GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we talk the state of the program for the Florida Gators under Dan Mullen during the bye week.
Andrew Spivey and David Soderquist break down what Dan Mullen had to say during teh SEC Teleconference on Wednesday.
Andrew and David are also joined by Eric Fawcett as we preview the Florida Gators basketball team as Mike White and the Gators get started in November.
TRANSCRIPT:
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David: What’s up folks of Gator Country? This is none other than your body David Soderquist, along with Andrew Spivey. Florida will be on a bye week, and hoops is starting up here soon. We will be having on Eric Fawcett here in a little bit to discuss hoops and Mike White going into another season with the Gators basketball team.
First on the podcast today, a little segment I officially want to call the Bye Week Blues. Spivey, what’s been going on in Florida Gator Nation, besides the little teleconference we had today?
Andrew: Who got fired, Ed Orgeron or Dan Mullen?
David: I don’t know. It feels a little different.
Andrew: It’s hot.
David: It feels a little different, doesn’t it?
Andrew: It does. It feels a little different. Very strange feeling around the program right now. Obviously, Todd Grantham’s all but got a fork in him. I’ll be honest. Heading into the LSU week never would I have thought that the pressure would be this on Mullen if he lost, but the heat’s out there. He was on the teleconference on Wednesday. That’s his only media appearance for the bye week, and that’s normal. He usually doesn’t do very much media during the bye week. Coaches are out on the road. They take Monday off. That’s normal, but he was peppered. He was peppered with questions. He give his normal BS about evaluating this and evaluating that.
I think the one thing that stood out to me, David, was he says both quarterbacks are going to play. He didn’t want to say one guy was going to start with another, but if I was reading that press conference, I would say Emory Jones is your starting quarterback.
David: Don’t say that. Please, don’t say that, Spivey.
Andrew: That would be where I’m at.
David: You know how Dan is though. He’s going to say one thing and then do another thing. The thing is Georgia’s going to prepare for two quarterbacks anyway. It doesn’t matter whether you say Emory Jones is starting, Anthony Richardson is starting. He said he’s going to play both, like he always does. Who cares? Just say Anthony Richardson is starting, if you want him to start. That’s the thing. We don’t know if Dan Mullen wants him to start or not.
Andrew: Here’s the thing for me. I wouldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t tell you a lick. I’d keep it a secret all the way down to the wire. That would just be me. That’s the football coach in me. I wouldn’t say a word. I would say just like he said. You look at it, and obviously it’s gamesmanship. You’re never going to say that. You’re not going to give Georgia any leads whatsoever. If Kirby Smart is smart, which I’m pretty sure Kirby Smart is pretty smart defensive guy, he’s going to prepare for Anthony Richardson to be the starter. Obviously, he knows both quarterbacks pretty well, and he even said that, Kirby did. I get it.
The issue becomes, and we’re going to get into this more after we talk to Eric, but the issue becomes when you get this far down the road that you really are, everything you say is scrutinized to a tee and picked apart to a tee. You’re in a no-win situation. I feel like that’s where he’s at. I think he could tell us the sky was blue, and we’d argue with him.
David: It’s rightfully so though. He brought it onto himself.
Andrew: Agreed.
David: You can’t sit here and recruit lackluster all year and then on top of that, we’ll get into some other recruiting and all that towards the end of this podcast, but you can’t lackluster recruit. You can’t have an anemic defense two years in a row. You can’t lose games you shouldn’t lose, especially whether it’s by three, seven, or two points. It doesn’t matter. You can’t lose games that you’re not supposed to lose. Good coaches close out close games, whether they’re playing Alabama or they’re playing an LSU team that’s hobbled with 30 players. Good coaches, elite coaches, close out close games. You can’t do that on a consistent basis without getting some sort of criticism for it.
Andrew: Agreed.
David: We’ll get into it later on. Dan, the same energy Dan has, you can see it starting to wear on him a little bit.
Andrew: Right.
David: You’re wondering now what’s his response going to be? Is his response going to be it’s going to be the same thing each week, next week, the week after, evaluate this, evaluate that? Or is he going to take another step and say, I need to prove all these people wrong, the pressure’s too much, I need to do something, and then maybe accelerate that into the Jacksonville game? Maybe just start Richardson to begin with and see how he does.
Andrew: I was listening to someone today. If you start Richardson, and Richardson pulls a shoe out of his hat and wins the game, people are going to be pissed that he hasn’t played all year.
David: Don’t say shoe around here.
Andrew: Whatever. Pull a bone out of a dog. Whatever. Still, if that happens. Again, Dan’s put himself in this position that it is. Everything is scrutinized. He’s 4-6 in his last 10 ballgames. That’s the same thing that Jim McElwain and Will Muschamp were when they got fired.
David: That’s pretty bad.
Andrew: The difference is those two guys got fired with really good recruiting classes coming in. Dan’s recruiting class, and we’re going to talk about this more, but Shemar James decommitted. That was their highest rated guy.
David: It’s falling apart.
Andrew: Probably going to go to Georgia. This class isn’t looking great.
David: No.
Andrew: Where are you planning to go from good to elite? I was reading a story on Wednesday, and they said you can out scheme teams and win eight and nine games, maybe even 10. You can’t out scheme yourself for 12 wins, 13 wins.
David: No.
Andrew: You can’t. Here’s the thing. It has shown. As our man, Wunderlich said, the margin of error for Dan Mullen is zero.
David: You have to be perfect with that roster that you have right now. You have to have no injuries, nothing going on. You don’t have good quality depth. You don’t have elite depth. Who’s going to step in if one of the offensive linemen gets hurt? Who’s going to step in if a corner gets hurt, like Jason Marshall or Kaiir Elam? Who’s stepping in there? You don’t have good quality elite depth. Then you went to the portal to try to band-aid that, and now you got Elijah Blades out of here.
Andrew: Right.
David: Who do you have?
Andrew: You look at it. We’re going to bring on Eric in just a second, after this point real quick.
David: We’ll get into it later.
