FSU Baseball uses big bats to win NCAA opener over Florida Atlantic

FSU baseball got six home runs, including two from one player that hadn’t hit one at all this season, to take down the Owls in Friday’s regional opener.

Entering Friday’s first game of the Athens regional in the 2019 NCAA baseball tournament, the FSU baseball team was in a rare position as the Seminoles were the No. 3 seed in the region – the first time in the 40 appearances under head coach Mike Martin that the Noles entered the first game of the tournament as the away team.

The Noles (37-21) were very quick to turn things around in a season that had them wondering if you would see some garnet and gold in the tournament as FSU baseball used a season high 20 hits to get an opening round 13-7 victory over Florida Atlantic and put themselves in the driver’s seat in the region.

For the Seminoles, the action started in the second inning when they scored five runs – all of them coming off of three home runs from J.C. Flowers along with Drew Mendoza and the first of the season for Tim Becker – to pace the way this game was going to go for both teams.

Mendoza would hit a two run homer in the sixth inning to extend the lead for the Noles to 8-2 before the Owls scored three runs to cut their deficit back down to three runs. In the seventh inning, Becker – a native of Palm Beach County who went to high school less than 30 minutes from the FAU campus – went deep for his second homer of the game.

The Owls would score two more runs in the seventh inning to again cut the deficit down to three runs before the Seminoles scored again with three runs in the top of the ninth inning and retired Florida Atlantic in order to end the game and get the first “upset” of the tournament so far.

The highlight of the day for the FSU baseball would be the four horsemen that batted 9th, 1st, 2nd and 3rd as the combination of Becker, Mike Salvatore, Reese Albert and Mendoza went a combined 12 for 23 at the plate with four homers and 10 RBIs total in the game.

On the mound, Drew Parrish got the win after going five innings while giving most of the relief work to Antonio Velez – who went three and a third innings and allowed just one hit while striking out three Owls.

FSU baseball returns to the field on Saturday evening when they will take on the winner of Friday’s late game between No. 1 seed Georgia and No. 4 seed Mercer.