Florida Gators combine and diamond podcast

This GatorCountry podcast breaks down on the Florida Gators football players did in the NFL combine this past weekend, plus the latest buzz around these players.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre also break down who the Florida Gators baseball and softball teams did on the diamond this past weekend as both teams are ranked number 1.

Andrew and Nick break down the Florida Gators basketball team as the head into the last week of the season, plus they talk about the women’s basketball team that has had a successful year this year.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Once again, this is your man, Andrew Spivey, with my man, Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, what’s up from Miami?

Nick:                         Just loving life with some Mark Light shakes. Those things are out of control. If you’re ever down there, go ahead and grab yourself one. I ordered an apple pie shake, and there was just a piece of apple pie in it. Fantastic.

Andrew:                 This is something I meant to ask you off the air this weekend, but who’s Mark Light? It’s Mark Light Stadium at Alex Rodriguez Field. Is that how they say it?

Nick:                         Yeah. Alex Rodriguez just recently donated a bunch of money. I’m trying to remember how long ago that was.

Andrew:                 I think it’s been about three or four years ago. Mark Light, is that a former baseball player? Who is Mark Light?

Nick:                         I’m not sure.

Andrew:                 I have you stumped. Okay. It was a good series. What was it? 4-1 this week for baseball?

Nick:                         Yeah. Florida took care of, they played five games, so 4-1. They took down Florida Gulf Coast first. It was at home. Then they took them down out in Lakeland, and then other than A.J. Puk it was really a very good week for Florida. I think on Friday and Sunday with Logan Shore going a complete game shutout, and Alex Faedo leaving after six and a third of no hit baseball, those are kind of like two of the best starts you’re going to see by any college player, across college baseball. That’s right there the best you’re going to see. For me, to be able to be there, it was a treat.

Andrew:                 We’ll go a little bit more in detail here on baseball in a few. Softball as well, 5-0. Two more Top 10 wins, and Kelly Barnhill pretty impressive this weekend. Nick, I was having a little fun with that on Twitter with your A.J. Puk deal. I have the Kelly Barnhill kind of deal. That was good.

Basketball though, not so good. Go to LSU and play. Nick, you had the argument the other day, and I respected your opinion. You said the team played hard. The team played unhard on Saturday at LSU. They played like a team that had no interest in being in Baton Rouge, and it showed until the last really minute and a half of the game, when they tried to make a comeback.

Nick:                         They played unhard.

Andrew:                 Yeah. They played soft.

Nick:                         Unhard. I didn’t get to see the game. I was at Florida’s baseball game, keeping track of it a little bit on Twitter, but we had a four and a half hour game on Saturday. I will take your word for it. It’s kind of what I said before this four game stretch. I said I’d be more surprised if they went 4-0 than if they went 0-4. With Kentucky coming in on Tuesday, I don’t expect that to be a win. Then you got to travel out to Missouri. Missouri is a very bad basketball team, but that is still a tough trip to make it out there.

Andrew:                 We’ll see. I don’t know. Definitely can’t go 0-2 these next two games. They need to find a way to win the next two and find a way to win a game in the tournament, but if they go 1-2 they definitely need to kind of make a little run in the SEC Tournament. This basketball team is heading in the wrong direction. Kasey Hill, surprise, surprise, probably was the best player on the court on Saturday for the Gators. If you follow Florida basketball, you know that’s not a good sign for the Gators.

Nick:                         I don’t know if this team, if we’re talking about can this team lose to Kentucky and win one game, does that get them into the tournament? Right now I think you’ve got if Florida loses to Kentucky, and then maybe even loses to Missouri.

Andrew:                 An 0-2 puts them out.

Nick:                         Then you’re talking about not getting a bye in the SEC Tournament, and you’re having to play one of those first games. I don’t know. Maybe it’s I’m ready to wash my hands of this team this season. It was funny to see Pat Dooley and Chris Harry get into it a little bit on Saturday about this being a bad team, and Dooley says it’s a bad team. Sometimes they look like it.

Andrew:                 No. They look like a shitty team. You can take it a step further. When your back’s against the wall, it’s go time. You don’t come out give up three straight easy dunks, two of which were Ben Simmons, but you’re giving away easy dunks in the game. No. This is not a good basketball team. Someone made the point that you want to see a team get better. This team has gotten progressively worse through the year. You can almost bank on this team going down 10-0 at the beginning of the game, putting on a 15-0 run somewhere in the middle part of the game to get the game back close, and then going on another 15, 16-0 run to put them out a stretch, and then it’s a ballgame. Every game I’ve watched this year has pretty much been that way, including the South Carolina game a couple weeks ago that was 22-0 run that got them back in the game. Unbelievable.

