The University of North Florida baseball team returned to the nest this weekend, playing against the Jacksonville State University Gamecocks in what was a three-game weekend series of baseball. The Ospreys managed to walk out of game two victorious, but could not take home the series as JSU won the other two games with mixed levels of resistance from UNF.

North Florida’s finest fought hard in game one, keeping a three-run lead while also holding the Gamecocks scoreless all the way until the end of the fifth inning.

Shortly following this, however, is where things took a turn for the worse. The Gamecocks fired on all cylinders in the sixth, putting up eight runs in what sealed the fate of this contest. Despite UNF managing two runs in the final inning, the final score was a close 8-6 win for JSU.

Things looked a lot better for North Florida in game two, with the Ospreys’ veteran pitcher Dominick Madonna locking things down at the mound with three strikeouts. This led to five straight scoreless innings from the second to the sixth in what was a 5-3 win for UNF.

But to the dismay of many North Florida fans far and wide, game three did not bring out the same production from this unit. 

Jacksonville State did not hold back, already managing a four-run lead before producing a devastating fifth inning, which garnered ten runs in what led to the game being a 16-1 mercy rule loss after the seventh inning.

These past two losses did not help UNF’s ASUN standings, with this squad being ranked at tenth in the highly competitive conference, a ranking that many are hoping will improve with the emergence of more and more conference matchups.

Despite this past weekend not going as planned against the ASUN rival, the Ospreys are still keeping things positive while searching to improve with a 17-15 overall record, matched with a very respectable 14-8 record at Harmon Stadium.

This team will get the chance to turn things around in the upcoming week, with FAMU traveling to UNF before receiving the chance to improve their conference ranking when Central Arkansas comes to town for three games this weekend.

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