Andrew: My last point on this is this. Alabama, for instance. Let’s just talk Alabama. The Florida game, their worst game of the year probably. They found a way to win. Great talent. You look at teams when things go wrong, and they’re able to still win games. When things go wrong for Florida, they lose, because they don’t have enough depth to just overcome it. They don’t have enough star power to overcome it. A lot of teams, great teams, can figure out a way to overcome eight penalties. Guess what? They have enough star-studded athletes. They can convert 3rd and 15.
David: You kind of saw it in the LSU game. You have one star, which a quarterback makes a huge difference. Don’t get me wrong. You can be depleted of skill level talent, if you have a good quarterback. You saw it in the LSU game. LSU, they were going to blow us out of the water, until Anthony Richardson stepped in. He’s one of those guys that is a good skill level athlete, but who do you have after? What if Anthony Richardson gets hurt? We got Emory Jones. I’m not trying to trash Emory Jones. Anthony Richardson is leaps and bounds better than Emory Jones, from what I’ve saw. If he gets hurt, who do you have?
Andrew: Here’s the thing I want to say. Emory Jones would be a lot better with last year’s football talent. With Kyle Pitts, Kadarius Toney, Emory Jones would look really good. The talent surrounding him is not good. Let’s go. Let’s talk to Eric, David. We’ll talk some basketball, some Mike White. Maybe Eric can cheer everybody up with some Mike White talk.
David: I don’t know about that.
Andrew: Yeah. They may surprise some people.
David: Maybe some other basketball talk.
Andrew: We’ll get Eric. We’ll talk the basketball, and then we’ll come back, and we’re going to break down that video you had on Twitter.
David: Let’s do it, man. Folks, we have on Eric Fawcett, basketball expert over here at GatorCountry.com, covers the Gators basketball team for us in every facet of the game. With all the bad news going on in Gator football, come shed some light on the Gator basketball team for us and give us some good news.
Andrew: Bring us some good news, Eric.
David: Good news. We need good news.
Andrew: We’re over here talking bad about losing to LSU and Kentucky. Bring us some good news, my man. Is Florida going to beat Florida State this year?
Eric: That’s a tough one. You know what, both kind of my general thoughts on the team and what will happen against Florida State are a little bit tied in here. The first thing I’ll say is if you’re looking for an optimistic way of looking at this Florida basketball team, the first thing to look at is that it really does look like a team that’s very different than the Gator teams of these last couple of years.
What I mean by that is you look at the last couple of years, and there’s been a couple of returning players that the Gators like, whether that was KeVaughn Allen and Chris Chiozza or Kerry Blackshear or last year with Keyontae Johnson. Of course, it didn’t turn out that way, but with Keyontae Johnson and Tre Mann. All those teams had a couple returning pieces that you liked, but then there was a whole lot of young players, fairly highly thought of recruits, that were going to be really heavily relied on. What we have kind of seen with the last couple years is if you rely on young players, that’s just often not going to work in college basketball, where everyone is trying to get older and more experienced.
You look at this year’s Florida team, and they’ve got a hell of a five-star recruit in Kowacie Reeves , who I love a whole lot, 6’7” shotmaker, but you know he’s going to have to be relied upon, because the Gators have Colin Castleton coming back. They have Tyree Appleby coming back as a fifth-year point guard, Anthony Duruji coming back as a fifth-year player. Then all the graduate transfers they’re bringing in, that I’m sure we’ll get to, Brandon McKissic and Myreon Jones and Phlandrous Fleming and CJ Felder. They have a bunch of players that are older, have already shown that they can contribute, a couple of them at the high major level, a couple of them just at a high level at some lower leagues.
Again, I just look at this Florida team, and it looks a lot different than these last couple of years, where Florida was going to need to get a whole lot of production from some very young players, and banking on that in college basketball, not just at Florida but around the entire sport, that has a recipe for experience. You can really look at them in a little bit of a different way than some of these past teams.
As that relates to Florida State, one thing that’s nice is that the Gators get to play Florida State in the second game of the season. You look at Florida. They are definitely the more experienced team. More new younger pieces for Florida State. They’ve got a lot of talent. They’ve got some really good recruits coming in, some good younger transfers, but Florida is the older team. So, I think when you look at a game that’s being played second game of the season, oftentimes those matchups are going to benefit the more experienced team.
That’s also I’ll say part of the reason why Florida State has really dominated the rivalry recently was because Florida State was always the older team, and then Florida’s bringing all these young players first or second game of the season. The Gators don’t know how to play together yet, and Florida State just comes out and blitzes them. I don’t think that’s going to be the case. If Florida is going to catch Florida State, it’s probably going to be this team, with the much older more experienced roster.
Andrew: Two-part question for you. A, can Florida go more than seven or eight deep, like they were last year, where it seemed like it was a limited group? Then based off of what you know, who do you think roles out as that starting five?
Eric: This has been a good question. There’s the starting five that I think would be the best five, and then the starting five that I think Mike White is going to play, just kind of based off what he has done in the past.
Andrew: Can you give him the starting five that’s going to win games? That’s what we want, Eric.
Eric: This is the starting five that I think will win games. Starting at point guard I’d have Tyree Appleby, fifth-year player. We saw him do pretty well next to Tre Mann last year, and now he’s going to be a lot more suited to his skillset, so I think we see a big year out of him. I see Myreon Jones, the Penn State transfer, 15 points a game, proven high major guy, at shooting guard. I see Kowacie Reeves, the five-star freshman, 6’7” shotmaker, at small forward. I see CJ Felder, 6’7” physical power forward, unlike anyone that the Gators have really had on their roster recently and a proven ACC player, played in one of the best leagues in college basketball the last two years. Proved he can contribute at a high level. I see him at power forward. And I see Colin Castleton, of course, preseason first team All-SEC, at center.
The lineup that I think the Gators are going to play, just based off of what Mike White normally does. Tyree Appleby at point guard. Brandon McKissic, UMKC transfer, combo guard, smaller guy, can really defend at the point of attack, shoots threes, and then I would say Myreon Jones at the three. That would be three 6’3” and under guards on the perimeter. Then I would see Anthony Duruji at the four. Mike White has always loved playing smaller, kind of more stretchy guys at the four than traditional power forwards. Then Colin Castleton at the five.
