By Will Miles
Win over Virginia Tech
With no Omar Payne (coach’s decision) for the entire game and no Tyree Appleby for the last 10 minutes and overtime, Florida found a way to beat Virginia Tech.
The Gators went into the half down 6 points and to be honest, I didn’t think there was much chance of recovering at that point. But one positive at that point was that Florida hadn’t shot the ball too well but had kept the Hokies to just 33 points, and when the Gators have kept opponents under 70 points this year, they’ve tended to win the game.
Yes, Virginia Tech got to 70, but it took overtime. They only had 64 at the end of regulation. The Gators held the Hokies to 30.4% shooting from three (35.4% on the year). They outrebounded the Hokies 36-22, dominating on the glass in a way that Florida has not done for much of the year.
On offense, Florida took 19.1 3-pointers (versus 37.3 2-pointers) on average in 2021 but only launched 13 against Virginia Tech. It’s probably not a coincidence that Florida made 38.5% of those shots and dominated on the inside.
Those who love to deride Mike White will criticize him for not fouling in the waning seconds. I have to admit that I hadn’t looked at the numbers for those situations. But after the game, I did.
Ken Pomeroy looked at this in 2013 and the answer is that it does not appear that fouling makes a huge difference in regards to winning. In fact, not fouling has led to a slightly higher winning percentage, though the difference is so slight that it is probably insignificant.
There are plenty of things to criticize about Mike White (more on that in a minute), but I’m not sure playing defense in the last few seconds is one of them.
Loss to Oral Roberts
White had a real chance to shut up his doubters. After dispatching the Hokies and getting fortunate after 15-seeded Oral Roberts upset Ohio State, he had a pretty clear view of the Sweet 16.
That seemed even more true when the Gators were up by 11 with 9:46 left. ESPN had Florida’s win probability at 94.1%. But from that point on, Florida was outscored 25-11 by Oral Roberts and the Gators looked discombobulated.
There’s a lot of criticism about White slowing things down, but I actually think the criticism needs to come from somewhere else. After the game, Gator Country’s Eric Fawcett tweeted that the Gators starters (Mann, Appleby, Lock, Duruji and Castleton) were +9 on the night. But that group was split up after Duruji fouled Kevin Obanor on a made three pointer and never saw the floor again.
White made things worse when after the game he blamed his decision to slow things down on his team being tired. ORU’s Obanor and Max Abmas both played the entire game. Kareem Thompson played 34 minutes and Carlos Jurgens played 35. ORU only played seven players in the entire game and only got 30 minutes from its bench.
Florida played 8 players, got 45 minutes from its bench and didn’t have anyone over 37 minutes played (Mann and Appleby). Duruji – despite being part of the best lineup – only logged 21.
If Florida played just a little bit better down the stretch, nobody would be questioning these sorts of things. And I imagine that White had an idea of what his rotations would be coming into the game and stuck to those. But in many ways, that’s the problem.
Florida had a starting lineup that was 9-points better than Oral Roberts and still lost. You shouldn’t have a bench that gets outplayed by a 15-seed.
As Scottie Lewis goes…..
Lost in the criticism of Coach White is the real difference in the two games of the tournament: Scottie Lewis.
Lewis, a former 5-star recruit, has struggled this season. I pointed out last week that Lewis scored 10+ points in 5 of his first 6 games in 2021 and only did it twice more in the remaining 13 games prior to the tournament.
So when Lewis put up 15 points against Virginia Tech, he was a key reason that the Gators even had a chance to win the game. He played 32 minutes, went 5-8 from the field and 2-3 from 3-point range. Colin Castleton got a lot of the publicity afterwards (and deservedly so), but Lewis gave the Gators the extra offensive punch that they needed in order to pull the game out.
Lewis didn’t score against Oral Roberts. He only played 18 minutes, went 0-3 from the field and never got to the free throw line. He had one rebound, one turnover and zero assists.
If you want to criticize Mike White, this is where I think you should look. Scottie Lewis has the highest recruiting profile on the entire team, is coming off the bench, and is not able to hold his own against Oral Roberts. Some might put that on Lewis, but I put it squarely on White.
As a coach, your job is to put your players in a position to succeed. Lewis clearly has the ability to contribute; he showed it early in the season, particularly in a 17-point, zero-turnover performance versus LSU or even in the 15-point performance versus Virginia Tech.
The fact that he has such inconsistent performances and that his minutes fluctuate so significantly to me points directly to White.
