WHAT HAPPENED: The Gators' offensive momentum continued on Tuesday and the pitching staff complemented the hitting as Florida beat FGCU 15-0 for its first shutout of the season.
 
Five players notched multi-hit games, led by Brady McConnell (2-4, 3 R) and Nelson Maldonado (2-3) who had three RBI apiece. On the mound, four pitchers combined to limit the Eagles to just four hits on the night.
 
Redshirt junior Nick Blasucci, making his first appearance since Tommy John surgery, pitched two scoreless innings with three strikeouts against his former team. A native of Fort Myers, Blasucci began his collegiate career at FGCU as a shortstop.
 
McConnell opened the scoring with a solo home run in the bottom of the first and Brady Smith launched his first homer of the season in the third to make it 2-0.
 
The game was blown open with a 10-run fifth inning. Maldonado provided the big blow with a bases-clearing double that made it 6-0. Jud Fabian and Cory Acton added to the lead with RBI singles. McConnell's two-run single made it 10-0 and Kendrick Calilao added a pair with a two-run single.
 
Austin Langworthy's two-run homer in the seventh inning capped the scoring.
 
Christian Scott relieved Blasucci and tossed three shutout innings with two hits allowed. Justin Alintoff followed with three scoreless innings and just one hit allowed. Kirby McMullen pitched a perfect ninth to finish it off.
 
IN THE SPOTLIGHT:  Pitching Staff – Entering the night, FGCU hit .344 as a team and scored 111 runs in 11 games (10.0 per game). Florida's pitching staff limited the Eagles to a 4-for-29 (.138) showing at the plate with no runs scored.
 
STANDOUT STAT:  73 – Runs Florida's offense has scored over its last five games (14.6 per game). As a team, the Gators are hitting .384 in that span.
 
FROM THE COACH: Head Coach Kevin O'Sullivan – On the offensive surge and tonight's game: "I don't really know, we've faced some pretty good arms too. We faced their number one tonight. I said on Sunday, you'd be able to tell with me if I was concerned about the offense and I would have said so. We just went through a tough time. This is [FGCU's] first road game of the year. For us, we've just had so many young players there's just a lot of firsts. First time on the road at USF, the midweek games, we've got a lot of young pitchers just starting to gain valuable experience. We've got a long ways to go, and that was our message at the end, we cannot get ahead of ourselves. We've got to stay the course we've got to get better. There are a lot of things to improve on. I think getting Nelson going offensively has really helped us. Jacob has been a huge spark plug at the top.
 
"It was good to get Nick out there for the first time; it's been a really long rehab process for him. He's got a really, really good changeup. I thought Christian Scott did a really nice job through three innings, other than the third when I think he had two outs on eight pitches … then it took him 18 pitches just to get the last out so instead of throwing 50 pitches he could have kept his pitch count to about 40. Justin came in and did a nice job and so did Kirby."
 
On Nick Blasucci: "I don't know what his role is moving forward, but certainly tonight we wanted to start him to not rush him out of the pen. That's the important thing when guys come back from an injury like that, you don't want to run them down the pen and try to get them hot in the middle of an inning. He was excited, the dugout was excited, the players were excited to see him back out there because of all the hard work he's put in as well."
 
UP NEXT: Florida's homestand continues against Florida Gulf Coast on Wednesday at 6 p.m. This weekend, the Gators host Yale for three games beginning Friday. The games will broadcast live on the Gator Sports Network.