TicketsORLANDO — Jack Natili homered three times, Derrick Pitts hit the go-ahead jack in the ninth, Quinton Coats tied the program's single-season home run record and Adam Buczkowski finished the game with 3 2/3 innings and eight strikeouts as Cincinnati defeated No. 21 UCF, 11-9, in Sunday's rubber game.
The Bearcats fell 7-1 on Friday before defeating the Knights 9-3 on Saturday, also powered by a late surge with five runs in the eighth.
The ninth inning summed up a chippy series: Pitts, who sent the game-winner over the right-center wall, was ejected after releasing his bat a few feet in the direction of the Knights' first-base dugout. Natili followed with his third, and after engagements from the umpire rounding third, was challenged by UCF if he touched the bag, which was upheld.
Natili, along with Coats, previously homered three times against Utah on March 21. He now has 13 round-trippers following nine last season and five for Rutgers his 2024 freshman season.
Coats is now tied with Mike Spina (2009) with 23 home runs. Buczkowski, who on Tuesday pitched a season-high 3 1/3 innings to earn the win against rival Xavier, upped the ante with another season-high in innings, as well as a career-high in punch-outs (previously five against Kansas State in 2025).
Neither team had a hit through the first three innings, and UCF struck first with a three-run homer in the bottom of the fourth.
Cincinnati responded with five in the fifth, with its first three runs coming via a fielder's choice, balk and seeing-eye single before Coats unloaded on a 403-foot blast to left center. The Knights responded in kind with a six-run bottom half, courtesy of a grand slam and two solo shots, for a 9-5 lead after five.
Natili homered for the first time in the sixth, then again in the seventh for a two-run blast after Pitts reached on a fielder's choice to make it 9-9 at the stretch.
Cincinnati boasted an all-freshman battery in Connor Blue, who went four innings, and Enzo Infelise, who was making his first Big 12 catching start.
Cincinnati hits the road again Tuesday for Wright State at 3 p.m.