Nick:                         So there are stretches, but that’s the problem is that it’s kind of stretches, and they’re not able to play that way for long periods of time, sustained periods of time.

Andrew:                 You should never go down 10-0 at the beginning of every game.

Nick:                         I’m ready for basketball season to be done. We’ve got two really good teams in softball and baseball, who I think will get more attention. When I was at the Florida Gulf Coast game, and they were sharing the night with basketball, I think basketball was full, and you’ve got the #1 team in the country four feet away, and there’s maybe 200 people, 400 people, in the stands.

Andrew:                 There is one good thing in basketball, and that’s the women’s basketball team. I know they don’t get as much love and talked about, but finished the season on Sunday, and actually got a double bye in the Women’s Tournament that starts on Wednesday in Jacksonville. This team, Amanda Butler’s taking a lot of heat, including from myself. A lot of people said she should have been fired, and, quite frankly, heading into this season nothing was for her in this case. When you look at this team now, 10-6 in the conference, won 21 games this year, got a double bye, and a lot of people are predicting them to get maybe a four seed in the NCAA tournament. Props to them. I think we can all agree this is probably the least productive sport for Florida, and they’re actually going to make the tournament this year.

Nick:                         A lot of people were calling for Amanda Butler’s job, and it’s nice to see her come through this year and have a very successful season.

Andrew:                 That’s what you do when your back’s against the wall.

Nick:                         They struggled a little bit somewhat down the road, towards the end of the year, with South Carolina and some of those better teams, but definitely a big bounce back year for her and for the girls overall.

Andrew:                 You look at what she did. She beat Tennessee. She beat them twice. Beat a Kentucky team that was ranked twice. Beat an A&M team that was Top 10 at the time, beat them as well. She has six ranked wins this year, because she also beat the Florida State team that was ranked in the Top 10 as well. They’ve done well. South Carolina is the Connecticuts of the world. There’s just such a huge gap between them that it’s not good, but it is what it is. Hopefully this team does well and makes a good showing in the NCAA tournament that starts in a few weeks.

Nick:                         It would be nice to see, especially given the kind of culture that was surrounding them heading into this year. Sticking with the ladies, Florida was just out in California keeping you up late at night. Talk to us a little bit about what Florida was able to do out there playing against teams like Washington, UCLA, some perennial powers in softball.

Andrew:                 First of all, who in the hell schedules the softball game to start at midnight Florida time on Thursday night? That’s crazy. My beautiful tweets, Kelly Barnhill was fantastic against NC State in that game, had 14 Ks in seven innings of play. So that means that 14 out of 24 hitters were struck out. She was having an unbelievable game, and my great Twitter game was when everybody was asleep. It’s not cool, Nicholas.

Nick:                         No. I guess you got to play by their rules.

Andrew:                 It was a good weekend overall. Florida went out and took on UCLA, that was the #10 team in the country. Took care of business there. That was the opening game on Thursday night. Won 2-1 in the game. It was a really good game there. Went out and beat North Carolina State in the late game on Thursday night, 5-2. That was when Kelly Barnhill had 14 Ks in the game. Beautiful game by Barnhill. Nick, you and I, I love a pitcher’s duel where the opposing pitcher is just absolutely dominating, unless it’s against the Braves. Then I hate it. Barnhill just had three pitches going. It was right down the middle on the fast ball on pitch one. It was the change up, and then it was the rise ball out of the zone to K them up, and it was just 12 straight hitters were struck out in the game. It was just beautiful there.

Then you go to #8, Washington, on Friday. Delanie Gourley sets them down, 3-1 win there. Barnhill, once again has a really good game against Nebraska, and wins 8-0 there. Finished Sunday, and maybe the most impressive pitching duel of the weekend, beats Utah 1-0. First hitter of the game gets a lead off single. Just the next 21 hitters were all shut down, in order. Too bad. Gators win 1-0. So 5-0 on the weekend, and 16-0 now on the year. Florida’s just outscoring their opponents 109-8.

Nick:                         Is that good?

Andrew:                 Just close to seven runs a game. Not too bad.

Nick:                         For me, we had kind of a similar performance. That was Logan Shore on Friday. That wasn’t really the strikeouts, but only giving up three hits. He was pretty dominant. Alex Faedo struck out seven, which was his career high, in the first three innings.

Andrew:                 He had seven in the first week as well, right?

