HOOVER, Ala. — Sophomore Blake Cyr drove a 2-2 fastball over the left-field wall in the bottom of the fifth inning Wednesday afternoon at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium for a two-run home run that broke a 3-3 tie, capped a 4-for-5 day at the plate, and propelled the No. 5 seed Florida Gators past the No. 12 seed Vanderbilt Commodores 8-3 in the second round of the SEC Tournament. Florida will face No. 4 seed Alabama in the quarterfinals Thursday night.
Florida improved to 38-18 overall and 18-12 in SEC play. Vanderbilt dropped to 33-25 (14-16 SEC). The official attendance was 8,352.
For the No. 18-ranked Gators (per the D1Baseball Top 25), the win extends a 17-year NCAA Tournament appearance streak — the second-longest active streak in college baseball — and pairs them with No. 4 Alabama, whom they have not beaten this year. For the Commodores, the loss puts the program’s 19-year NCAA Tournament streak — the longest active streak in the country — into the hands of the selection committee Monday.
For Tim Corbin, in his 23rd season at Vanderbilt and four years removed from the program’s 2019 national title, the loss closes a season that may or may not end before Selection Monday.
The Gators face Alabama at approximately 8 p.m. ET Thursday on the SEC Network, with junior right-hander Liam Peterson (2-5, 4.00 ERA) starting against Alabama redshirt junior righty Tyler Fay (9-3, 4.43 ERA).
GATORS on the BOARD ?
? SECN pic.twitter.com/PqGQOGWlVe
— Florida Gators Baseball (@GatorsBB) May 20, 2026
Cyr breaks the tie
The game was tied 3-3 going into the bottom of the fifth. Vanderbilt had just come back from a 3-0 deficit with three runs in the top half of the inning — a two-run double to left-center by Braden Holcomb scored Mike Mancini and Brodie Johnston, and Logan Johnstone followed with an RBI triple to right-center to bring Holcomb home and knot the game.
Florida’s response was three batters long. Brendan Lawson worked a leadoff walk and stole second. Cyr stepped in and, after working through a 2-2 count, drove a fastball over the left-field wall for a two-run home run that put Florida back in front 5-3.
The blast capped a day that, for Cyr, was career-defining: 4-for-5, two doubles, a two-run homer, two RBI, one run scored. The four hits were his first four-hit game as a Gator.
“Baseball is definitely a mental sport,” Cyr said in the postgame press conference. “But I think the biggest thing for just anyone playing this game of baseball is, one thing that we use here at the University of Florida is that every game that we play is the most important game of the year. So that day that you might have had a bad day before, this next game’s the most important game of the year. You can’t even worry about what you’ve been through or what happened the next day or even no matter what happened off the baseball field because you’ve got to go out there and play your hardest and give everything you can for not just yourself, but for your team, for your coaches and what you’re playing for on the front of your jersey.”
Asked about his recent surge — Cyr has been on a tear over the past month — he gave a candid answer that pointed back to his personal life off the field.
“I had a tough year last year off the field. Being the first full year without my dad. And I didn’t really know how to separate off-the-field and on-the-field stuff. So I would say that mental battle was tough,” Cyr said. “Then I actually went up to the Cape and talked to some mentors. And it’s such a blessing to be able to be out here every single day. Honestly, I would give a lot of credit to Sully. He’s been an unbelievable person in that process outside the baseball field. He’s not just an awesome coach on the field, but off the field he cares so much about who you are and what’s going on. Him constantly checking in on me, and to lead me coming back this year with such a mental clarity and ready to go — I wouldn’t say it was just like something clicked in the middle of the season. I mean, in the fall I was just a totally different person. So I’m just out here having fun playing the game of baseball again, exactly doing what my pops would want me to do.”
Lawson, asked the same broader question about how players manage the sport’s failure rate, offered something different.
“It’s important to have things that you enjoy to do outside of baseball,” Lawson said. “For me, I really like playing guitar. I like fishing as well. When your time is over at the field, if you can have things that you’re passionate about and that you enjoy, it makes you realize that it’s just a game and failures are going to happen. And it allows you to clear your head and reset for the next day.”
Lawson and Yost finish the cycle
Florida’s offense was a three-headed monster Wednesday. Beyond Cyr’s four-hit day, Lawson went 3-for-3 with two RBI, two walks, three runs scored, one stolen base, and a leadoff home run to right field in the bottom of the eighth. Hayden Yost — a player O’Sullivan singled out in the postgame as one of the program’s “great stories” — went 3-for-4 with a solo home run to right in the second inning that gave the Gators a 3-0 lead, plus a one-out double in the sixth.
All three players (Cyr, Lawson, Yost) finished the day a triple short of the cycle.
Yost’s home run was his 10th of the year, all of which have come in the last 21 games played. He has raised his batting average from sub-.200 in March to .292 through Wednesday.
