Box Score ORLANDO, Fla. – Jacksonville University baseball weathered a delay and an early deficit and came from behind to defeat UCF 8-5 on Friday at John Euliano Park.
 
After an hour and forty delay for lightning and rain, JU (4-4) erased a 3-1 deficit to topple the Knights (6-3) and win its first road game of the season.
 
"You want to stay focused, never let your guard down," said Head Coach Chris Hayes. "That's the message we preach to these guys, every time we have weather issues."

Jacksonville struck first, with leadoff man Ruben Someillan singling up the middle to start the game and advancing to second on a wild pitch and third on a bunt single by Dakota Julylia. Scott Dubrule brought him in on a fielder's choice.
 
The lead was short lived however, as UCF jumped on JU starter Tyler Santana to load the bases on two singles and a walk in the bottom half of the first. Two sacrifice flies later, the Knights led 2-1 and a two-out RBI single made it 3-1 before Santana got out of the first.
 
After that, both starting pitchers settled down, throwing up zeroes for the next almost three innings, until lightning in the area stopped play with two outs in the bottom of the fourth. After resuming, the Dolphins went to the pen and freshman Nick Love (1-0), who promptly threw one strike to the hitter he inherited with a 3-2 count to end the inning.
 
"It was really about getting that one pitch," said Love. "We were down, and if we just got that one pitch across to get out of the inning, the energy could turn to us and we'd get some runs."

JU capitalized on that momentum in the top of the fifth. John Cassala led off the inning with a single off UCF starter Grant Schuermann, who stayed in the game after the delay. Cory Garrastazu tried to bunt him over, but an error by the third baseman made it second and third with two outs. A Jacob Southern sacrifice fly set up Cory Heffron, who appeared to ground out to short until another throwing error tied it up. A Someillan RBI ground out made it 5-3 JU.
 
The Dolphins tacked on one more in the seventh when Heffron reached on another throwing error by the shortstop, scoring Hunter.
 
On the mound, Love used the one pitch strikeout to start his best outing of his young career. He struck out five over 3.1 perfect innings of relief to completely neutralize the UCF bats and earn the first win of his college career.
 
"It was like everything was on today and I knew if I wasn't striking them out I would get a ground ball and the guys behind me would make a great play and keep us in it," said Love.
 
UCF threatened one more time, when they loaded the bases and scored a run to make it 5-4 in the eighth off of four walks from Zach Bryant and Chris Mauloni combined. But the JU offense kept the pressure on, extending the advantage to four with a three spot in the top of the ninth, on Julylia's two-RBI single and a run scoring base hit up the middle for Angel Camacho.
 
Darien Smith relieved Mauloni in the ninth to earn his first save.
 
Jacksonville goes for a second straight series win on Saturday night at 6 p.m. Trent Palmer gets the start for the Dolphins.