MCWS 2023 - Can Florida and LSU top an epic first two games? - ESPN

OMAHA, Neb. — The 2023 Men's College World Series continued to make history during Sunday's Game 2 contest between LSU and Florida. It just wasn't the kind of history we've come to expect from this wildest of MCWS. After a thriller of a championship opener, won by an LSU homer in the top of the 11th to produce the record-tying eighth one-run game of this 15-game series, the 15th and latest of those games achieved a whole bucketful of records all on its own.

The difference is that these were the first 2023 statistical milestones directly related to a butt-kicking. Like, historically lopsided butt-kicking. Think Georgia vs. TCU, Dream Team vs. Angola, Hulk vs. Loki. That kind of butt-kicking.

Florida's 24-4 victory that set up a Monday night winner-take-all title game (7 p.m. ET on ESPN) also set a record for the largest margin of victory ever posted in Men's College World Series finals contest. That mark was a dozen runs. Now it is 20, tied for the second-largest margin of any MCWS game played. It could have been even larger if the Gators hadn't gone for two after their third touchdown (insert rimshot here). In 76 years of the MCWS, no team scored more runs in a single game than the 2023 SEC regular-season co-champions, not even during the so-called «Gorilla Ball» era of unregulated aluminum bats in the 1990s.

«The bad news is that we can't carry over any runs from today into the game tomorrow night,» Florida coach Kevin O'Sullivan said. «The good news is that you struggle and you grind and you have four games and they are all one-run games, three wins and a tough loss, and now you're reminded, 'Hey, guys, we know how to play. We can play our type of game.' Our best players were performing well today.»

The much-ballyhooed