Mike White’s Future
Mike White isn’t going anywhere unless he wants to. I’m pretty sure the administration is strongly in his corner and isn’t going to make a change unless forced. Whether that’s a good thing or not is really up to you to determine.
I’ve harped on point-per-game differential all season and this is where Florida has finished in all six of White’s seasons at this point.
- 2015-2016: 5.5
- 2016-2017: 11.4
- 2017-2018: 6.6
- 2018-2019: 4.2
- 2019-2020: 5.9
- 2020-2021: 3.9
Remember that 12+ appears to be the threshold for a legitimate Final Four team. That means that I completely understand Gators fans who look at this data and feel like there just isn’t any progress being made. I also understand Gators fans who look at this year – with COVID and the medical scare with Keyontae Johnson – and think that White deserves one more year.
But the question I asked myself when looking at these numbers is whether I think that Johnson would have been able to make the Gators 8 points per game better to get that differential to 12. I just don’t think that’s even remotely close. Instead, in a best case scenario, I suspect Johnson would have gotten the Gators to a 6 or 7-point differential in-line with 2018-2020.
So that’s the real question: Is the basketball performance from 2018-2020 good enough? Because that’s pretty much what it appears we’re going to get from Mike White teams.
As someone who cares much more about football, I’d rather not pay White’s buyout and instead spend that money to even up recruiting budgets with Georgia. But the idea that White is going to take Florida to the Final Four in the near future is pretty far-fetched based on his history.
Baseball sweeps Texas A&M
Stories of the Gator baseball team’s demise appear to be greatly exaggerated. After a poor 10-2 loss to FSU last week, Florida regrouped and swept Texas A&M in its first three SEC games.
That put the Gators at 16-5 overall and 3-0 in the conference. That 76.1% winning percentage is better than the 73.2% winning percentage of the 2017 national championship team. I guess the message is that baseball is sometimes weird and one loss is never the end of the world. That should be obvious considering that the major tournaments are series rather than single games for just this reason.
However, Florida’s pitchers had been really struggling early this year and that’s perhaps the best sign in this particular series against the Aggies. The Gators surrendered 9 runs in the three games after just giving up 10 to FSU. That included three solid starts from Tommy Mace (7 IP, 2 ER), Jack Leftwich (7 IP, 1 ER) and Hunter Barco (6 IP, 2 ER).
The Gators offense is elite. Jud Fabian is now up to 8 home runs. The offense has a .390 on-base percentage overall. The Gators have scored 164 runs in its 21 games (7.8 per game).
But to see the pitching step-up for three games in a row is a good sign that the team is about to go on a run. And remembering that even the championship team in 2017 didn’t win every game is good perspective as this season goes along as well.
Significance of a good Hunter Barco start
The Leftwich and Mace starts were in-line with much of what we’ve seen this year. Leftwich is now 4-0 with a 1.79 ERA and Mace is also 4-0 with a 2.10 ERA. Those guys have been good all year.
The same cannot be said for Hunter Barco. Barco is now 3-1, but with a 5.26 ERA after his 6 inning performance against Texas A&M. That’s why the sweep is significant: it may be the signal that Barco is figuring some things out.
After giving up 8 runs to Miami and 5 to Samford (in 8.1 IP), Barco has now blanked Florida A&M for 5 innings, gave up 2 runs to Jacksonville and surrendered three to A&M (2 earned). That’s much more like the guy who went 2-0 with a 1.40 ERA in 19.1 IP in 2020.
The reality is that despite only allowing 6 BBs, Barco is struggling with his control a little bit. You can see that in his 5 HBP and the fact that he’s given up 27 hits in 25.2 IP despite also striking out 38. Both of those indicate to me that he’s a little bit wild both outside and inside the zone.
That is correctable. That is mechanical. And 38 strikeouts in 25.2 IP means he’s got really, really good stuff. If the last three games are any indication, Barco is starting to harness that stuff and really good things could be ahead for the Gators pitcher.
Goose Eggs for Mississippi State
The Gators softball team eviscerated Mississippi State this weekend, taking all three games by a combined 19-0 score. The first game was close, with the Gators only scoring one run in 6 innings off of Bulldog pitcher Annie Willis. That was enough though as Elizabeth Hightower blanked Mississippi State over 7 innings with 6 K’s.
The next game was close too as the Gators scored in the first inning and took that one-run lead into the seventh where they blew the doors off, putting up a nine spot before finishing it off. Natalie Lugo pitched 5 scoreless innings and Hightower came in for the last two to finish it off.
