We've done some things, that's why our RPI is what it is, but at the end of the day we have to do well in conference."