By Will Miles
Apparently, you’re delusional
Gators fans who have decided to voice their opinion that the Mike White era should be over have been told to be quiet by Mike Bianchi because they are “delusional”. This after Bianchi interviewed White’s brother who assured us that White was doing a fantastic job. I mean, if his brother isn’t an unbiased source, I don’t know who is!
Look, I actually don’t think White should be let go. But that has nothing to do with his performance. He’d get run out of town for the exact same performance at places like Indiana, North Carolina, Duke or even mid-tier programs like Cincinnati. The reason I don’t want Florida to let him go is that it would cost the Gators money that they can otherwise use to improve the football program.
Billy Donovan was a lightning-in-a-bottle type hire. It is possible that Florida could find that again and win another championship, but I just wouldn’t care all that much about it because I’m far more passionate about football. So are most other Gators fans. That means that anything that takes away finances that could go to the football program are working against the goal that most of us want.
But I’m not going to denigrate anyone in the fan base who believes that Florida can do better than Mike White. I agree with you. I think his statistical record at Florida is average and I have no issues with a fan who doesn’t believe this program should be average.
It certainly doesn’t make you delusional.
Scottie Lewis to the NBA
It was a bit of surprise when Scottie Lewis decided to leave the program and hire an agent. Lots of players go through the draft process to get feedback. The fact that Lewis has truly decided to leave without that feedback is what was surprising to me.
But Lewis saw his minutes go down in 2021 even though he put up virtually identical production. He also saw his stats nosedive a couple of games after Keyontae Johnson went down, which makes you wonder whether that incident impacted him more than some others.
Maybe Lewis will wow NBA scouts and somebody will take a flier on him in the second round. That has to be what he’s counting on, and that getting paid to play in the D-league or in Europe is better than taking the risk of regressing another year in Gainesville. While it’s a different situation, the guy whom I think of when comparing to Lewis is Avery Bradley.
Bradley was a can’t-miss, 5-star recruit when he decided to go to Texas. Bradley scored 11.6 points per game in his one year with the Longhorns but was considered a bit of a disappointment. He declared for the draft and went 19th overall to the Celtics.
Lewis is a year older but he’s also three inches taller. My initial indication was that he wouldn’t be drafted, but after hearing Andrew Nembhard talk about how Florida wasn’t a good fit for him and with Lewis’ pedigree, maybe I’m wrong.
I certainly hope so, as I want to see all these guys do well and get paid.
McKissic and Felder transfer in
With all the players transferring out, some good news. University of Missouri-Kansas City guard Brandon McKissic and Boston College forward C.J. Felder are transferring in.
McKissic averaged 17.2 points per game last season, seeing his scoring average jump from 10.5 and 11.0 his sophomore and junior seasons. That included 20 and 24 against the Oral Roberts team that knocked Florida out of the tournament. He also shot 43% from 3-point range, which given Florida’s proclivity for depending on that sort of shot, bodes well.
Felder is a younger player who showed real improvement between the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 seasons. His scoring average increased (5.6 to 9.7 ppg) but so did his percentages, as he shot 59% from the field overall and 31% from three. The thing that gets me most excited though is Eric Fawcett’s assertion that Felder is a good defensive player, both protecting the rim and as a defensive rebounder. That was certainly something missing from last year’s squad.
These guys aren’t enough. Mike White is going to have to snag some more transfers and get those guys to play together in a way that other programs are not going to have to. But there are a ton of players in the transfer portal, this season especially, so hopefully White is able to snag a bunch of guys who fit what he’s trying to do better than some of the high-level recruits he’s previously brought in.
That’s a tough ask, but that’s the bed White has made by having so many guys transfer out or test the NBA waters. We’ll see if he’s up to the task.
Softball: 2-1 vs. Georgia
Softball suffered a setback on Saturday against Georgia, but it was perhaps their response to the loss that impressed me the most.
25-2.
The 4-2 loss to the Bulldogs included Georgia getting 4 runs against Elizabeth Hightower, who has been the Gators best pitcher thus far in 2021. You could understand if that would have rattled the team a little bit given Hightower’s success and being on the road.
Instead, the Gators beat Georgia in the next two games 17-1 and 8-1. Both games were over early, as Florida scored 3 runs in the opening frame of each and continued to pile on. I had the Sunday game on the TV and it was 5-0 when I went to help my wife with my son for what seemed like 5 minutes. By the time I came back, it was 13-0.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, turn on a softball game. These women are fun to watch. They work counts. They compete. And they showed significant grit on the road after losing the opener with their ace faltering. It was quite a weekend.
Baseball: 2-1 vs Ole Miss
The baseball team also went 2-1 this weekend against Ole Miss and just squeaked by Stetson 7-6 on Tuesday. That puts the Gators at 19-9 overall, but just 5-4 in conference play.
Franco Aleman and Tommy Mace gave up one unearned run in the opener against the Rebels and things looked on the upswing headed into the weekend after a 4-1 win. But Jack Leftwich struggled for the second game in a row, taking the loss after surrendering 6 ER in 3.1 IP. Hunter Barco got the win in game 3, giving up 3 runs (2 earned) in 5 IP as the bullpen nearly gave up a 3-run lead in the 6-5 win. The same thing happened against Stetson as the Gators went into the 8th inning up 6-2 and held on to win 7-6.