Hightower was at it again on Sunday, throwing 5 scoreless innings as the Gators won 8-0 with 2 runs in the second and 6 more in the fourth. Overall for the weekend, Hightower’s line was 14 IP, 9 H, 0 ER, 11 SO and 2 BB. Whew!
The Gators improved to 21-2 (5-1 SEC), with their only losses coming to ranked teams in Kentucky and FSU (in series in which they won the other two games). Hightower has been around for a while, but she’s never been this dominant. Having her as a true ace has raised the ceiling of this team.
It sets the team up for a really deep run later this season.
Spring Football Practice Over
Spring football practice is over. Apparently we’re going to get a 2-hour special on the SEC Network at some point detailing what the Gators have been working on, but it was a little bit sad to turn on the TV Guide this weekend and see Missouri hosting a spring game knowing Florida would not.
There’s not a lot you can glean from watching practices on Instagram or even that 2-hour special. The reality is that the coaches are going to control what we see and the narratives that come out of spring camp. This does allow them to control the message and perhaps to even send messages to their players in the media, but I’m not sure it does a lot for us to actually know what’s going on.
That’s too bad. I’m sure that transparency is something that every head coach loathes to give up, but it does feel like some transparency would be good when it comes to attracting recruits. Particularly with the name, image and likeness rules that are coming, giving the press better access to the players would be something you’d think recruits would like to see.
All I know is that we now get a loooong offseason. Normally the spring game is in the middle of April. Now it’s not even Easter yet and we don’t have anything to talk about until fall camp kicks off in August. Hopefully the extra time allows the players to get bigger and faster with their strength training. Hopefully the extra time allows the coaches to focus on heavy duty recruiting.
And hopefully I can stay sane without any real football to analyze until August.
Running Backs and Linebackers
Two position groups that Mullen specifically praised in his post-spring press conference were the running backs and the linebackers.
The running backs are not much of a surprise. With the arrivals of Demarkcus Bowman and Lorenzo Lingard adding to an already steady set of backs in Dameon Pierce, Malik Davis and Nay’Quan Wright, we would expect this to be a solid group, particularly as the offense looks to take more of a run-centric approach with Kyle Trask’s departure.
But to hear that Mullen is really comfortable with his linebackers is really good to hear.
Ventrell Miller was pretty good last season, but he is limited, particularly in coverage. Mohamoud Diabate took great strides last season, but he still wasn’t a shut-down linebacker by the end of the year. Ty’Ron Hopper showed some flashes last season but didn’t get on the field all that much and Derek Wingo was relegated to the bench most of the time.
It has been a while – probably since Jarrad Davis – that the Gators have had a true difference maker at linebacker. David Reese was solid and Vosean Joseph did some things well, but Davis consistently did things that made you say “wow”.
Hopefully that’s what we’re going to get with Diabate, Hopper and Wingo. Because if the linebackers can excel – particularly in coverage against opposing running backs – that’s going to make it significantly harder for opponents to convert third downs.
And we all know about Todd Grantham and third downs.
Defense Wins
The message coming out of spring camp is that the defense won most of the battles against the offense.
That’s to be expected given the turnover at QB, tight end, wide receiver and on the offensive line, but it’s still welcome to hear after last year’s defensive performance. Of course, it could just be that Florida’s offense isn’t going to be very good and is making the defense look better than it is.
The one thing I will say is that Dan Mullen may have some flaws, but offensive execution is not one of them. Anybody who can mold a functioning offense with Nick Fitzgerald at QB is going to be able to mold a good offense with either Emory Jones or Anthony Richardson at QB as well.
I mean, look at the Fitzgerald example again. Fitz put up almost the exact same stat line from 2017 to 2018 when Mullen was replaced by Joe Moorhead. Yet Mississippi State went from averaging 32.0 points per game in 2017 (41st in the country) to 28.5 in 2018 (68th). That’s how you end up with a team that has a worse record (8-5) despite having a defense that only surrendered 13.2 points per game.
So if the defense is winning some battles this spring, I do think that means the defense is improving. Granted, the Emory Jones running game isn’t being utilized, but that wouldn’t have mattered last year. That defense wasn’t stopping anybody.
That’s a good thing because while I have faith in Mullen, to expect no offensive regression after scoring nearly 40 points per game probably isn’t wise. But if the defense isn’t giving up 31, we just may win some games.