“What can you say about Hayden Yost? I mean, what a great story,” O’Sullivan said. “He’s raised his average up to .292, and he was sub .200 for a good part of the year. I don’t know how many home runs he’s hit in the last 20 games, but it’s quite a bit. It’s another great story to go along with the Caden McDonald story. And it’s just a testament to their hard work, not putting their head down and being good teammates. I’m a firm believer that as long as you stay the course, good things are going to happen to good people. And it certainly happened with those two.”
The Lawson home run in the eighth — his team-leading 15th of the season — pushed the Florida lead to 8-3 and effectively closed the game.
King and a clinical bullpen
Aidan King — newly named the 2026 SEC Pitcher of the Year on Monday — got his first-ever start in Hoover and made it a clean 4.2 innings. The Florida ace allowed three earned runs on five hits, walked three, struck out five, and exited at the 75-pitch limit O’Sullivan and pitching coach Tommy Slater had set going in.
“We wanted to keep Aidan King to about 75 pitches. That’s exactly where he was,” O’Sullivan said.
What followed was the Florida bullpen’s most complete tournament performance of the year. Jackson Barberi, returning from a six-week injury absence, entered in relief in the top of the fifth and was dominant — 2.1 innings, no hits, three strikeouts, one walk, one HBP, and the win to improve to 4-2. Ernesto “Everyday Ernie” Lugo-Canchola followed with a clean eighth, then Luke McNeillie — back from injury for the first time since April — closed out the ninth with two strikeouts and a single allowed.
The combined Barberi-Lugo-Canchola-McNeillie line: 4.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 7 K, no walks issued by McNeillie or Lugo-Canchola.
“Ernie continued to be Ernie. We call him Everyday Ernie. He just comes in and does his job and kept it to about 11 pitches. And on top of that, getting Luke McNeillie back, this is huge. This is the first time I think we’ve been healthy, truly healthy the entire year,” O’Sullivan said.
O’Sullivan said the timing of the program getting fully healthy — Barberi off the IL, McNeillie back from a month-long absence, Kyle Jones working through a turf-toe injury, plus Lawson back from his own setback — is what’s giving the team its momentum.
“When you watch Luke McNeillie go out there, and we hadn’t had him in a month. And we didn’t have Barberi for six weeks, you know, you take those two guys out of your bullpen, it looks totally different. Right now, we make a change with Aidan and Liam. And now all of a sudden, Liam’s last two starts is like what we’ve been waiting for.”
The Bowen factor
Asked about catcher Karson Bowen — a senior who has called the games for Florida’s pitching staff for most of the season — O’Sullivan gave him the kind of praise college head coaches save for veteran leaders.
“I don’t think it could be stated enough about having an older catcher with maturity behind the plate. He gives us so much more than just good play day in and day out. His leadership — I mean, he’s calling the games for the most part. And for me to be able to give him that confidence tells you everything that you need to know about him. And he had a tough fall. He had to go through some injuries and some rehab stuff. But we would not be here where we are without him.”
O’Sullivan called Bowen “the unsung hero” of the Gator pitching success.
ABS through the player’s eyes
Bowen also led Florida’s ABS challenges Wednesday — the catcher’s first game working under the system. The Gators were 1-for-1 on Bowen’s initiated challenges by the end of the second inning, when a 1-0 ball-to-strike overturn on Vanderbilt center fielder Rustan Rigdon made Florida the eighth NCAA program to win an ABS challenge. The Gators went 3-for-3 on Bowen’s challenges across the game.
The Florida players themselves were enthusiastic about playing under ABS for the first time.
“I thought it was really cool,” Lawson said. “Our catcher Karson Bowen did an unbelievable job with it today. The coolest thing is it just takes our game one step closer to professional baseball.”
Cyr framed it the same way: “The biggest thing for me is that at the end of the day, we want to play professional baseball. We want to play in the Major Leagues. That’s what they do there. So anything that can benefit us towards getting to that goal, I think is awesome for the sport.”
O’Sullivan explained how the team prepared.
“It was pretty simple. The pitchers were not allowed to be involved. It was the hitters and the catchers,” O’Sullivan said. “I was talking to Tommy Slater about it — one of our coaches, and obviously he’s been through this process in professional baseball — the best thing he said to me that made total sense was use common sense, just be a good teammate, don’t make this about yourself. If we’ve got two outs, nobody on first, it’s a questionable call, that’s not the time to do it. Now we’ve got runners in scoring position, and you feel firmly about it, that’s fine. No one is going to get upset if you’re wrong. The best thing he said to the team was just be a good teammate, and when you make decisions, make them with some clarity.”