Nick:                         Yeah. He tied his career high with seven last week, last Sunday, and then Sunday against Miami just a dozen.

Andrew:                 Just a cool dozen.

Nick:                         Florida’s got some people that can throw strikeouts. The girls moved to 16-0 now, and you really think that, obviously before SEC play a lot of the best teams in the country are in the conference, but they kind of got that tough part of the out of conference schedule out of the way now. You look at the teams coming in. South Alabama has had a good team the past couple years, but FIU shouldn’t be really a difficult game. The tournament this week in Gainesville is not really the same quality or caliber as you had last week.

Andrew:                 No. South Alabama’s a Top 25 team. Go Jags, but I will not be pulling for the Jags this weekend. Don’t give me hate mail, but go Jag Becky Clark. Jaguars are doing well. It’s not a difficult tournament, but this team is, I’m going to say this, and I promise you I’m not talking bad about this team. I love this team. There’s still some kinks to be worked out. They scored 109 runs, but they’re struggling with some of the little things. Nick, you know what I mean when I say that. That’s the getting the sack bunts down, the hit and runs a little bit, the one out hit where you need to hit it to the right side to score the run, or the sack flies, that kind of stuff.

They’re struggling with the little things, and that’s something that will come there, and Tim Walton still hasn’t really set a for sure lineup. Moved Kirsti Merritt down to the six hole. Move Nicole DeWitt up to the two hole, and it doesn’t seem like he’s too comfortable with that, with three straight lefties to start the game off. Maybe he’ll adjust that as well. It’s interesting to see kind of where they move on. Not too bad for being 16-0, and faced three Top 10 teams and won all three. Michigan, who Florida run ruled earlier this year, #2 team in the country, has rolled since then. So they’re doing well.

One positive thing for Florida this weekend, two positive things really, were Kelsey Stewart now hitting .347. You and I talked about it. After the first weekend she had just two hits on the year. Now is hitting a cool .347. Then Janell Wheaton, finally in the four hole started to produce some power. Now has four home runs and a cool 19 RBIs, so she’s having an RBI a game now. Things are starting to kind of fall into order for this team, but there’s still some loose pieces to pick up, and nothing better to do that than against six weak opponents this weekend. Well, five, and then the Jaguars who will be their hardest test of the year, Nicholas.

Nick:                         That’ll be the toughest test of the year?

Andrew:                 That will be the toughest test of the year, because you’re not only fighting South Alabama, but they’re fighting the Andrew Spiveys.

Nick:                         Who will you be rooting for? Will there be a rooting interest for you?

Andrew:                 I love this Gator softball team. No doubt I love this Gator softball team. I love Tim Walton. I love Becky Clark as well, and my Jaguars. No. Gators can’t lose their undefeated streak against the Jaguars. I mean, I’d feel responsible for that. Chomp, chomp this weekend.

Nick:                         Okay. You mentioned some players on softball that are either getting it done or not getting it done. Let me get back to baseball a little bit.

Andrew:                 Hold on. I have a question to ask you here, Nicholas. Faedo, and who pitched after Faedo? It was Faedo and who before Shaun Anderson?

Nick:                         Snead.

Andrew:                 When is the last time a baseball and softball team threw a no hitter together? We almost had history in the making, Nicholas. We could have been famous.

Nick:                         I don’t know. Florida made it all the way one out into the ninth with no hits, or no outs, because there was an error and then a hit. Made it eight innings with a no hitter intact. Shaun Anderson giving that up, giving up three runs to Miami. Still a win. I have no idea when that would have happened. It’s not really rare in softball, but it’s rare in baseball.

Andrew:                 We could have been famous.

Nick:                         I don’t think we would have been famous for that. No.

Andrew:                 Yeah. We could have been famous. We could have been famous. They could have been like, if we hire Andrew and Nick to cover our team we get no hitters.

Nick:                         I don’t think that’s how it would have worked.

Andrew:                 That’s how it would have worked on my side. You don’t have to take credit over there on your side, but I’m taking credit on my side. Tim Walton, when you’re listening to this, let everybody know that I was part of Aleshia Ocasio’s no no.

Nick:                         Okay. And we’re back. I wanted to mention again. Deacon Liput, the freshman, threw for the first eight games of the year. He has started every game, played every game. He’s still hitting .500, 12 for 24. Leads the team in hits. Leads the team in doubles. Triples he’s tied for the lead with JJ Schwarz, who is not really fleet of foot. Is second in walks, has the most total bases and the most RBIs. This is a freshman who continues to get it done. Had a big two RBI night on Friday when the game was so close. To me, being a freshman, as much as you say these kids are good, that’s why they’re at Florida, they’re at Florida because they wanted to play in games like this, big games against Miami. Wanting to do something and then being able to come through and do it are two completely different things. I’ve been very impressed with his approach at the plate, with his approach to the media, very mature kid. Just impressed with his overall game and everything he’s been able to take on so early in his career.

