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| The FAMU baseball team celebrates its upset win over UF in 2014 |
FAMU will be the No. 4 seed in the Gainesville Regional,
while UF is the No. 1 seed after earning the No. 4 overall national seed in the
NCAA Tournament. The Rattlers trail UF 1-18 in the all-time, but that first
win came in their most recent game against the Gators in 2014. FAMU pulled off an upset with a score of 4-3 over the then-No. 6
ranked UF in Gainesville.
“They were good last year. They’re playing extremely well.
It’s going to take a real strong effort on the part of our student-athletes to
go down there and pull the upset off again. We won’t sneak up on them again,”
Head Coach Jamey Shouppe said in statement to the Tallahassee Democrat.
FAMU has won six straight and are 9-1 in its last 10 games heading into the NCAA Tournament. FAMU also won 14-of-18 against the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) down the stretch on the way to its’ first MEAC Championship since 1994.
In 2015, FAMU faced three schools that earned berths in the
2015 NCAA Tournament field of 64. The Rattlers played two No. 3 seeds – Auburn
(35-24) and South Florida (33-24-1) and split two games with No. 4 seed –
Mercer (35-21).
The Rattlers secured an automatic bid for the NCAA
Tournament by defeating Bethune-Cookman 8-2 in the Championship Game of the
MEAC Tournament on May 16. FAMU and B-CU entered the tournament as the top two
teams from the MEAC Southern Division. The MEAC Championship was the first for
FAMU since 1994 and seventh in program history. FAMU went 3-0 in the tournament
with wins over Savannah State (7-4), Delaware State (11-2) and Bethune-Cookman.
Florida A&M led the MEAC with a .964 fielding
percentage, walks (202), second with a 4.38 team ERA and third in home runs
(20). The Rattler pitching staff was also tied for the MEAC lead with 10 saves
this season.