Vandy’s day, and Corbin’s
For Vanderbilt, the offense came in a three-run fifth and never came again. Holcomb’s two-RBI double and Logan Johnstone’s RBI triple wiped out an early Florida 3-0 lead. After Cyr’s home run in the bottom of the fifth restored Florida’s advantage, Vanderbilt didn’t manage another base hit until the eighth.
“Florida’s pretty good,” Corbin said in the postgame press conference. “We had a tough battle with King. Knew he was good, but he competed well. Then after that, I thought their bullpen — they closed gaps when there were potential gaps inside the game. They shut us down. From an offensive standpoint, it was tough sledding. But I think from a pitching standpoint, we just didn’t set the tone from the beginning. There was a lot of traffic out there. We were on the field a long time during the course of that game.”
Corbin, asked about Florida directly: “First time I’ve seen Sully’s team this year, but I knew they were good, but they beat us handily.”
In a moment that landed differently, Corbin — when asked about Florida specifically — paid a remarkable compliment to a peer program.
“Lawson’s a big leaguer. And Cyr and Surowiec hit. McDonald can, too. Bowen’s really good behind the plate. Stripling’s got experience. Kurland’s played as a high school kid, senior. I like Sully’s bullpen. And King’s good. And we didn’t see Peterson. I’ve seen him on TV. But, listen, I’m not putting anything on them, but to me that looks like an Omaha team. If they’re able to stay at home, even if they’re not, I would not want to see them in my ballpark. That’s a good team.”
Corbin, asked if he was surprised Florida has 18 losses on the season: “I just think they’re well-balanced. They’re very athletic.”
The Vanderbilt season may or may not end here. Selection Monday airs Monday, May 25. Vanderbilt’s RPI of 83 and 14-16 SEC record makes it a 4-seed-or-bubble play at best.
“If there were 64 teams, do I think we’re a 64? I do,” Corbin said. “But there’s measurement devices to all of this. So people may not think that. But who knows? Who knows what happens? It might be some teams that have won their conference that win their tournament and open up some spots. If they open up some spots, we’ll be waiting.”
On the program: “We did what we did. It is completely out of our hands.”
Junior infielder Mike Mancini — who earned All-SEC Second Team and All-Defensive Team honors at second base on Monday — asked what he’ll take from the season: “Just the growth that I’ve had as a baseball player, but even more as a man. I give Coach Corbs his flowers right now. He probably doesn’t want it. But the lessons he’s taught me on and off the field, that will go a long way as a man and when I’m a father.”
The streak
If Vanderbilt does not get an at-large bid Monday, the program’s 19-year consecutive NCAA Tournament streak — the longest active streak in Division I — ends. Florida’s 17-year streak is the second-longest. The two streaks are now permanently linked in college baseball history; the 2026 Vanderbilt-Florida second-round game in Hoover may have been the moment the gap closed.
“It’s an unbelievable accomplishment, what Tim’s done at Vanderbilt and where he started with that program and where it is now,” O’Sullivan said. “I have the utmost respect for Tim and the way he goes about things. I sure hope that this wasn’t the last game they play. I hope they get an opportunity to move on.”
Corbin, asked to reflect: “I just didn’t know. I went in head first, but I was very eager and very opportunistic, and I felt like Vanderbilt could be like — back then it was Rice, back then it was Wake Forest, back then it was Notre Dame, back then it was Stanford — and I thought, why not, you know, why not this school from Nashville, Tennessee that’s in the middle of the SEC?”
The grind
Wednesday’s two completed second-round games — Mississippi State’s run-rule of Missouri and Florida’s eight-run output against Vanderbilt — covered roughly six and a half hours of baseball at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium. Two more games were scheduled for the evening: Tennessee-Arkansas at 5:30 p.m. ET and LSU-Auburn at 9 p.m. ET. By Wednesday’s nightcap, the Hoover Met grounds crew will have worked four games in 11 hours at the same field, for the second day in a row.
For the SEC’s 16-team single-elimination format — expanded from 12 teams just this year — Wednesday is the test of whether the fans, players, and venue can absorb the compressed schedule. The crowd at the Hoover Met has now seen six games across two days. The grounds crew, the umpires, the broadcast trucks, and the police escort that brought every visiting team to the field have been in continuous motion.
What’s next
Florida faces No. 4 seed Alabama Thursday at approximately 8 p.m. ET on the SEC Network. The Crimson Tide swept Florida in a three-game series in Tuscaloosa earlier in the season. The matchup pits Florida’s Liam Peterson (2-5, 4.00 ERA) against Alabama’s Tyler Fay (9-3, 4.43 ERA) — a rematch in a season where Florida (No. 18) and Alabama (No. 15) have been ranked closely in the D1Baseball Top 25.
