Baseball is hard enough without handing out free bases to the opposing team. The No. 1 Florida Gators learned that lesson the hard way this weekend walking and hitting 30 Hurricanes over three games.

Florida's pitching, once again, let them down on Sunday in an 8-6 loss to No. 21 Miami. Sunday's loss dropped the series, the first series loss to the Hurricanes since 2014.

The Gators got into a hole early. Hunter Barco wasn't sharp and the Canes got after him early.

Barco hit leadoff man Jordan Lala, who stole second and moved to third on Yohandy Morales' single. Both were driven in by Adrian Del Castillo's double to right-center. Del Castillo scored to make it a 3-0 Miami advantage before the first frame was done. Barco would give up a run in the second, third, and fourth inning before his day was done. The second year pitcher lasted just 3.1 innings, gave up eight runs, six earned and walked three, and hit a batter.

“We had the least amount of walks per nine in the fall and the spring combined than we’ve ever had here before," Kevin O'Sullivan said after Sunday's loss. "Then this weekend we walked a lot more than I ever anticipated and hit batters, there was multiple times where we got an out on the first or second pitch of the inning and then we walked the next hitter. We could never get into a rhythm. Surprisingly enough, we played good defense behind them but we just, I don’t have any answers. We preach two of the first three pitches for strikes, work your tail off to get the leadoff hitter so you don’t have to get in the stretch at the beginning of the inning."

The Canes scored the first eight runs of the game before the Gators eventually started to battle back.

It was too little too late for the Gators, however. Florida came into the game with a lot of high expectations, ranked No. 1 in the country and this weekend should serve as a wake up call for the ballclub.

"Maybe this is a wake up call. That’s what I told them in the dugout there at the end. Maybe this is what this team needs," O'Sullivan said. "I can assure you that we talked about this numerous times. The preseason rankings are nonsense. Between all the social media and everything else that goes into it, constantly reading about themselves and that type of thing. It’s nonsense. It doesn’t mean anything. We talked about it."

Nathan Hickey had a fantastic opening weekend. The sophomore went 7-13 (.538) with two home runs, a double, and five RBI. Hickey had at least two hits in all three games.

There wasn't much competition but don't let that take away from how well Scott pitched. The junior made two appearances out of the bullpen, throwing 5.2 innings of scoreless baseball. Scott allowed just two hits, walked two, and struck out two.