That’s the five I’m expecting to see when they open the season against Elon. I mentioned the starting five that I think is going to kind of emerge as the best one by the end of the season. You know what, Andrew, this is very easily the most depth that a Mike White team has had. As much as I say this is the starting five I think should happen, and this is the starting five I think is going to happen, I don’t hate the starting five I think Mike White is going to roll out. Let’s just roll with the starting five that I think Mike White’s going to roll out.
Andrew: Do you think that helps get to the pace of play Mike White wants to play?
Eric: It certainly helps. You look at the Gators that have been so thin, especially at the positions of guys that need to be flying out there at the wing. There’s been so few wings on the roster, so it just hasn’t been really part of Florida basketball, despite that being what Mike White was branded as.
You look at the starting five that I think is going to play with Tyree Appleby, Brandon McKissic, Myreon Jones, Anthony Duruji, and Colin Castleton. Off the bench you’ve got a five-star in Kowacie Reeves. That’s pretty special. You have Phlandrous Fleming, a transfer from Charleston Southern, which played in a not very good Big South league, but he scored 20 points per game, eight rebounds per game, was just a dominant player in that league.
Then you look at a player like Niels Lane, who had production as a freshman last year. Couldn’t hit shots, that was the only problem, but was one of the best defensive players on the team. Then in that kind of situation as well, with Duruji starting, that means that CJ Felder, a player who was one of the best defensive players in the ACC, that means he’s coming off the bench.
Right there, I think you see an eight-man rotation that looks really solid. For that reason, I think you’ve got to be pretty high on the depth of this team, which hasn’t really been the case in the last couple of years. It was like the guys that Florida was taking off the bench were all freshmen, freshmen or sophomores. Young players, unproven players. It looks like the Gators are going to be bringing of Phlandrous Fleming, a guy who’s a fifth-year player, CJ Felder, a third-year player with ACC experience. Kowacie Reeves, at least if you’re going to bring a freshman off the bench it’s going to be a five-star, not someone who is a low four-star. Depth is definitely going to be a strength for this basketball team.
Andrew: I want to hear you say Tuongthach, whatever his name is.
Eric: That’s a tough one. Tuong Gatkek, you can kind of shorten that one up. He’s a pretty interesting one, a junior college player that Florida took really late in the cycle. It’s not a take that I’m particularly a big fan of. There’s not really much of an archetype of these kind of transfers working at the high major level. He wasn’t a super heralded recruit, wasn’t a super heralded junior college player. We kind of saw the Gators try this last year with Osayi Osifo, a player that I said was not a take for the Gators, and we kind of saw what happened there. We’ll see. We’ll see with Gatkek.
He just technically played his first year of college basketball, or of junior college. He can get that year of eligibility back due to Covid, so maybe he’s someone who sticks around for four years and contributes in Year 3 or 4. I would say that doesn’t really happen in modern basketball anymore, so I guess we’ll see. Florida’s track record of developing, particularly front court players, has not been great. So, the Gators really making a bet on their ability to develop a front court player and have him stick around for a lot of years. Well, that’s just a little bit more 2011, not 2021. We’ll see with that one. Really cheering for the kid, but I definitely would not expect production here in Year 1.
Andrew: Is Akeem Miskdeem, you told me how to say it before, what does he bring to the table? Obviously, Al Pinkins is more of your big guy coach, but what does Akeem, does he bring that ability to really develop guys? Is that something he’s known for? You have him and Erik Pastrana joining White’s staff. Do you have those two guys as more of developing guy, recruiting guy? Give us a take on that.
Eric: Erik Pastrana is definitely the recruiting guy. He got a bunch of really good players at Oklahoma State, and right away he came to Florida and got Malik Reneau in the Class of 2022, five-star player at Montverde, could very well be one and done. Post player that’s so skilled, really great feel for the game. He’s going to be a good one to look forward to next year. There’s a lot of coaches with reputations of guys who can recruit well. Pastrana right away showed that it wasn’t just reputation. He could really get the job done. I think that was an awesome hire for the Gators. He’s someone who seems like every summer there was a lot of really good programs looking to get his services. As someone who is from South Florida and has recruited that area really well, which everyone wants to do, definitely a great add by the Gators.
With Miskdeen, he’s definitely a little bit more of the development guy, particularly with the guards. Someone who this is his first high major job, so he’s kind of used to being in situations at Kent State and Florida Atlantic where you have guys around for a couple of years, and you’ve got to develop them up. He’s definitely known a little bit more as someone in that kind of role, particularly with the guards.
Then returning Al Pinkins, like you mentioned, he’s someone who has been tasked with developing the big men. I’ve kind of been a little bit critical of big men development in the past. There’s a couple guys on the roster now, Jason Jitoboh entering his third year, and with Gatkek there’s some guys that Al Pinkins can really shut me up and prove me wrong and turn these guys into some really good players. We’ll see. Unfortunately, that track record at Florida so far, not so good with the development of big men.
David: You’re talking up all these five-stars and all this depth, and it makes me kind of sad when I refer to my football team. It’s making me not feel good right here. Florida took in some transfers this year as well. I know you went through a little bit of it. What do these transfers bring to the table for this Florida team? When we take transfers from the portal in football, it’s to band-aid problems. It looks like this is a lot better quality of transfers that are coming into this basketball team.
Andrew: This is save Mike White job.
Eric: There’s definitely a different culture with the whole transfer portal in basketball versus football. You see so many high impact transfers in basketball. It’s kind of been a proven way to win games, and it’s proven to work. Gonzaga makes it to the National Championship last year with Andrew Nembhard, a Florida transfer, and they had a couple players on their roster that transferred. Baylor, who won the National Championship, had several transfers on their roster. It’s proven at a whole lot of levels to work, and I think it’s smart that the Gators have always left room on their roster for transfers and this year lean into it more than ever, because they were like, we’re tired of being young and inexperienced.
Kind of each of the transfers, Myreon Jones would be definitely the most proven kind of high major guy. Played at Penn State for three years, was the 40+% three-point shooter. If you’re looking for the Noah Locke replacement, that’s him right there. Someone who put two 40% three-point shooting seasons in the last years on the table. Has been able to prove he can shoot the ball at the high major level. One thing just to watch with him, he’s got a really funky shot mechanic. He’s a righthanded shooter, but he brings the ball from the left side of his face and kind of brings it across his body. He’s really prone to some streaky shooting. He’ll go ice cold. He’ll go 0 for 7, and then the next game he’ll go 6 for 8.
