By Will Miles
Men’s basketball home stretch
After a three-game losing streak took the Gators men’s basketball team to a record of 9-6, the Gators schedule eased up and they went 7-3 to get to 16-9 (6-6 SEC) heading into a road game against Texas A&M.
This was really a must-have game, as the Gators had six games left, three against ranked opponents. Two of those are almost sure losses (#2 Auburn and #4 Kentucky). But the only ranked team Florida has beaten this year is FSU early on, and the ‘Noles have fallen apart this year.
So after the loss to A&M even if Florida beats the unranked opponents on the schedule, the Gators are going to finish 18-13 with an under .500 record in the SEC. That’s just not good enough, to make the tournament or for a Florida program.
And beyond that, after coming out and falling way behind A&M in the first half, I’m not sure how sure we should be that Florida beats Georgia or Vanderbilt. Both of those games are on the road and Florida should win them, but you could’ve said the same thing about Texas Southern.
I’ve been monitoring the Gators point differential in this column all season long. At one point, it was above 8 points per game. It dropped down to 7 about midway through the season. It now stands at 5.9. That’s better than last year (3.9), but almost exactly in-line with the 2019-2020 team (5.9). Perhaps not coincidently, that 2019-2020 team went 19-12 (11-7 SEC) before COVID shut down the season.
Teams with a chance to win in March almost always have a point differential north of 10. Billy Donovan’s 36-3 squad in 2013-14 had a differential of 12.1. Last year’s champion (Baylor) had a differential of 17.4. This year’s presumptive SEC favorite (Auburn) has a differential of 13.4.
So whether this team makes it into the tournament or not, they aren’t going to go very far. Is it possible that they catch fire like UCLA did last year even though the Bruins only had a point differential of 5.0? Perhaps. But even that UCLA team had Johnny Juzang, a player who had been incredibly inconsistent but had put up 32, 27 and 25 against Washington, Stanford and Washington State.
Tyree Appleby, Phlandrous Fleming and Anthony Duruji have broken 20 once this season. Colin Castleton and Myreon Jones have done it twice. And let’s be honest, if we’re depending on pointing towards UCLA’s run as an 11-seed last year as the place for hope, at what point do we stop making excuses?
Arlis Boardingham commits
Composite 3-star recruit (492nd nationally) Arlis Boardingham committed to the Gators last week.
Boardingham is listed as an athlete on the composite, and I suspect that’s exactly what he’ll end up being in Florida’s offense. While he is listed at 6’4” and 220 pounds, Boardingham is a track athlete who runs the 100 meters (11.4 seconds as a junior). That unique combination of size and speed is something that Florida obviously can use on the offensive side of the ball.
More than that, I’m intrigued that Boardingham – who hails from Van Nuys, California – chose to come across the country to play at Florida instead of stay close to home at Oregon. Certainly the switch at Oregon from Mario Cristobal to Dan Lanning probably helped Billy Napier get in the door. But for those questioning Napier’s ability to recruit, bringing in someone from California in a transition class certainly portends good things to come.
The good news is that Boardingham’s commitment comes not just with an increase in overall recruiting rankings, but at an area of need for Florida. The Gators currently have only 8 scholarship players at the receiver position. While Boardingham may end up being a tight end in the long run, early on he’s probably going to contribute at receiver.
Recruiting Recap
The addition of Boardingham puts a cap on the 2022 recruiting class and lifts the Gators recruiting ranking to 16th overall in the 247Sports rankings with 18 commitments.
As I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t think the exact rankings matter all that much in a transition year, except that coming in ahead of Tennessee (second class for Huepel), Auburn (second class for Harsin) and Florida State (third class for Norvell) suggests that Napier should be able to widen the gap between the Gators and those teams next year.
In the meantime, I’m fascinated to see whether Napier’s evaluations turn out to be spot-on for this class. As the Athletic pointed out this week, 16 of the 22 players he recruited in his transition class at Louisiana turned into starters and 8 received All Sun-Belt recognition. Whether he got lucky and hit on a bunch of players or whether he can replicate that sort of success at Florida is still to be determined.
It’s easy to forget now, but Dan Mullen actually had a pretty good transition recruiting class. The problem is that he got 9 starters out of that group, and as of yet, only one All-SEC player (Kyle Pitts). That was further exacerbated by the 2019 class, which has produced only 6 starters (if I’m generous) and one All-SEC player (Kaiir Elam).