“I forgot about the Alabama series. I’ve somehow put it in the back of my mind and kind of moved on,” O’Sullivan said when asked about the regular-season sweep. “I mean, they’ve had a great year. And obviously we’re facing their number one. We’ve got Liam going, and Josh didn’t throw today, and Ernie only threw 10 pitches. I would expect it to be a very competitive game.”
For Vanderbilt, the wait is now until Monday at noon ET.
By the Numbers
Score: Florida 8, Vanderbilt 3 (FINAL)
Hits: Florida 14, Vanderbilt 6
Errors: Florida 0, Vanderbilt 0
Left on base: Florida 10, Vanderbilt 8
Attendance: 8,352
Florida pitching: Aidan King 4.2 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 5 K, 75 pitches. Jackson Barberi (W, 4-2) 2.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 39 pitches. Ernesto Lugo-Canchola 1.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 11 pitches. Luke McNeillie 1.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 16 pitches.
Vanderbilt pitching: Tyler Baird 2.0 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 37 pitches. Matthew Shorey 1.0 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 2 K, 30 pitches. Brennan Seiber (L, 5-2) 2.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 2 K, 49 pitches. Wyatt Nadeau 0.2 IP, 0 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 2 K, 21 pitches. Luke Guth 1.0 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 24 pitches. Jacob Faulkner 0.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 15 pitches.
Florida hitting leaders: Blake Cyr 4-for-5, HR, 2 2B, 2 RBI, 1 R (first career four-hit game). Brendan Lawson 3-for-3, HR, 2 RBI, 3 R, 2 BB, 1 SB (15th HR of season, team lead). Hayden Yost 3-for-4, HR, 2B, 1 RBI, 1 R (10th HR of season). Cade Kurland 1-for-4, 2 RBI. Ethan Surowiec 1-for-3, 1 RBI, 1 R, 2 BB.
Vanderbilt hitting leaders: Brodie Johnston 2-for-5, 1 R. Mike Mancini 1-for-4, 1 R, 1 BB. Braden Holcomb 1-for-2, 2B, 2 RBI, 1 R, 2 BB. Logan Johnstone 1-for-3, 3B, 1 RBI, 1 BB. Ryker Waite 1-for-2.
ABS challenges: Florida was successful on all three of Bowen’s ABS challenges, including a 1-0 ball-to-strike overturn on Rustan Rigdon in the top of the second inning — the Gators’ first-ever ABS challenge win, making them the eighth NCAA program to do so.
For More on the 2026 SEC Tournament
- Game 5 Recap: Mississippi State 12, Missouri 2 (7)
- Game 4 Recap: LSU 6, Oklahoma 2
- Game 3 Recap: Tennessee 11, South Carolina 6
- Game 2 Recap: Vanderbilt 8, Kentucky 5
- Game 1 Recap: Missouri 10, Ole Miss 8
- How to Watch the 2026 SEC Baseball Tournament
2026 SEC Baseball Tournament Schedule
All times Eastern. Second game of each session begins approximately 30 minutes after the conclusion of the first.
Tuesday, May 19 — First Round (SEC Network)
Game 1: No. 9 Ole Miss vs. No. 16 Missouri — 10:30 a.m. (Missouri 10, Ole Miss 8 — FINAL)
Game 2: No. 12 Vanderbilt vs. No. 13 Kentucky — 2 p.m. (Vanderbilt 8, Kentucky 5 — FINAL)
Game 3: No. 10 Tennessee vs. No. 15 South Carolina — 5:30 p.m. (Tennessee 11, South Carolina 6 — FINAL)
Game 4: No. 11 Oklahoma vs. No. 14 LSU — 9 p.m. (LSU 6, Oklahoma 2 — FINAL)
Wednesday, May 20 — Second Round (SEC Network)
Game 5: Missouri vs. No. 8 Mississippi State — 10:30 a.m. (Mississippi State 12, Missouri 2 — FINAL, 7 inn.)
Game 6: Vanderbilt vs. No. 5 Florida — 2 p.m.
Game 7: Tennessee vs. No. 7 Arkansas — 5:30 p.m.
Game 8: LSU vs. No. 6 Auburn — 9 p.m.
Thursday, May 21 — Quarterfinals (SEC Network)
Game 9: Mississippi State vs. No. 1 Georgia — 3 p.m.
Game 10: Winner Game 6 vs. No. 4 Alabama — 8 p.m.
Friday, May 22 — Quarterfinals (SEC Network)
Game 11: Winner Game 7 vs. No. 2 Texas — 4 p.m.
Game 12: Winner Game 8 vs. No. 3 Texas A&M — 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 23 — Semifinals (SEC Network)
Game 13: Winner Game 9 vs. Winner Game 10 — 1 p.m.
Game 14: Winner Game 11 vs. Winner Game 12 — 5 p.m.
Sunday, May 24 — Championship (ABC)
Game 15: Winner Game 13 vs. Winner Game 14 — 2 p.m.
