Florida baseball coach Kevin O’Sullivan unleashed a profanity-laced rant to site representatives at the NCAA Tournament’s Conway Regional after the officials pushed the Gators’ elimination game against East Carolina back by an hour, and Coastal Carolina coach Kevin Schnall took strong exception to his colleague’s outburst. Schnall called O’Sullivan a “bully” for directing his frustration toward the Coastal Carolina administrators, who served as NCAA site reps at their home regional.
Site staff moved Sunday’s elimination game, which Florida lost 11-4, back an hour because East Carolina played late into the night prior. The Pirates did not wrap up their Saturday night contest until around midnight. The elimination battle was originally set for a noon first pitch but got underway at 1 p.m.
“What transpired this morning on our field, another coach disrespected our associate AD, who works as hard as anybody in our entire program,” Schnall said of O’Sullivan. “He disrespected our field crew, who are the salt of the earth. These guys would do anything for our program. It’s not OK, and this needs to be brought up. Absolutely disrespectful. As a coach, it’s our job to mentor young kids. And the way he treated the two site reps, the way he treated our associate AD, the way he treated our field crew is absolutely unacceptable.”
Host schools select site reps to serve as ambassadors to the NCAA and oversee the administrative side of their respective regionals. Coastal Carolina was one of the 16 regional hosts and cruised through its bracket with a perfect 3-0 weekend as the tournament’s No. 13 national seed.
“This is a national champion coach who thinks he can come in here and try to bully people around,” Schnall said. “Disappointed. Disappointed, somebody that a lot of coaches look up to, for him to act that way. Really disappointed. He disrespected a Hall of Fame coach, who’s the site rep here.”
Florida’s loss to East Carolina was its second in three days at the Conway Regional and sent the Gators home after a quick stay in the postseason. O’Sullivan’s squad struggled on the mound as pitchers Liam Peterson and Pierce Coppola both failed to get out of the third inning of their respective starts.
The Gators were the Conway Regional’s No. 2 seed and lost twice to the No. 3 seed Pirates. While they fell short of earning a host bid, O’Sullivan’s Gators were a trendy upset pick in the regional as the No. 17 team in the final regular-season D1Baseball rankings. They were in search of their second national championship and a return to the College World Series for the third time in as many years.
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