Andrew:                 How’s he doing at second base at well? Dalton Guthrie moved to short, had an error on Sunday, but how is the defense at second going?

Nick:                         He has a 1000% fielding percentage. Second’s interesting. There’s not really, at short you’ll get plays where you’d see Richie Martin get charged for an error on a play where maybe even some shortstops wouldn’t get to that ball. So seems to me like there’s more of a chance to have an error at short than there is at second. Liput doesn’t have an error. Hasn’t really come close to anything that I would consider an error, and has made some nice plays.

Andrew:                 I watched the team for the first time really this weekend. Watched bits and pieces of it. I think the thing that surprised me was how comfortable Guthrie looked at shortstop. You say, he just moved 20 feet to the left, but playing shortstop and playing second base is two totally different parts of the field. I thought he looked natural. Even the play on Sunday where he had the error, it was a good charge. He charged the ball really well, threw the ball really well. He had a little bit more time than he did, but did well there. Then the other things surprising me is Peter Alonso. I thought he would start off kind of better than he did. Kind of looked off stride this weekend a little bit.

Nick:                         Pete’s hitting .423 on the year.

Andrew:                 I meant this weekend. That was what I was saying. This weekend in the Sunday game. I know, excuse me, Saturday game against a lefty, the change up kind of threw him off a little bit. Like you said, .425, not complaining.

Nick:                         He hit .423. He’s also got 10 RBIs, which is second on the team. I think he had a really good game Friday. We talked to him after the game Friday. He was pumped up, and then was kind of off Saturday, Sunday. To me, JJ Schwarz is starting to come around a little bit. Buddy Reed came around, and really the guys that are struggling in my mind right now are Mike Rivera, Jonathan India, and Ryan Larson. Larson started off, had that big five for five game against Florida Gulf Coast, that was a career high for him, and since then it’s kind of dropped off. Hitting .231. If India and Larson aren’t getting the job done, there’s guys like Danial Reyes, Nelson Maldonado, Christian Hicks, Blake Reese. These guys are waiting for an opportunity. So Florida’s good.

I think what you saw this week in Miami is that Florida, on Saturday when they lost it kind of seemed like, first off, they never gave up. You come back, you score three runs in the bottom of the ninth. It just seemed like there was almost a sense of don’t worry about it, we’ll come back, and then you get a 1, 2, 3 inning. Don’t worry about it. We’ll come back. Then you start to run out of time with that kind of mentality. I think getting a loss wakes you up. Listen, Florida’s going to lose games. There’s 56 regular season games. They’re going to lose games. I still think they’ll be the #1 team when the rankings come out on Tuesday.

Andrew:                 Yeah. It’s kind of what we talked about. We talked about it earlier this season. I don’t know if it was on the air or off the air, but I told you I didn’t want to see A.J. Puk in Atlanta for the Braves, and he showed me exactly why over the weekend. It’s a mental game for Puk, and it’s like he lets one bad hitter go through three, four hitters. It’s something that you would expect from a freshman, maybe even a sophomore, but now a junior who’s been through the big games you would expect it to get better. It still seems like at times he just tries to overthrow and pinpoint his fastball.

Nick:                         Yeah. The thing for me with Puk I don’t know what happened to him on Saturday, and maybe it is what you said. It’s something we’ve seen in the past where he lets a walk, or he lets an error, kind of snowball. It’s becoming a problem. So the first week you get four innings out of him, and that’s unacceptable, or you get 4.1 innings out of him, 4 1/3, and then last Saturday you get 2 1/3. You start looking at Logan Shore has pitched 14 innings in two starts. Alex Faedo has pitched 12 innings in two starts. Then you go down to Puk, 6.2. Brady Singer has made one more appearance than A.J. Puk, all in relief, and already has a full inning more pitched. Florida needs, to do what they want to do, and to be the team that we’ve all said, they need A.J. Puk to start looking like the A.J. Puk that finished last season. I think Kevin O’Sullivan knows that, and the team sure knows it. They’re going to need to get A.J. going pretty soon.

Andrew:                 I mean, you look at him, and a lot of teams deservedly so are saying he may be the first round pick, or the first pick overall, but he doesn’t look like it.