And what that means is that Napier’s initial recruiting push is only half-over. The 2023 class will truly tell whether he has the recruiting chops to bring the Gators back to prominence and whether he can combine that class with this one to produce the requisite 6-10 All-SEC players necessary to win the conference.
In-State Recruiting
I would say that Napier needs to get the job done in his second year (“bump”) recruiting class regardless of the cirumstances. But that’s even more true in 2023, when the state of Florida is absolutely loaded.
If you draw a circle around Gainesville with a diameter of 150 miles, there are 17 players ranked in the top-300 of the 247Sports rankings. Seven of those are top-100 players and three are 5-stars. If Napier just signed those 17 players and then added 3-stars to complete the class to 25, he would have a class with an average player ranking of 93 and a point total that historically would have ranked third.
So when I say that Florida needs a top-3 class in recruiting, it’s not just because that’s what’s necessary to win. It’s also because that top-3 class is sitting right in the Gators’ back yard.
That doesn’t include any of the IMG kids (Samuel M’Pemba or Will Norman) who are 167 miles away. It doesn’t include any targets in the Ft. Lauderdale or Alabama area who are less than 300 miles away. If you look at 53 realistic targets for the Gators right now, 38 of them are within 350 miles of Gainesville.
The names of those targets are going to change a little bit. Over the next year, some players are going to play themselves into or out of the higher tier rankings. But the point is that Billy Napier is likely never going to have as much talent in his back yard as he does in the 2023 class.
It’s up to him to take advantage.
September’s coming fast
I like what Napier’s building. I like the process that I’m seeing. But one thing that we didn’t see with Dan Mullen was any real urgency to get kids to commit early.
We all saw what happened with Texas A&M this year. They were able to get the ball rolling with a bunch of commits and they never really seemed to stop. We also saw what happened when Kamari Wilson committed to Florida and how he really became the spokesman for the class.
The issue with that is Wilson committed in late December and so had limited time to convince others to come to Gainesville. If Napier can get some big-time recruits to commit early-on in this cycle, I suspect the same kind of momentum that built for A&M will be possible to build at Florida as well.
The IMG connection of Wilson to players like M’Pemba and Norman is significant. If one or both of those dominos fall, Florida is going to be off to the races. Get someone like Malik Bryant out of Orlando to commit and the momentum will really start to build.
We should all know where this class stands around the time the ball kicks off in September. It has always been the case that class quality doesn’t rise or fall that much after September and that the rankings just change because of volume (i.e. Florida was ranked 77th at one point this offseason but shot up to 16th because they went from 8 commits to 18).
That’s even more the case now with the early signing period in December. With the season in full swing, the idea that you’re going to be able to convince players to flip in large numbers is a mistake. Plus, Napier wants to have a large portion of his class in place by September, as opposing coaches can’t point to anything on the field to negatively recruit against.
Getting to know the staff
We talk a lot about recruiting being about relationships, but the same is true when it comes to retention with a new staff.
That’s why it was impressive to see that Florida had a meet-and-greet with parents of current Gators players this past weekend. With the 2022 class complete and things settling down a bit, allowing time for staff to get acquainted with parents and vice versa is something that makes sense, but isn’t something I remember happening with previous regime changes.
Perhaps in the past it wasn’t necessary. It would have been nice but getting buy-in from players already in the program wasn’t as important because they didn’t have the ability to just leave. But in the world of one-time transfer rules and the transfer portal, building those relationships isn’t just a courtesy, it’s a necessity for keeping the team together.
I’m cynical enough to believe that Napier knows that and that he isn’t spending his time schmoozing parents just to be nice. But again, it points to an attention to detail from the Napier regime that makes me believe that when it comes to recruiting, the Gators are in good hands moving forward.
Identity Phase
Just like the players and their families need to get to know the staff, the staff also needs to get to know the players. That, more than anything, seems like where Napier’s Identity Phase portion of his offseason program comes in.
Napier mentioned in his presser that this phase wasn’t just about testing physical toughness, but mental toughness as well. He mentioned that it wasn’t just about the workouts, but about eating habits, hydration habits, sleep habits and self-discipline.
Certainly the players are going to get tested physically, but honestly, that’s probably the easy part for most of them. They have been trained to deal with physical tests, and they aren’t making it to the next level without being able to push through that sort of pain.
