The Florida Gators won the SEC baseball tournament and were rewarded with the No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament. They will host an NCAA regional starting on Friday against Florida A&M, South Florida, and Bethune-Cookman at McKethan Stadium in Gainesville. Coming off the SEC tournament title, Florida was looking to continue its momentum into the NCAA tournament as host of the Gainesville regional.

1. Associated Press/BUTCH DILL
Florida players celebrate winning the
SEC tournament title Sunday after
beating Vanderbilt in Hoover, Alabama.
The Gators host an NCAA regional
starting Friday.
Staff and Wire Reports
Coming off a Southeastern Conference
tournament title, the Florida baseball
team was rewarded Monday with a No.
4 NCAA seed and a familiar bracket in
hosting the Gainesville Regional.
The tournament opens Friday with 16
four-team, double-elimination regionals.
Best-of-3 Super Regionals are next week,
with those winners moving to the 69th Col-
lege World Series at the TD Ameritrade
Park Omaha in Omaha, Neb., starting
June 13.
The Gators, the top seed in their region-
al, will host fourth-seed Florida A&M
(23-23), which is making its NCAA Tour-
nament debut as the Mid-Eastern Athletic
Conference tournament champion, at
COLLEGE BASEBALL
Gators, ’Noles, ’Canes learn fate
All 3 teams to host NCAA regionals this week
SPORTS SECTION
B
NEWS-JOURNAL
TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2015
SHOWN THE DOOR
Venus Williams loses her
first-round match at the
French Open. PAGE 2B
HEY,
WILLIE!
KEN
WILLIS
HEY, WILLIE!
Enjoyed your “Two Cents” on
Jeff Gordon moving to the Fox
booth, but you left out my first
reaction. Gordon has a whiny,
tinny voice less suited for broad-
casting than anybody this side of
Ricky Craven. Oh wait, Craven
has a TV gig, too. Where are
the exquisite, rich intonations
of Ward Button when we really
need him?
MIKE IN DEBARY
HEY, MIKE!
Easy, there, Mike. Jeff isn’t
exactly replacing James Earl
Jones in the Fox booth next
year.
His new gig made Larry
McReynolds the odd man out,
which is indeed odd, mathe-
matically, since
it already was a
three-man booth,
but moving on ...
Larry Mac goes
down to the track-
side studio where
he and Mikey
Waltrip will sand-
wich Chris Myers,
who, sitting
between those two, undoubtedly
will take on the air of William
F. Buckley.
HEY, WILLIE!
With the possible exceptions of
chess or contract bridge, base-
ball is probably the most compli-
cated game devised by man.
Regardless of your level of
understanding, there is always
another level and, beyond that,
several more levels the average
fan doesn’t even suspect.
Unfortunately, Major League
Baseball works on the one-man/
one-vote rule; the team owner
is “the man,” so he gets the vote
even if he can barely read the
box scores.
Which leaves a potentially
good team like the Miami Mar-
lins with a manager whose last
gig as manager was at a junior
high school.
BC
HEY, B!
It’s not as bad as you think.
Dan Jennings, the unlikely new
manager for the Marlins, actu-
ally coached in high school, not
middle school, back in the 1980s,
we’re told. Briefly.
Jeffrey Loria apparently is
trying to remind all those trans-
planted New Yorkers down
there of George Steinbrenner,
who invented the dispos-
able-manager system.
Jennings, at least, has been
in professional baseball for 30-
plus years, but not in uniform.
As soon as he learns to chew
tobacco and anger a bullpen,
we’ll see what he can do. But so
far, he entered Monday with a
2-5 record.
HEY, WILLIE!
Did you notice how many for-
mer Magic players were starters
for teams playing in the NBA
conference semifinals?
I think there were five or six.
Also, one head coach.
Well, enough said about the
past and current Magic manage-
ment and coaching!
CHUCK
HEY, CHUCK!
The Magic have done more
than any of the civic leaders in
making Orlando a soccer town.
HEY, WILLIE!
Brackets, head-to-head races,
no rolling start? Are you confus-
ing NASCAR with the NHRA?
JANE
HEY, JANE!