Andrew: It’s not going to be pretty like Noah Locke, because Noah Locke had the prettiest shot I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m going to miss Noah Locke. I’m going to miss Noah. I love Noah Locke.
Eric: The thing with Noah Locke was you just knew he was going to go 3 for 7, and he didn’t run really hot and really cold. Myreon Jones seems to be the opposite. The percentages work out. He’s been a 40% three-point shooter for two years, but I’m telling you he’s going to put one off the side of the backboard one time that is going to have you just wincing. The percentages so far have really worked in his favor.
Then kind of the theme with the other three transfers, more than anything, I’ll say is defense. Brandon McKissic was Defensive Player of the Year in the Summit League, multiple time All-Defense in that league. Phlandrous Fleming, defensive player of the league in the Big South. Which is also crazy, because as I mentioned before, he scored 20 points per game. He was the ninth highest usage player in the entire country, so he was shouldering a whole lot of the offensive load, and he was still getting back on defense and grinding. You’ve got two all-league, mid-major league, but all-league defenders, in Phlandrous Fleming and Brandon McKissic.
Then CJ Felder wasn’t an all-league defender, but he very easily could have been. Something that I thought was pretty interesting, Neil Blackmon from Saturday Down South, he talked to Leonard Hamilton, the head coach at Florida State, and they’re known for playing really good defense at Florida State. He said one of the best defensive players in all the ACC was CJ Felder.
Really, if you want to look at a common theme of these transfers, it’s kind of defense, defense, defense, but I will point out that while it’s defense, defense, defense, it was Phlandrous Fleming scoring 20 points per game in the Big South and Brandon McKissic scoring 17 points per game in the Summit League.
Just as one more kind of thing to add, the Summit League is where Oral Roberts played, the team that beat Florida and made a Sweet Sixteen. While it is a mid-major league, we’ve seen that obviously there’s guys in that league that can hang with the Floridas and the Ohio States of the world. Not that I’m saying that Brandon McKissic is Max Abmas, the guy who just sunk the Gators, but came from the same league and had production that was somewhere in that realm. He could end up being a really special player.
Andrew: I thought we were friends, Eric. You talk about all the guys who get transfers, and you forgot the transfer machine, Richie Riley. Come on, man.
Eric: We got to talk Deaundrae Ballard there and all those.
Andrew: We don’t even talk about Deaundrae Ballard. We got better players than that.
Eric: Here’s a fun stat, talking about the transfer portal in 2021. South Alabama has more players on their roster that were committed to SEC schools out of high school than Florida does right now.
Andrew: Go Jags.
Eric: Yeah. Looking at this year, Florida’s likely going to start, unless they start Kowacie Reeves, they’re starting five transfers. If it’s Tyree Appleby, Colin Castleton, transfers. If it’s Brandon McKissic and Myreon Jones and CJ Felder or Anthony Duruji, it’s all transfers. Florida’s probably starting five transfers this year, and that’s modern basketball for you, my friends.
Andrew: J’s up. Richie Riley.
David: J’s up.
Andrew: Question for you real quick, Eric. You look at this transfer portal. Obviously, I look at it differently, because of doing more football than basketball. You look at this roster, and it’s 75% transfers. Let’s see. What is it? Duruji, Reeves, Jitoboh, and Lane. That’s the only four that were committed to Florida, right? Am I missing one?
Eric: No. Duruji was a transfer. The numbers are going to also get a little bit thrown by some of the late adds, like Elijah Kennedy was a player that was headed for prep school. Keyontae Johnson, of course, but we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. Kowacie Reeves and then Jason Jitoboh, Niels Lane. You’re essentially 60-70% transfers. When you look at the minutes played, it’s probably going to be 70-80%.
Andrew: Is it a failure in recruiting? Mike White’s done well in recruiting. Tre Mann is playing for the Thunder. Scottie Lewis was one of the best players in high school basketball when he committed. The same thing with Noah Locke. Noah Locke was a really good player. Keyontae Johnson was a really good player. Recruiting hasn’t been a problem really for this staff. What is it? Why do you think it is now 75% transfers? Is that just where we’re going in college basketball, or is that a knock on Mike White?
Eric: It’s really not a knock on Mike White. It’s just pretty easy to look at that when you look at all the other rosters around college basketball. Again, if you’re a football fan listening to this, and you hear Florida’s starting five transfers, that’s ridiculous, or more than half of their roster is transfers, that’s ridiculous. Then if you just go look around the SEC, look around high major, it’s not just the SEC. You look anywhere in college basketball, like I mentioned. Look at the National Championship with Baylor and Gonzaga.
This is just modern college basketball, where the mid-major leagues and low major leagues are almost used like junior colleges. Players just want to go where they can play right away. I think especially in basketball, when you’ve got 13 scholarships in basketball, and you reasonably need seven or eight or maybe even nine of them to play for you right away, it’s kind of the way you have to build your roster. You can’t just fill your backend with guys that are not going to play for a couple of years and be content with it.
You even look at a couple of the transfers out the last couple of years, like Ques Glover for example. That’s someone who was an unrated player, unranked player that Florida took as a commit. I think for a lot of people hearing a story like that, you say, Florida takes an unranked player with no Division I offers, that’s the kind of guy that will be happy to redshirt and stick around for a couple years to play. He said, no, I’m not getting enough minutes here. I’m going to go transfer to Samford. Again, you can dislike it, but I would just say, if you’re mad at it, you’re kind of mad at college basketball. You shouldn’t be mad at Mike White. If you think that this is bizarre or weird, just go look at some other rosters around college basketball. You’ll see this is not unique to Florida.
Andrew: Do you think this is going to be the new normal, where you’re 60-70%, or let’s just say half of your roster is transfers? Obviously, Florida has a couple good players in the 2022 class, and you lose a lot of guys with turnover. Obviously, they’re going to go back to the portal? Is that kind of where you’re seeing basketball go to, where it’s almost portal, portal, portal, besides the ones and dones pretty much?
