The Missouri Tigers baseball team got its biggest lift of the season over the weekend, after a colossal series win over a top-5 opponent and being voted highly in the eyes of the rankings that followed it.
Mizzou faced No. 4 Florida for a three game set at Taylor Stadium in Columbia over Easter weekend. And, after slow start, the Tigers turned things around in dramatic fashion for the latter two of the series.
The Tigers (22-11, 8-4 SEC) began the weekend with a 5-1 loss to Flordia on Friday as it failed to capitalize on opportunities in the early goings and the Gators poured it on them in the hit department during the middle innings. Ace Reggie McClain suffered his second consecutive loss—the first time this year he’s lost two straight—and Brett Peel had the lone RBI in the 7th inning for Missouri.
But the next two days for the Tigers faired much better. Mizzou clobbered Florida in every way possible, hitting three multi run home runs and scoring all but two of its base runners home in a 10-1 battering of the Gators, who are not used to that kind of loss. The game flipped the script on a team that had one of the largest run-to-runs allowed ratios in the country.
Easter Sunday was another good day for Missouri Tigers baseball.
The Tigers followed the previous days shellacking with another victory, this time in more of a dramatic fashion. With the game a 3-0 for the Gators, Mizzou’s freshman Alex Del Rio, who spent almost all of the Tigers previous 30 games on the bench, doubled into left to bring in two runs and to give the Tigers the game win and the series win.
Del Rio’s first RBIs of his career were part of a 5-run inning that eventually saw him home for his first career run as well. Mizzou’s bullpen sealed the deal in the second half of the game, and the Tigers escaped with a 5-3 win and 2-1 series win over the No. 4 team in all the land.
It was Mizzou’s second series win over a Top-10 opponent and its third conference series win of 2015 thus far.
It’s perhaps a program high in the last decade for Mizzou’s baseball. And it will be a watershed moment of the 2015 season for a club that now has more conference wins than it did all of last season.
A day later, four different rankings have Missouri as ranked, the highest of which is No. 20 in the USA Today poll. This signals the official arrival of the Missouri Tigers baseball team, which finished near the bottom of the SEC each of the previous two seasons. This turnaround is one of the bright stories in college baseball and Missouri looks poised for a run in the SEC east division.
The Tigers take a few days off before getting back to work against Tennessee this Friday.