Nick:                         I think what you saw is Logan’s more of a pitcher right now than A.J. A.J. might have the higher ceiling, better measurables, but Logan Shore is more of a pitcher right now.

Andrew:                 Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. You made a good point. People have made good points. That is that MLB takes people off of projection so much. You want to see Puk start doing well. Of course, he’s going to have his spot in the rotation no matter what, pretty much. I say that. Sully really doesn’t care who you are. He’s going to yank you. You would still like to see him start to just throw the ball. I mean, when he’s just throwing the ball he’s better than 90% of the hitters in the country, but I do think he gets too reliant on the fastball and doesn’t trust his secondary pitches.

Nick:                         I think if I threw 97 I’d probably rely on it too much too.

Andrew:                 Right, but you know what I’m saying. That becomes a problem when the fast ball’s not locating. Then it’s time to throw something else and get that fastball back working. A good changeup is probably the best fastball you can have when you throw that really good changeup, and then you mix that up with a really good fast ball. You got hitters all off balance.

Nick:                         I think that will go back, and Kevin O’Sullivan does a very good job with his pitchers. You look at what happened with A.J. last year. Obviously it was after his trespassing incident there on campus that things kind of turned around, but I think if anyone can do it Kevin O’Sullivan can get him turned around, whether it’s a mental thing, whether it’s not even mental and just kind of getting back to throwing strikes and pitching and being able to mix stuff up like you’re saying. We’ll see what he does. Obviously he’ll still be starting on Saturday, and I’m looking to throw up as many Ks as you did with Kelly Barnhill. That’s what I’m really trying to do.

Andrew:                 There you go. Couple things. Combine was this week for football. Good showing for a lot of guys. Maybe a not so good showing for a couple people. One thing that kind of made the news, two things made the news. Let’s start with the first thing to make the news. Jonathan Bullard, a guy that, Nick, I’d have no problem calling my favorite player that I’ve ever covered, love Jonathan Bullard. He kind of said that the team’s not success at the end of the year was kind of due to players relaxing a little bit. I sit here, and I thought about it a little bit, and it made a lot of sense. After they clinched that game against Vanderbilt and won the East they did kind of relax a little bit, more so than they did at the beginning of the year when it was kind of like teams are doubting us, so we’re going to do this. Agree or disagree with Jonathan Bullard?

Nick:                         Do I agree with it? I think it can be an easy excuse. I don’t know if he’s using it as an excuse, but when you lose a game or lose a bunch of games as Florida ended the year, it’s kind of like, we stopped trying. It’s kind of what Coach McElwain says. We want people to try, because if you’re not trying it’s easy to use that as an excuse as to why we weren’t successful. To me, I’d hope that’s not the case. I understand. You can see why it is. I hope it’s not the case, because that means the coaching staff lost the team over the last four games.

Andrew:                 Well, no. I don’t know if you can say that the coaching staff lost the team if they were relaxed. I think that’s a little bit there.

Nick:                         I say that, because then you’re talking about it’s lasting. It didn’t happen one game or two games. now you’re talking about it lasted a month. It lasted more than a month, because you had a month off in between the SEC Championship.

Andrew:                 I don’t really call the bowl game, for me the bowl game is whatever.

Nick:                         You got worked in the bowl game.

Andrew:                 I know, but I’m saying the bowl game is whatever. I mean, what are you playing for? You’re playing for pride, sure. These seniors, they had checked out. These juniors, they had checked out. The two games I’m more so worried about is that Florida State game and that Alabama game where that Florida State game the team really didn’t look interested. I get on the basketball team, but that Florida State game the team just didn’t look interested. The Alabama game they did, and they just simply were outplayed, out talented in that game.

Nick:                         I think it’s pretty darn acceptable to show up to the Florida State game uninterested.

Andrew:                 Right, but you know what I’m saying? I mean, would you agree or disagree that for the most part that team didn’t, the defense did, but the offense. Well, I say that. I can’t even say that, because that offense was bad. I don’t know. I guess Jonathan Bullard’s right. Now that I think about it more.

Nick:                         I think the defense checked out at some point in that Florida State game. Kind of looked up after maybe Florida State scores the first drive of the second half, you see that, and then all of a sudden you’re like, we’re done. Our offense isn’t going to score 17 points, so we’re done. We’re checking out.

Andrew:                 As much as I would love to get on those guys, do you really, Treon Harris was still playing quarterback.