Eric: There’s been a couple high major coaches who said that they’re not going to be taking players from high school anymore. They just were straight up like, why would we take a risk on that, when I can see someone who plays at South Alabama, and I can go try to get him?
Andrew: Stay away.
Eric: Bad example. Bad example, because Richie Riley is the one who’s getting all these. Actually, that’s a good example. I think people think, look at all these, this transfer portal is going to kill mid-majors because these high major guys are going to get whatever they want. Look at team like South Alabama. They say, you might try to get the best player from my team, but I can get the sixth or seventh best player from your team. That’s what South Alabama and a couple other savvy mid-majors are doing.
I think this is going to happen a lot more. I think Florida could end up having five or six open scholarships after this year, I’m guessing. They have two commits in the 2022 class, which honestly that surprised me a little bit. I didn’t think they were going to take two this early. Maybe they get one more, but I wouldn’t imagine we see more than a third player from the high school recruiting class. Florida’s going to keep roster spots open, and their plan is going to be to go hard after the portal. I think this is not even the future of college basketball. It’s the present.
Andrew: By the way, they picked my Jaguars to finish fifth in the Sunbelt this year. They’re full of it.
Eric: That’s some bulletin board material.
David: That’s not good.
Andrew: My man Eric knows about J’s up in Mobile with Mr. Richie Riley. Richie Riley is going to be a head basketball coach at a big time school sooner or later.
David: They might have to evaluate. That’s the word of the week, right?
Andrew: That’s the word of the week.
David: Reevaluate.
Andrew: Eric, before we get you out of here, real quick, a couple things. What do you see the keys being for this team this year to succeed? If they fall, if it’s a down year, why is it?
Eric: I think the biggest thing with this Florida team is, again, we kind of mentioned their depth is awesome, and they’ve got some really good defensive players that I think are going to be stout. The one thing with basketball though is when there’s two minutes left in the game, and it’s tied, it’s often what team has the better scorer on the floor. The Gators stole a couple games last year, because Tre Mann was the best scorer on the floor. I look at this team, and there’s just not that kind of guy that you’re really comfortable with.
I should say, let’s see if one emerges, but as we go into the season I’m not sure who’s going to have the basketball in their hands in a tie game with 30 seconds left, one more possession, and you just are sure they can get a good shot off and hit a big shot. Tyree Appleby has a little bit of that to his game, but he is 6’1”. Could be a little tougher for him to get off those big shots than it was a 6’4” Tre Mann. Colin Castleton might be the best player on the Gators, but it’s hard to run your offense through a center, especially at the end of these tight games when refs are swallowing their whistles.
I see the floor of this team being really high. They’re just so old, so experienced, so much proven production. I think that the idea of them missing the NCAA Tournament and finishing 10th or 11th in the SEC, that’s just not really believable to me. I also look at their top end talent, and I just say I’m not sure they really have that kind of star power that could really propel them to winning the SEC or being a really high seed in the NCAA Tournament. That’s kind of my outlook.
I think things will go better than expected. I think they’ll be good defensively. Maybe they’re awesome defensively. Mike White had a couple teams earlier in his career at Florida where Florida did not have good defensive players, and they were a top 15 defensive team. Yes, Kevarrius Hayes was awesome, but they surrounded him with a lot of guys who weren’t good defensive players, and Mike White found a way for them to be awesome defensively. They’ve got a lot better people.
Andrew: Scottie Lewis has been the worst.
Eric: Sadly, he was. You look at this team with a lot more pieces defensively. Maybe it ends up being a top 10 defensive team, and then it doesn’t matter if they’re not great offensively. Then if the wheels were to kind of fall off in a way that I don’t really expect, maybe we look back at the transfers and say, one thing that’s crazy is Phlandrous Fleming, Charleston Southern. Charleston Southern was 2-18 last year. Their two wins were by one point, so they were two points away from not winning a single game last season. Boston College only won four games last season. UMKC was not good. Penn State was 11-14.
Florida’s getting some players that all look really good, and a lot of them came to Florida because they wanted the chance to play big-time basketball, and they were tired of losing, but maybe we look back on it and say, these were guys that maybe there’s a reason their teams weren’t that good, because they played big parts in all of them.
So, to summarize, if things end up going really well, it’s because they’re not good, they’re great defensively. If the wheels kind of fall off, maybe it’s because these transfers aren’t quite as good as we think, and maybe it’s just because they don’t have a good enough shotmaker. Instead of being the team like last year where the Gators got outplayed in some games, and then Tre Mann bailed them out and stole one, maybe there could be games where Florida’s depth and experience, where they outplay a team for 38 minutes, and then someone steals one from them. That would be my concern.
Andrew: You make me depressed. I just want to win. Win something.
David: Last but not least, SEC, they’re 7th right now. Where do you think they wind up at the end?
Eric: I do want to say something quick about that. Just the fact that whether it’s the analytics, predicted metrics, or it’s just straight prognosticators and voters, pretty much consensus the SEC is the best conference in college basketball this year, who could be putting in 9 or 10 teams. Honestly, I think the Gators are probably the 5th best team in the SEC, but the SEC is really, really good. Even if they are 7th, like the polls are saying, 7th in the SEC could be a six or seven seed. That’s how good the league is.
I know some people are going to say, 7th, like that sucks, what’s happened to the Florida program? Again, you still in any year want to be better than 7th, even if the SEC is the best league in college basketball. This is Florida. We know what the Gator standard is here on this podcast. At the same time, even if Florida does end up being 7th, that’s not awful. That’s a six or seven seed. Are you shooting for higher than that? Yeah. At Florida, you absolutely are. But if your season doesn’t go great, and you end up being a six or seven seed in the NCAA Tournament, that’s not so bad.
Andrew: I’ll say this. Obviously, I know zip about basketball compared to Eric, but a lot of your great teams, Gonzaga being one of them, are just five guys who play really well together. Not necessarily a superstar. Maybe that’s it this year. Maybe these five guys gel together and just play really good together. Like you talk about, these are guys that have proven themselves at smaller levels. Let’s go for it. Eric, we appreciate it.
David: Definitely.
Andrew: Always enjoy getting you on. Get ready, because we’ll have you on for some more Mike White talk. I’m thinking it’s going to be a good year.