Just borrowing one of their
good ideas.
My idea for revamping the
so-called All-Star Race is to
introduce brackets and head-
to-head competition, preferably
one lap for each match, from a
sitting start. No pace car.
Yes, I’ve had better ideas, as
well as worse. But the same can
be said for those who actually
are in charge.
Reach Ken Willis at ken.
willis@news-jrnl.com. Twitter:
@HeyWillieNJ.
Gordon has
too whiny
of a voice
By PETE IACOBELLI
Associated Press
CONCORD, N.C. — Joe Gibbs has had
many special nights in football and
auto racing. Few were bigger than
Sunday’s showing in the Coca-Cola
600.
The head of Joe Gibbs Racing had
plenty to celebrate: Kyle Busch re-
turned to points racing and finished
11th; Matt Kenseth won the pole
and ended fifth; and Denny Hamlin,
the All-Star Race winner last week,
fought for a title before finishing
seventh.
But the highlight was Carl Ed-
wards’ first victory for his new JGR
team in the NASCAR Sprint Cup
Series’ longest race.
“In so many ways,” said Gibbs,
the three-time Super Bowl winner
with Washington and three-time Cup
championship team owner, “it’s a big
deal for us.”
Things for JGR might get bigger
this season.
Edwards becomes the third of four
Gibbs’ racers with a victory, just
about locking them into NASCAR’s
10-race, year-end championship
chase. Gibbs said the program now
can concentrate on getting Busch
into contention after he missed three
months because of a serious accident
during an Xfinity Series race at Day-
tona three months ago.
Gibbs’ plans when he brought in
Edwards as a fourth team are taking
shape in a big way.
“We’ve taken a long time to catch
up, I’m not saying we’ve caught up”
to other power programs like Hen-
drick Motorsports and Stewart-Haas
Racing, Gibbs said. “Over the last two
races here, it’s a big deal for us.”
Edwards won his first Coca-Cola
600 with a gutsy call from crew chief
Darian Grubb to pit earlier than most
competitors and stay on the track as
the field was diving in for full tanks
SPRINT CUP
SPECIAL NIGHTEdwards’ win caps off big evening for Gibbs and his race team
Associated Press/GERRY BROOME
Carl Edwards, second from left, celebrates with his Joe Gibbs Racing crew after winning Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at
Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina.
(2) FAULKNER (ALABAMA) 7, (6) EMBRY-RIDDLE 6
Late Eagles’ rally comes up short
ERAU scores 6 runs in final 2 innings but falls in NAIA World Series
Special to the News-Journal/MIKE STETSON
Hunter Bruehl gets Embry-Riddle’s first hit of
Monday’s game.
Up Next
What: FedEx 400 benefiting
Autism Speaks
Where: Dover (Delaware)
International Speedway
When: 1 p.m. Sunday
TV/Radio: Fox Sports 1/1150 AM
Inside
Montoya’s win gives IndyCar a
boost, ChumpCar heats up at DIS,
Sunday’s late results, PAGE 5B
NASCAR This Week, PAGE 6B
Inside
This week’s polls, PAGE 2B
Regionals glance, PAGE 3B
SEE SPECIAL, PAGE 5B
SEE REGIONALS, PAGE 3B
JEFF
GORDON
By MIKE STETSON
Special to the News-Journal
LEWISTON, Idaho — Heartbreaking and
frustrating all at once.
Defensive miscues dug Embry-Rid-
dle into a hole that, despite a pair of
dramatic rallies late, the Eagles sim-
ply couldn’t climb out of as they fell
7-6 to Faulkner (Alabama) on Monday
night at the NAIA World Series.
“I look at it as our defensive was
atrocious tonight,” said ERAU coach
Randy Stegall, whose team made four
errors to help Faulkner and added a
couple mental mistakes to also assist
the Eagles from Alabama.
The setback sends ERAU into an
elimination game at 3 p.m. today
against Oklahoma Baptist.
Through the first five innings,
the winner’s-bracket contest was a
Up Next
ERAU vs. Oklahoma Baptist, 3 p.m.
today
Inside
Updated World Series schedule,
PAGE 2B
SEE EAGLES, PAGE 2B