Nick:                         I blame them, because in football your tape is your resume, and everything you do on the football field, for someone like Jon Bullard, and he never quit, but for someone like Jon Bullard or Vernon Hargreaves, somebody that was ready to go into the NFL, your tape is your resume. There’s no time where you can check out, and you can put pause on it, because I think it’s a lost cause, so I’m not going to try.

Andrew:                 The next piece of news, Nick, is very disturbing to me, because I’m not even sure what exactly happened. Antonio Morrison no showed this week. I mean, Nick, you and I have been able to be around him a good bit, and I’ll be honest. I would have never expected him just to not show up for something. This is a football player that in my opinion loves to play. I would have never expected him not to show up.

Nick:                         There is not much that Antonio Morrison can do that would surprise me. My take on it is that you said, yes, he’s a football player, loves football. Antonio Morrison would not view anything that he’s doing this week as a football thing.

Andrew:                 Yeah, but this is for your career here.

Nick:                         He’s a hardheaded guy, very hardheaded. He would not view any of this as a football thing. I think that you would be smart enough to surround yourself with people who wouldn’t let you just switch or just not show up because you didn’t feel like it, but I don’t think Antonio Morrison was going to do very well this week.

Andrew:                 This is a deal that it’s the pride thing. You took someone’s spot.

Nick:                         Yeah.

Andrew:                 You took someone’s spot. Nick, you know. I know people around Jacob Coker a lot. He’s a quarterback, different position, but he was hurt that he wasn’t invited. Brian Poole was hurt he wasn’t invited. You took someone’s spot, and you pissed it away. I mean, I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is. I’ve taken up for Antonio Morrison in a lot of ways. I know he hates the fan stuff. He didn’t want to do Senior Day, and that’s cool, but what the hell were you thinking? You missed the Combine? If you didn’t want to do anything, go there and say you don’t want to do anything, but you show up. You go through interviews. No.

Nick:                         Where is his agent?

Andrew:                 Where’s his PR guy? Where’s anything?

Nick:                         Publicist. Where’s somebody to come out and get in front of this and say, he got hurt. You’re not hiding an injury. Listen, if you’re not showing up to the Combine you’re not hiding an injury. You’re not doing something, and you look terrible not showing up and not saying anything.

Andrew:                 There is one report. Nick, you and I are taping this on Monday, and I just searched Twitter to see if there was any new updates. Matt Miller, one of the NFL draft scout guys, says there’s some talk that Antonio Morrison might be sick. Might be? Boy, you were supposed to show up on Thursday. Like you said, where’s agent putting out a press release? Antonio Morrison’s got the flu. He’s in Illinois State University East West Hospital with the flu. He’s unable to show. You just don’t not show. This would be like you not showing for a job interview. Job interview wasn’t there, but this is exactly what it was, and he didn’t show.

Nick:                         The NFL Combine is a job interview, and he just didn’t show up. The fact that there’s nothing around it. When you’re in a position like this, Vernon Hargreaves, you’re paying people. You’re paying an agent. You might be also paying a publicist, someone to run PR. You’re paying people real American dollars to handle stuff like this. Antonio Morrison didn’t need to come out and say, “I’m missing the Combine, because of XYZ.” He’s now paying people whose jobs are to take care of him and his image, and the fact that nobody’s coming out and saying where he is from his team is, to me, pretty incredible missight and misstep. I was already of the opinion that I don’t know where Antonio Morrison even fits in on an NFL team. I think he’s a one down linebacker. Doesn’t play special teams, so I don’t know where you draft him. Not showing up to something like this is certainly not going to help that.

Andrew:                 Yeah. If you’re sick, you better be pretty sick not to at least just show up for interviews. There’s several players every year, Laramie Tunsil, Laquon Treadwell, those guys, they’re different caliber than Morrison as far as NFL goes, but show up. Do your interviews. Say, “I’m sick. I can’t give you my best. I’ll see you in Gainesville for Pro Day.” If you are in the hospital, someone should speak up.

Nick:                         I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s doing, what he’s thinking. I don’t know why there’s not an explanation.

Andrew:                 You and I just talking about this, it’s a negative hit on Morrison.

Nick:                         There shouldn’t be any talk of where is he? Because even if you’re not showing up, there should be his agent or he released a statement that said, I’m not going because of XYZ. When you start to think of guys like Brian Poole, like you said, Jacob Coker, guys that weren’t invited, then it starts to make you mad that you had an opportunity, and for whatever reason you didn’t take that opportunity. It’s going to hurt him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Antonio Morrison goes completely undrafted, to be honest with you. To me, there is better stories coming from the draft than Antonio Morrison not showing up.