Eric: I’m looking forward to that. Florida State is the second game of the season. I think we’re going to be probably having some conversations about Florida basketball for the better or worse after that one. I’m looking forward to it.
Andrew: We’ll be having conversations before that game, because we’ll be previewing that with you too. That’s a big one. Eric, appreciate it as always. Thanks for coming on. We will talk with you on the podcast here soon.
Eric: It was a pleasure. Go Gators.
David: Definitely. Eric Fawcett. You can follow him @EFawcette7 on Twitter. Covering basketball for us here at Gator Country. Thanks, Eric. Eric Fawcett, our man covering the basketball here for Gator Country.
Andrew: I can’t get over the fact 70% of a team is freaking transfers.
David: I know. Isn’t that crazy?
Andrew: That’s insane. I was expecting 50, but 70%.
David: It’s crazy how the transfer portal has changed everything.
Andrew: Right.
David: Mike White, he takes those transfer not to band-aid problems.
Andrew: Right.
David: He might have taken a few to band-aid some problems, but the other ones were actual transfers that are going to make a difference coming onto your team. It’s not like Dan Mullen, band-aid issues on the defensive line.
Andrew: 70%. You’re just bringing a new team. That’s like Calipari when he was bringing all those one and dones in. It’s insane. That kicks off here the first of November, or tips off I should say the first of November. We’ll be covering that here on the podcast. We’ll have Eric back. Eric does a great job. He knows this stuff.
David: Yeah he does.
Andrew: Let’s get into some football. Let’s start with the big one. Shemar James decommits from Florida. It has been rumored. He visited Georgia twice. That one hurts. That one hurts big time.
David: It’s our biggest commit.
Andrew: Yeah. You and I talked about this on Sunday’s podcast where Florida had no middle linebackers on this team after Ventrell Miller got hurt. Now they lose their best middle linebacker, and one of the best middle linebackers in the country. Not only that, but you’re either going to lose him to Bama or Georgia.
David: Yeah. He’s probably going to wind up going up in the actual 247, Rivals, however they rank them. He’s probably going to wind up going up there. Who knows what his ranking is going to look like at the end. It’s going to go up. I know for a fact it’s going to go up.
Andrew: It’s just scratch your head, frustrates you. You name it.
David: I don’t blame them after seeing that sickening performance of LSU last week. He’s going over to Georgia watching that defense trample all over everybody, block kicks, get interceptions, turnovers, and he’s seeing good defense. Then he comes to watch this LSU game, where we’re just practically letting a three-, four-star running back just run all over us, 287 yards by himself, 321 yards for the game. Can you really blame the guy?
It sucks that we couldn’t hold onto Shemar James, but for you to be able to recruit at an effective level, you got to be able to at least communicate with the guy that’s already committed to you, keep him onboard. On top of that, on field results make a kid really want to come to your university and stay committed. I always say, they’re never committed until they sign the letter of intent.
Andrew: Can’t celebrate.
David: With the transfer portal now it changes things too, but you’ve got to keep them onboard. That’s one of those things where I always tell people, if we get a commit that’s cool, he’s got to stay onboard though. That’s one of those decommitments here. This class is falling apart. It really is. I hate to say that, and I don’t like to be Debbie Downer, and I did call this the Bye Week Blues episode. It’s looking rough. It’s really looking rough.
Andrew: Julian Humphrey looks all but gone. He’s your second guy.
David: You’re sitting here, and it’s almost November, and you don’t have a good recruiting class at all. I don’t even know how far they dropped. They probably dropped down to 19 maybe. It looks like from the gist of it, if Humphrey’s goes, you’re going to be in the 30s. That’s terrible. I don’t know the last time that we had a recruiting class in the 30s by the end of the cycle. I know when Jim McElwain came from when Will Muschamp was here we got like a 21 ranked recruiting class, but that was his rebound. He was luckily able to get a few five-stars on National Signing Day and then bump that class rank up, but it’s just not looking good.
Andrew: Florida is 17th in the composite ranking now, after that.
David: I’m surprised.
Andrew: You have to figure it out. It goes to a couple things, and I hinted at this a little bit on the message board. You celebrated too early. Mullen wasn’t communicating. Mullen wasn’t talking to Shemar, and Kirby was blowing him up. Listen, I hate Georgia. I can’t stand Georgia. I can’t stand the bulldogs, can’t stand Kirby Smart, but they are what they are right now. They’re the hot team.
David: They can recruit too.
Andrew: Yeah. And they’re the hot team. Right now, they out recruited you for a guy you wanted. I just don’t get it. I don’t. This is going to be the downfall. I’ve said this, and I’ve said this, and I’ve said this till I’m blue in the face. Recruiting is going to be the downfall for Dan Mullen. You just can’t. You cannot not recruit well and win at the University of Florida the way you’re supposed to win. Now, can you be second and third in the EAST and every now and then get to Atlanta and get blown out? Yeah. You can. That’s not Florida football.
That’s not what the standard is at Florida football anymore. It just isn’t. The standard is to be competing for championships year in and year out. Not every four years like you were at Mississippi State. It just isn’t getting any better. People have asked me, what does Dan need to do to get it better? The past 13 years of Dan’s career tells me it’s not going to get better.
David: The guy that you should have fired last year, you didn’t fire. He’s still here on the roster, and there’s been rumors saying that it was a contract thing, and the reason why he didn’t get rid of Grantham was that. That wasn’t the reason. That was not the reason at all.
Andrew: No. If he wanted to fire Todd Grantham last year, he could have fired Todd Grantham last year. That’s BS if I ever heard BS. Here’s the thing. You fire Todd Grantham, and you get a new defensive coordinator to fix the defense. Cool. What did you do to fix recruiting? Todd Grantham ain’t the only absolute waste in recruiting. Tim Brewster has the best tight end in arguably college football history last year and can’t recruit a tight end this year.
David: What’s the deal with that? I don’t get that. You had a Mackey award winner in Kyle Pitts, and then you had that tight end that went to Alabama over Florida. I can’t even remember the guy’s name off the top of my head.
Andrew: Skinner. Jaleel Skinner.