But who’s going to be out partying at night? Who’s going to end up on the police blotter? Who’s going to have to sit out the first game of the season because of a “violation of team rules?” And who’s going to avoid all of those things and fully commit to the program, the staff and their own personal development?
Those are the questions that get answered in February. By the time the Spring Game rolls around, you need to be working on installing things, not making sure everyone is in alignment.
Transfer portal needs
We’ve talked a lot about recruiting (and rightfully so) heading into February, but now we need to start talking about the transfer portal. After spring practice, players are going to decide to leave the Gators, but players are going to decide to transfer to Florida as well.
So what players does Florida need to go after in the portal?
The first and most obvious is wide receiver. As I mentioned above, Florida only has 8 scholarship receivers on the team. That means if they have one injury, they won’t have a 2-deep for 4-wide formations.
The other place that seems to jump out is players who can generate a pass rush. The return of Brenton Cox certainly helps, and Princely Umanmielen and Antwuan Powell have shown flashes. But where else is the pass rush going to come from?
Gervon Dexter had 2.5 sacks, Powell had 1.5, Umanmielen had 1.0 and Dante Zanders, Lloyd Summerall and Justus Boone had 0.5 each. That’s it from the returning linebackers and defensive linemen excluding Cox. The Gators defensive backs may be much improved in 2022, but it isn’t going to matter if they can’t get to the quarterback.
Absent the portal, guys like Jack Pyburn, Andrew Savaiinaea and Shemar James are going to have to shine immediately. It also is going to force players like Tony Livingston and Arlis Boardingham into more receiver-heavy roles.
We’ll see what happens when the smoke clears in April or May.
Special teams
One place that Florida absolutely has to improve is on special teams. David Soderquist posted on his site recently some pretty striking stats regarding Florida’s special teams under Dan Mullen.
From 2018-2021, Florida finished 13th in the SEC in combined kick-off and punt return yardage, only besting Missouri. However, in the same time-frame, the Gators finished dead last in yards per attempt on kick-offs and punt returns.
That doesn’t even start to factor in that Florida has rarely seemed to block either punts or field goals, and lost two games last season in large part because of a blocked field goal and missed extra point. Put simply, the special teams have been an eyesore not just recently, but much of time time since Urban Meyer left.
It isn’t lost on me that Napier has brought in a bunch of recruits with basketball backgrounds. I know it isn’t exactly brain surgery to say that you just want athletes on your roster, but players like Tony Livingston, Hayden Hansen, Caleb Douglas and Arlis Boardingham will all have opportunities to contribute early if they embrace a role on special teams.
I used to hear all the time about college coaches telling players that they could earn reps on either the offense or defense by showing out on special teams. In the world of the transfer portal, I’m not sure how much that still happens at major college powers given both specialization, injury risk and the ability of some players to transfer if they don’t get on the field.
But it also makes me suspect that special teams play is a leading indicator for team chemistry. If you have a team bought-in, players are going to give max effort even when it doesn’t always show up in the box score. And eventually, that max effort will turn a game when perhaps you least expect it.
The Anthony Richardson show
I recently took a deep dive into Anthony Richardson’s 2021 campaign, and it was really enlightening.
I say that because after all the talk from Dan Mullen about how Emory Jones made the right reads and got the Gators into the right play and that being why Richardson wasn’t playing, I watched both the LSU and Georgia games and didn’t see any of that at all.
What I saw was a player who was throwing to the right man a vast majority of the time given the coverage until the turnovers against Georgia zapped him and the team of any confidence. But even in the Georgia game I saw some things that give me hope.
Kirby Smart threw some advanced concepts at AR, and you could see him learning on the job. Usually that learning is accompanied by incomplete passes, but in this particular game, the bounce always seemed to go Georgia’s way.
Whether it was the lesson that sometimes it’s better to just go down instead of having the ball ripped out or that Smart likes to drop his defensive linemen into throwing lanes when bringing his middle linebackers, that game is going to be a valuable learning experience for Richardson.
That being his first start was unfair. And despite the outcome, on rewatch I actually think he acquitted himself okay. I’m never going to say that was a good performance – and the pick-six was a really bad throw – but it was not the complete disaster that the scoreboard indicated.
All that is well and good, but the scoreboard matters. Nobody knows that more than Richardson. But based on what I saw when I watched him in detail, his skill set is going to deliver quite a few wins to the Gators in 2022 and beyond.