Andrew:                 You look at Demarcus Robinson. We’ll move on to Demarcus Robinson. I mean, if there is anyone that’s a head case and should be scared to death to go to the NFL draft it should be Demarcus Robinson. Credit to Demarcus Robinson. He got right up there and said, “I failed drug tests. I had to go to drug rehab, and the last suspension I got is because I was talking to someone that was trying to give me free stuff.” Props to Demarcus Robinson for at least being a man about it and stepping up. I ain’t questioning Morrison’s manhood or anything else. He’ll whip my ass and bury me somewhere probably. At least Robinson stood up.

Nick:                         No. To me, I mean he didn’t say that someone was trying to give him free stuff. It was a marketing agent.

Andrew:                 He was saying that was offering me stuff that I’ve never been offered before. I believe that was his actual quote was, “She was offering me stuff I’ve never been offered before.” McElwain was upset that he was even talking to her, suspended him for that. He didn’t actually take anything, but the fact he was talking to them had Mac and company upset.

Nick:                         Yeah. To me, Demarcus Robinson has good representation. He has put good people around him. When you go to the NFL Combine these guys aren’t asking you questions that they don’t know the answers to. They just want to see how you’re going to answer, if you’re going to face the music, if you’re going to own up to what you’ve done in the past. That’s exactly what Demarcus Robinson did. The honesty, everything there, fantastic. Then you look at what he did on the field, and that might not help him out as much as what he did off the field, a 4.59 40. That’s fast. Not as fast as most of the wide receivers. 34.5 inch vert. 123 inch broad jump. 6.77 in the three cone drill, and a 4.19 in the 20 yard shuttle. I will point out that that is slower than Alex McAlister’s shuttle.

Andrew:                 It was a slow year for receivers. So it won’t hurt him as bad as you would think it would. The question that I think he has is catching the ball, and how much does the off the field stuff hurt him?

Nick:                         I think the off the field stuff is really the biggest red flag. You look at that position as a whole really. It’s become the diva position, wide receivers, and then when you start looking at how seriously the NFL is taking off the field stuff. You look at Johnny Manziel. You look at Justin Blackman. There’s guys that are giving the NFL and giving the shield a bad rep and a bad name, and teams are really looking at how hard the NFL is coming down on them. Then you look at stuff in the past with Demarcus Robinson. It might just be drugs, but then you hear I had to go to rehab. That makes it a little bit more serious. When you have problems like that, that’s when you need to really look and say, risk, reward. What are we getting on the field versus what’s the potential of something bad happening off the field?

Andrew:                 I don’t know.

Nick:                         Braxton Miller ran a faster 40 than Demarcus Robinson.

Andrew:                 That’s not surprising at all to me. The thing for Demarcus is missing team meetings like he did, other things. We’re running close to out of time. Let’s run through this real quick, Nick. Kelvin Taylor, 4.60. It’s slow, but I expected that.

Nick:                         The thing is with Kelvin Taylor is that he was in the bottom group. In every drill he did he was in the bottom group. To me it’s like you can have a slow 40, but then be strong in the bench, have a good broad jump, or a good vert. He was kind of in the bottom tier of everybody. I guess he heard the criticism, because he tweeted, “This doesn’t mean anything. Turn on the tape. Film doesn’t lie.” Then he’ll see us all at Pro Day. It’ll be interesting to see what KT does at Florida’s Pro Day, but the Combine didn’t help him.

Andrew:                 No, the Combine didn’t help him at all. Jonathan Bullard, 4.93 in the 40. That means absolutely nothing for Bullard. A guy like Bullard, he’s not asked to be running the 40 very often, but he’s a guy that had rave reviews from just about everyone there. One draft analyst said, “If you’re looking for a three technique in the draft, Jonathan Bullard’s your guy.” Ran a 4.93. Had a 32 inch vert. 23 bench press, and 20 yard shuttle of 4.56, which isn’t bad at all for him. Actually had a 10 yard split that was better than McAlister at 1.66. Nick, you and I have watched him a long time, and we expected Bullard to be quick off the ball.

Nick:                         That explosive, when I look at defensive linemen, especially Bullard projecting a three technique at the next level, I really see there’s no point. Don’t run the other 30.  I don’t need to see. What are you doing 40 yards down field? Something’s gone terribly wrong. Those first 10 to show that off the ball, that burst, that explosion, that’s what I want to see. Jon Jon had a very good first 10, but you can see that when you watch him play.

Andrew:                 Vernon Hargreaves, 4.41 was his first run in the 40. Not bad, actually a lot faster.