David: Jaleel Skinner. That should have been your guy right there. You should have been going after that guy after that. Even if he said he wanted to be a wide receiver, you still should have been going after that guy. Put him in the slot. It’s just like having a tight end anyway. You could have had Jaleel Skinner, and you didn’t go after him, so who do you have now? Who are you going after now? The second ranked tight end in the class? No.
Andrew: It looks like you’re going to go after Mason Taylor, who’s committed to LSU from St. Thomas, Jason Taylor’s son. He’s a good player. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a good player, but the thing about it is there’s no guarantee that you get him, because he didn’t feel wanted a few months ago, and you’re in your fourth option basically. You struck out on Skinner. You struck out on Delp. You had Hawkins. He flipped. Now you’re going to go to Mason Taylor. It’s just bad. I hate to be the Debbie Downer and everything else, and I don’t know that I’m on the fire Dan Mullen train yet. I’m on the fire up Dan Mullen train to get him wherever it needs to be, but again, history says that it’s not going to improve recruiting wise. I don’t know what to say.
David: If you look at it, fire up Dan Mullen, we’re talking about this, and we’ll get into this too. We’re going to discuss my video that I posted, and it’s a really good video that I had posted on my Twitter. I did post it on our VIP boards. It’s the transition. I called it the evolution of Dan Mullen. He gets here in 2018. He’s like, we got to be better at this. We got to be better at that. This isn’t the standard. This is that. Then he talks about his first loss to Missouri, or his first bad loss was to Missouri. He’s like, everybody knows this, the thumb wrestle me, the quote. Kick your ass.
Andrew: In that quote too, he said, I believe Florida’s offense was outgained, and he said, it doesn’t matter. It only matters about the scoreboard. Fast forward to Kentucky this year, and he wanted everybody to give him praise because he had 448 yards of total offense against Kentucky. What is it, Dan? The thing is you see that evolution, like you say, of him, and you just wonder what’s going on. Is the stage too big for Dan? People always are asking, does Dan even want to be here? That I don’t know. I don’t know if he does anymore or not. Does Dan want to win? Yes. Everybody wants to win. Nobody wakes up wanting to lose. Nobody I know wants to wake up and lose. I don’t think Dan’s that way. The mindset has changed.
David: Yeah. And we don’t even know why his mindset has changed. We don’t know if he’s just given up, or he’s upset with something that’s going on at the university he’s not getting, if he wants to go to the NFL, and he didn’t get his NFL contract last year, so he’s just down in the dumps. We don’t know. We have no clue what’s going on at the university to know why Dan Mullen’s attitude suddenly has changed.
Like I said, you go to the ’18, the ’19 season, and then ’20 and ’21 season. You’re thinking Covid in the 2020 season. Maybe Dan was down because of Covid. He couldn’t get back on track with strength and conditioning, all that other kind of stuff. You kind of give him a pass for last year. For his attitude at least, not for the games that he played and the defense the way that it was playing. It was just terrible. You give him a pass.
2021, there’s a vaccine out. Everybody can go to practice. You got all the strength and conditioning going, everything going for you, and you just see an attitude of, well, we lost a game, but … there’s always a but. No. you lost a game. There is no but. You lost the game. It’s bad. You shouldn’t have lost to Kentucky. You shouldn’t have lost to LSU.
We’re going to get into this a little bit. You should have had a quarterback playing over another quarterback, and you’d probably be 6-1 or 7-0 right now, but you didn’t do that either. Now you’re at a position where you’re going into Jacksonville to face Georgia, and you’re at a means where are you going to start Anthony Richardson, or are you going to start Emory Jones? Right now, to me, you have to give the fanbase some kind of hope. I would have mentioned a starter today. Like I said, Kirby is going to prepare for two quarterbacks anyway. That defense, it doesn’t matter. There’s so many good players on that defense, they probably don’t even have to prepare, and they’re going to be able to stop Florida on some offensive drives.
Anthony Richardson, what I saw from him in the LSU game, I’m not going to call him elite. I’m not going to call him a Heisman winner. I’m not going to call him a future Heisman winner. He’s a rookie. He’s a young kid who’s going to make mistakes, but what I saw in that LSU game looked pretty elite to me.
Andrew: You just have to change something up. Again, I don’t think he should have named a starter. I get it. You have to do something to get the fanbase back.
David: You got to get them excited.
Andrew: You’ve lost the fanbase. Period. Now, obviously, the fanbase is short for fanatic, and you can win them back in a heartbeat. You beat Georgia, most of the fanbase will be back on your team. It just isn’t where you want to be in Year 4. You look at Year 4 of Kirby. You look in Year 4 of Dabo. You look in Year 4 of programs. This is not where you want to be. This is your team now. These are your guys now. These are your guys that you handpicked. Emory is the guy you handpicked to be your quarterback, and it’s not going very well.
David: No, it’s not. The thing is you got to swallow your pride. If Emory Jones isn’t that guy, you just got to replace the guy. You have to swallow your pride, or else you’re going to be out of a job. That’s the problem. Eventually it’s going to catch up to him, and it may be here in Jacksonville. Maybe over the bye week he has some big that tells him maybe I need to straighten up, maybe I need to start doing this, maybe I need to start doing that. We don’t know yet. What I found funny too, and we talked about the video I posted transitioning through Dan Mullen’s attitude throughout the years, you’ve got players liking that video. You’ve got former players retweeting that video. That’s not a good look.
Andrew: No. It’s not.
David: It literally had 550 retweets, and almost 100,000 views. You know somebody saw it. I’m sure the staff probably saw it, as many times as it’s going around on Twitter. I don’t know how many angry fans tagged Dan Mullen. It was great. I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t expect for it to blow up as much as it did, but I kept it up, because you need to see that. Somebody needs to see that.
Andrew: Right.
David: It’s getting ridiculous.
Andrew: You’re at a point, and I say this, and again I don’t know a better way to say it. You’re at this point now where you’re in a transition of this is at a split roads here where things can go a lot of different ways, and you’ve got to figure out which way you want it to go. It’s very quickly could spiral badly, very quickly.
David: It’s already starting to spiral.
Andrew: Yeah. I’m saying it could spiral even more.
David: You got to keep it from spiraling. Right.
