For the Florida State baseball team to knock off host Auburn on Saturday night, it was going to need terrific pitching, solid fielding and timely hitting.
It got none. None. And not much of any.
The result was a 21-7 blowout loss to No. 1 regional seed Auburn.
The Seminoles now face UCLA on Sunday afternoon (2 p.m. ET) in an elimination game.
"The environment, the time of year, you've got to be able to think," FSU head coach Mike Martin Jr. said. "There were some miscommunications on pop-ups. There wea a little bit of (everything). We ran the gamut.
"We flat out stunk."
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Bryce Hubbart got the start on the mound Saturday for the Seminoles. For Florida State to have any shot of upsetting the Tigers, the lefty was going to have to silence the hot Auburn bats.
That didn't happen.
Hubbart couldn't get out of the third inning, and then the Seminoles' bullpen melted down, specifically in a seven-run fourth inning that turned a 3-1 Auburn lead into a 10-1 rout.
Conner Whitaker could only retire two batters on his night while allowing three hits and three runs. Lefty Ross Dunn came in and did even worse, not retiring a single batter while allowing four more runs (three earned).
By the time the dust had settled in the fourth inning, Auburn had sent 12 batters to the plate and seven had scored. Two costly errors -- one by shortstop Jordan Carrion and one by right-fielder Jaime Ferrer -- didn't help matters as the Seminoles completely collapsed in front of the sold-out Auburn crowd.
From then on, it was just a matter of what the final score would be.
"They made it uncomfortable," Martin Jr. said of the Tigers' offense. "Their approach and their bat-to-ball skills are outstanding. They're hard to strike out. That's kind of the way we pitch. We punch out a lot of guys. They put balls in play, put pressure on us, and again, they whipped us."
Auburn tacked on a single run in the fifth, four more in the seventh and then another run in the eighth.
Finally, for good measure, the host Tigers put up five more in the ninth.
All told, it was legitimately one of the worst pitching performances in the history of the program. FSU hurlers gave up 21 runs, 19 hits and 16 walks.
Seven different Seminoles pitched and only one -- Kyle McMullen -- didn't allow multiple runs. He gave up just one, while walking five, in his three innings of work.
Not that it mattered, but Florida State's offense got an RBI double from Alex Toral, a three-run homer from freshman Trenton Rank and a long solo homer from fellow freshman Sebastian Jiminez.
But the pitching collapse, along with the four errors, made sure the late-inning runs didn't matter.
Instead, it was as humiliating a postseason defeat as the Seminoles have ever suffered.
They now have to win three games to advance to the Super Regionals. They have to beat UCLA on Sunday and then Auburn later in the day. Then they would have to turn around and beat Auburn again on Monday night.
Martin Jr. said senior Jonah Scolaro would get the start today vs. UCLA.
"It's a loss," Martin Jr. said. "And you've got to flush it. What's worse? Getting smoked like this or losing a heartbreaker? You've got to flush it. That's baseball. You've got to go. We've been up and down the whole year. So, they're resilient. And I expect them to be resilient (on Sunday."
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