Nick:                         I think he got knocked back down to a 4.50. That 4.41, they always give you the unofficial times, and then they come back out later, once everyone’s done with the official. Everyone gets knocked down a little bit. Nobody’s faster when the official time comes out than the unofficial. 4.50 is still good for him, 15 reps, 39 inch vert is very good. They have him graded as a 6.7, which is a chance to become a Pro Bowl caliber player. It’s the way that the NFL grades players at the Combine.

Andrew:                 A broad jump of 10.10. That’s incredible for him. Nick, you and I, I don’t know how many times you and I talked about this when Alex McAlister came out of school, but we said numerous times he was going to dominate the Combine, and guess what he did? Dominated the Combine. He had an incredible Combine. A lot of people were saying that he had one of the best Combines they’ve seen out of a guy. He did really well. Had the seventh fastest three cone drill for a defensive lineman ever.

Nick:                         To me that fast twitch, his quickness, his get off, a little different than Jon Bullard, but still very fast. The best 20 cone drill. The best three cone drill. The best broad jump of any defensive lineman at the Combine. Jumped a full five inches farther than Shawn Oakman. Shawn Oakman does weigh about 50 pounds more than him, but a full five inches than the next person under him. Everybody that was like, why is he leaving? Why is McAlister leaving? He needs another year to show stuff on film, and you and I were both like, because he’s going to go and do what Dante Fowler did. He’s going to have an awesome Combine, and then Alex McAlister probably won’t even do anything at Florida’s Pro Day. What he just did at the Combine is good enough.

Andrew:                 Yeah. McAlister, word of advice for you. Tell people why you’re not. Don’t pull the damn Antonio Morrison. McAlister was 7.01 in the three cone. For a pass rusher they say under 7.10 is impressive. He was a full .09 of a second faster than that. That’s not too bad for Mr. McAlister.

Nick:                         Jake McGee, we’ll wrap things up for Florida on Monday, and we’ll talk about that on Friday.

Andrew:                 I think McGee’s not working out because of the hamstring.

Nick:                         That makes sense.

Andrew:                 I think he’s not working out.

Nick:                         He’d be in the last group.

Andrew:                 Yeah. I think he just pulled out. He was there, did interviews, that kind of stuff. I just don’t think he did anything. Keanu Neal’s still wrapping up as we’re taping this. 4.64 unofficial 40 yard dash, which is my opinion is about right for him. Nick, it’s a good week. Kentucky coming into town for basketball. Senior Night. Go out give Dorian Finney-Smith props for being a great Gator. He’s done really good things for Florida. It should be a good game. I think it’ll be close for a little while. Then baseball and softball this week. Nick, what’s the midweek baseball schedule? Softball doesn’t play till Thursday.

Nick:                         Florida’s got UCF at UCF on Tuesday, and then they will host UCF on Wednesday.

Andrew:                Okay.

Nick:                         Back to back UCF, and then they’ve got is it Harvard or Dartmouth? They have the Ivy Leagues. We’ve talked about it before. All of these northern schools come down for a stretch to get out of the snow. I think it is Harvard this week. Nope. Sorry. Dartmouth this week for a three game set.

Andrew:                 Got you. It’ll be interesting. UCF is a pretty decent ball team. We’ll see how they do. Nick, tell the people where they can find us. We’ll get out of here, and see you guys on Friday.

Nick:                         @NickdelaTorreGC on Twitter, @AndrewSpiveyGC on Twitter. GatorCountry on Twitter. TheGatorCountry on Instagram. Also, you can get all of our content on Facebook as well. Of course, the podcast on iTunes. Thank you for listening. Make sure to drop a little comment in the rating down there.

Andrew:                 We would appreciate that for sure. As always, Butch and Mark, you know the drill, and unfortunately the guy for ESPN III, who considered Mark Richt to be a great football coach, somebody lied to you. Go Braves. Chomp, chomp.

Nick:                         You stay classy, Gator Country.

Andrew Spivey
Andrew always knew he wanted to be involved with sports in some capacity. He began by coaching high school football for six years before deciding to pursue a career in journalism. While coaching, he was a part of two state semifinal teams in the state of Alabama. Given his past coaching experience, he figured covering recruiting would be a perfect fit. He began his career as an intern for Rivals.com, covering University of Florida football recruiting. After interning with Rivals for six months, he joined the Gator Country family as a recruiting analyst. Andrew enjoys spending his free time on the golf course and watching his beloved Atlanta Braves. Follow him on Twitter at @AndrewSpiveyGC.