Andrew: You’re at that crossroads of we have to figure this out. If you’re Dan Mullen, you have to figure it out. It’s sad to say that you’ve went to that point, especially when it was the Alabama game where everybody at the highest of highs, as far as a team. Even though you lost, you were at the highest of highs, and now you’re at the lowest of lows.
David: With all the people that are coming out on social media, you know he sees some of that. Now it’s a matter of does he care, or does he not care? Like you said, does he take the one way, or does he take the other way? The other thing that concerned me too is watching the postgame presser of that LSU game, Mohamoud Diabate’s interview, the way that he was talking. Not a good look.
Andrew: No.
David: That worries me too coming into Jacksonville. I’m wondering now. I’m not saying rumors. This is me wondering as a fan. Has the defense checked out just mentally?
Andrew: You have to worry if the whole team has checked out.
David: Do you think the team’s defense checked out mentally during that LSU game?
Andrew: I don’t know. Listen, at some point or another, I’ll say this.
David: That wasn’t a good LSU team.
Andrew: No. But at some point or another, whether your team’s checked out or not, you have to play for the pride on the back of the jersey too. The pride on the front of the jersey is one thing, and you should play for it, but at some point or another, you have to play for the pride on the back of the jersey too. As much as Diabate’s comments are true about we have to be put in the position, I get that, and that’s true. At the same point or another, you’re a linebacker. Your instincts have to take over to where you do that.
Now, again, you can lose your team, and you can lose your locker room. I’m sure he is noticing that. You have to look at it and say, if I start Anthony Richardson, how does my team react? If I start Emory Jones, how does my team react? If I have this gameplan, how does my team react? You have to think about it. The thing is, and this is what worries me, we’re in a day and age now where opting out is okay. I hate it, but it’s okay now. You’ve got some seniors on this team and some Draft eligible guys on this team that if things go really bad in Jacksonville, maybe Georgia’s the last game the play.
David: Yeah.
Andrew: You have to be careful here.
David: This is a big game every year.
Andrew: Will Muschamp won these games.
David: He only won one.
Andrew: It can happen.
David: I’ll say this. The year that Will Muschamp got fired was the year that he finally won in Jacksonville. It was the last year of his career, and Florida rushed 400 yards.
Andrew: Kelvin Taylor was like a workhorse. The poor guy was running like all day long.
David: Him and Matt Jones. It was crazy.
Andrew: That was the fake field goal too, right?
David: Yeah. That was the one that Michael McNeely ran in.
Andrew: McNeely. That’s it. The walk-on.
David: Publix guy. Doesn’t steal crap, sells them.
Andrew: Wasn’t he going to medical school or something?
David: Yeah. He was.
Andrew: David, there’s a lot. I hate that it’s a negative podcast. I don’t know the answers. I really don’t. I think that there’s a lot of questions that have to be answered in the meantime, and I think that there is not a lot of answers right now. I don’t know that the answers are coming any time soon. The one answer that has to be fixed quickly is recruiting.
David: Recruiting. One that’s got to be fixed even quicker is quarterback before the Jacksonville game. I will say this. Here’s some hope for you guys. Since this is a Bye Week Blues segment, there is hope. If Anthony Richardson starts in this Georgia game, I think we got a shot, albeit a slim shot. I still think we have a shot. We’ll have to see, because we don’t know how good Anthony Richardson is. We’ve seen him play LSU. We’ve seen him play USF. This is a whole different defense you’re playing. How good and how elite is Anthony Richardson? We’ve seen how fast and progresses through his reads. He could be good. He could be good enough to take on this defense.
Andrew: Here’s the thing I’ll say too. As good as both of those guys are, they got to have help on that side of the ball. The offensive line has got to play better. Period. The running backs have got to play better. The receivers have got to get open. The tight ends actually have to show up. Everybody puts it all on the quarterback, and rightfully so. Quarterback can win you the game or lose you the game, but you got to have help. There’s not a lot of guys helping anyone.
David: You also see the energy of the team is different when Anthony Richardson gets in there, at least on offense. On offense it is.
Andrew: Right.
David: Maybe they can take that energy. Hopefully, Dan Mullen is smart enough to start Anthony Richardson, first of all, but if he is, hopefully they can take that energy into Jacksonville, get the defensive guys energized up to want to win that game and upset the #1 team in the nation that is your biggest rival every single year in Jacksonville. That’s enough of an energy to want to play hard, and this team has. I’ve seen them play Alabama. I saw them play Tennessee pretty well. I’ve seen them play a lot of other teams well better than Kentucky. Their defense played good against Kentucky. Kentucky just was able to out physical.
I’ve seen them play good before, so now you have to get energized for this game to play that way when you come into Georgia. If you can hold Georgia to 20-some odd points, you might be able to win this football game. If they get 30, Anthony Richardson might be good enough to score 30. You might win this football game. If they get in the 40s and 50s, it’s over.
Andrew: We’ll see. We’ll definitely see. Get us out of here, David. We’ll be back. We’ll be back on Sunday and start to preview this big one. I love it. It’s Jacksonville. It’s cocktail party. I don’t care what anybody says. I love it. It’s great football game. It always is. Great atmosphere. Coming across that bridge is spectacular. Going to be fun.
David: I call it the cocktail party too, because I forgot what they were even trying to rename it to. That’s how much I cared about it.
Andrew: I don’t even know what they were trying to rename it to. It’ll always be the cocktail party, whether anybody wants to admit it or not. It is the world’s largest cocktail party.
David: That is correct. That game will kick off every year like it does at 3:30 on CBS. The #1 team in the nation playing the unranked Florida Gators. Can the Florida Gators upset Georgia and upset and spoil their national championship hopes? We will see. Hopefully, by next week, Andrew, will be smiling from ear to ear because his Braves won the series. We’ll find out on the next podcast. That’ll wrap it up, folks, for this episode of the GatorCountry.com podcast.
I’d like to thank Eric Fawcett from Gator Country joining us and giving us the updates on the basketball, as basketball season comes up here in November. That’ll wrap it up. You can follow me @SoderquistGC on Twitter, and you can follow Andrew Spivey @AndrewSpiveyGC on Twitter as well. That’ll wrap it up, folks, for this episode of the GatorCountry.com podcast. Go Braves.