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Many times when a team wins some sort of championship, it can look back on one signature moment, or one signature play or one signature event that sort of was the catalyst for its success.

I don't know if what happened to the Gator baseball team after playing Brown University in a doubleheader will be that turning point for this team, but there is no denying that the play of the Gators has gotten much better since that doubleheader back on March 8th.

Even though Florida split the doubleheader, Florida head coach Kevin O'Sullivan was not pleased at all with the way his team played. Too many errors, too many strikeouts, no fire...he did not like what he saw.

So after the game he let his team know about it in no uncertain terms, and let them know about it hard. O'Sullivan put an exclamation point to his displeasure by making his team go out and do drills after they had played their games that day. As he said to the media, he could accept not winning but he would not accept his team going out and being unprepared mentally and physically to play the game and he vowed that would never happen again.

Welcome to Gator baseball's new attitude.

Since that tongue lashing, Florida has played very good baseball, including a win over third ranked Florida State in front of a record McKethan Stadium crowd of over 5,700 people. The 6-1 win was business like, methodical, and it provided a one game glimpse on how this team in my opinion needs to win; with timely hitting and putting the ball in play, starting pitching that throws strikes and gets ahead of hitters, and a bullpen that must come in and make key pitches in key situations.

All those things happened against Florida State...and Florida got the win.

There is certainly an adjustment period when a team gets a new coaching staff and perhaps some players recruited by former head coach Pat McMahon were slow to adjust to O'Sullivan and his way of doing business. But make no mistake; O'Sullivan is the boss and if players do not perform the way he thinks they should or do the things he believes necessary to win games, they won't be playing.

O'Sullivan saw right away that some changes needed to be made On offense, with Matt LaPorta around, Florida too often waited for the long ball to get them runs and the offense became stagnant, especially when LaPorta was hurt. With LaPorta gone, O'Sullivan saw he inherited a team without a lot of power but a team that acted and hit like it DID have a lot of power.

So hitting approach had to be changed, and their was some resistance at first. But slowly, the approach of using the positives of the hitters...good speed, putting the ball in play and gap to gap power, began to be seen by the players. The result; Florida has more stolen bases now in 18 games than it had in ALL of its games last year and the team is hitting over .300 on the year after hitting just .290 last year.

The same thing has happened with the pitching staff; O'Sullivan saw a staff without a big strikeout arm; in other words, no power pitchers that were going to go out there and blow the other team away and strike out a bunch of hitters. O'Sullivan, who serves as his own pitching coach, had to change the way his pitchers went about their business too; he has them working much more quickly, concentrating on throwing two of the first three pitches for quality strikes to get ahead of hitters, and the results have been good. The team earned run average a year ago was 5.27; this year going into the Ole Miss series it was 3.13.

I truly believe O'Sullivan has this team going in the right direction and also believe Gator fans will start to warm up to this team that will use the short game and the little things to get themselves wins. It may take some time to be in the hunt for Omaha right away but with the way the team is playing now, I don't believe it is too far fetched to think an NCAA Regional appearance is possible.

There is still a lot of baseball yet to be played in this college season but one thing is for sure; the Gator players know who the boss is and how he wants to see the game played.