Drew Brutcher hit his 13th homer of the year in Wednesday’s 9-6 loss to Tulane.
CLEARWATER, Fla. (May 25, 2022) – A year after winning the American tournament championship and advancing to the program’s first-ever Super Regional, the University of South Florida Bulls saw their 2022 season come to an end with a 9-6 loss to Tulane at the conference tournament on Wednesday at BayCare Ballpark.
Drew Brutcher (Lakeland) homered and matched a career high with five RBI for South Florida in the loss.
In the opening game of the tournament on Tuesday, USF jumped in front of nationally-ranked at top-seeded ECU with a grand slam in the sixth inning only to see the Pirates respond with a grand slam of their own to prevail with the win.
The Bulls fell behind to Tulane in Wednesday’s elimination game in the first inning, 1-0, and could have easily packed in their season after Tuesday’s deflating loss, but gave the Green Wave a ballgame.
“Our guys never folded. They battled all season when we faced adversity, and they left it all out there again today. We just came up short,” said head coach Billy Mohl.
Still trailing 1-0 in the third inning on Wednesday, true freshman Jackson Mayo (St. Johns) led off the frame with a double. Ben Rozenblum (Coral Springs) followed with a walk, and two batters later Brutcher (Lakeland) launched his team-leading 13th home run of the season to give USF a 3-1 advantage.
The Green Wave erupted for six runs, all with two outs, in the bottom of the fourth inning to regain a 7-3 advantage, but the Bulls again answer and chipped away until the final out of the ballgame.
Brutcher’s big day continued in the top of the fifth with a two-run single to cut Tulane’s lead to 7-5.
The Green Wave stretched their lead to 9-5 with single tallies in the bottom of the fifth and sixth innings.
In the top of the eighth, Daniel Cantu (Jacksonville) led off the frame with a single, but was erased on a double play ball. Nelson Rivera (Tao Alto, Puerto Rico) followed with a solo home run. Rivera hit the go-ahead grand slam for the Bulls on Tuesday afternoon.
Down to their last three outs, Rozenblum opened the ninth with a single and it appeared Brutcher may have a chance to come to the plate as the tying run before anther double-play ball wiped out his chance of a late heroic swing.
Notable
- Brutcher’s 13 home runs in 2022 are a new career high and came up just one short of cracking the USF single-season top 10, despite missing a month of the season with injury.
- Carmine Lane (Lake Placid) led the AAC this year in hits (78) and RBI (54) and recorded the most hits by a Bull in a single season since David Villar (82) in 2018.
- Rivera homered in back-to-back games for the first time in his career and was the third Bull this season to accomplish the feat.
Quotable
Mohl on the 2022 season and the future – “It was a disappointment. This day of the season is always hard when you have to go into the locker room and know you’re never going to coach the same team again. In terms of the young players on this team, I told them they got a lot of opportunities this year that a lot of freshmen don’t usually get. You look at the number of underclassmen in our lineup, especially freshmen, who got experience this year, that’s invaluable. Take Carmine Lane for example, who hit .190 as a true freshman and became an All-American the next season, and we had (Jackson) Mayo and Marcus Brodil, (among others), hit .280-.290, that’s a solid foundation. The future is bright, but that doesn’t take away from the disappointment we feel from this season.”
About USF Baseball
The USF Baseball program played its first season in 1966 and is entering its 57th season in 2022. Head coach Billy Mohl is entering his fifth season at the helm. The Bulls have made 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, including four since 2015, and earned their first-ever Super Regional berth in 2021. USF was ranked in the Top 25 by five different publications in the final 2021 polls, checking in as high as No. 16. The Bulls have won five conference tournament titles (3 Sun Belt, 1 Metro and 1 American) and six regular season championships (3 Sun Belt, 2 Metro and 1 C-USA). USF baseball players have been recognized with All-America honors 12 times, most recently with third baseman David Villar in 2018, and 18 have earned Freshman All-America accolades, most recently Drew Brutcher and Carmine Lane in 2021. Four players were selected in the 2018 MLB Draft, including the program’s fourth first-round selection in pitcher Shane McClanahan, who made his Major League debut with the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2020 World Series and was the Rays’ postseason game one starter in 2021.
– #GoBulls –