As has been the case all season, Florida has just been unable to string together effective pitching more than a few games in a row. It does look like Jud Fabian is starting to come out of his slump, but I’m not even sure that matters.
Anyone who has watched Vanderbilt – and seen the crazy performances coming from Jack Leiter (0.43 ERA) and Kumar Rocker (0.84 ERA) – has to be concerned about coming up against the Commodores in the postseason. The thinking coming into the year was that Florida was going to have a pitching staff that could help the Gators compete against the ‘Dores.
We haven’t seen that thus far.
Jahari Rogers transfers
Basketball wasn’t the only team to lose a player due to the transfer portal. Defensive back Jahari Rogers also decided to go play somewhere else.
This is a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty type transfer. Rogers was the 87th overall player in the 2020 class, so for the staff to get nothing from a player with that kind of pedigree is disturbing. However, if Rogers can’t see the field, it must mean that Jason Marshall is asserting himself as a potential starter, which is absolutely necessary if Florida is going to see a significant step-up on defense this season.
I am absolutely worried that Florida has a limited number of scholarship corners. A few years ago, Trey Dean had to play corner as a true freshman when Marco Wilson went down because Florida didn’t have any numbers there. We aren’t quite at that level, but there isn’t a lot of room for error now. Marshall has to be good, and he and Elam need to stay healthy.
Fans seem to take a bit of perverse pleasure giving criticism when Todd Grantham’s players don’t tackle very well. But keep quiet on the snark if a corner misses a tackle, especially early-on in 2021. Because while I’d like those players to make the play, it’s much more important that they not get hurt.
Marco Wilson pro day
The Marco Wilson rehabilitation tour was out in earnest during the Gators pro day.
There was a puff piece on ESPN detailing how he’d learned a ton from the shoe toss incident and how Gators fans are still giving him crap about it (true). Then he went out and ran a better 40-time than Kadarius Toney and Kyle Pitts. Then he jumped so high that the mechanism designed to measure it was completely maxed.
But here’s the thing. Gators fans were never concerned that Wilson didn’t possess the physical skills to succeed. In fact, that’s what made his struggles so maddening. He was often in good position, only to not come down with the ball. Then he would make a routine play and celebrate like he just secured the SEC Championship. Then there’s the shoe toss incident and the reaction of Wilson to that incident, and also the reaction of his family.
Look, I hope Marco Wilson succeeds in the NFL. I hope that because it’s good for Florida and because it’s good for Wilson. I hold no ill-will towards Wilson for his overall play. Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you want.
But the idea that Florida fans – or at least this one – are going to just forget and forgive the shoe toss is laughable. That was perhaps the dumbest way to lose a game I can possibly think of, and the fact that it happened when Florida would have had a real shot to play for the playoff the next week made it even more unbelievable.
The ESPN article compared it to the peeing incident that Elijah Moore performed at Ole Miss. But let’s be honest, the Egg Bowl might be important in Mississippi, but the consequences of that incident were that Ole Miss finished 4-8 instead of 5-7 and Mississippi State got to 6 wins and a bowl game.
Wilson’s shoe toss cost the Gators a 9-1 start heading into the SEC Championship. Yes, the Gators had a chance to stop LSU again (sure, with that defense). And yes, Evan McPherson could have bailed out Wilson by tying the game on his long field-goal try.
But nobody remembers those things. Instead, the reason Florida had nothing to play for the next week is because Wilson finally made a play to stop LSU and then immediately threw it away. That’s his legacy, whether he likes it or not. And no ESPN piece talking about how he learned from the experience is going to make any of us Gators fans forget.
Underrated Gator
While Wilson got a lion’s share of the attention, the player I think might be the most underrated Gator coming out of the pro day – and based on his in-season performance – is left tackle Stone Forsythe.
The offensive line was bad in 2019 and average in 2020. But one guy who really excelled – particularly in pass protection – was Forsythe. Time after time, Florida dropped Trask back to pass and the best pass rusher for the opposition lined up against Forsythe. Time after time that player was rebuffed, often in one-on-one matchups.
The fact that Florida ranked 8th in the country in sack rate on known passing downs is in many ways due to Kyle Trask’s ability to get rid of the ball quickly and to move around the pocket. But we all saw the struggles of the offensive line on the right hand side, which meant that for Trask to have room to move around depended on Forsythe holding strong on his side.
More often than not, he did just that. And while Pitts, Toney and Trask (and Wilson) got some much deserved attention during the pro day, the guy with the longest NFL career may end up being the guy who developed into a stalwart on the offensive line.
Kyle Pitts worth a top-5 pick?
There has been some scuttle that Kyle Pitts may be drafted by the Atlanta Falcons with the 4th overall pick.
Certainly if you’re Matt Ryan, you have to be salivating at the opportunity to throw to Calvin Ridley, Julio Jones and Pitts on a regular basis. The question this raises though, is whether a top-5 pick is reasonable for a tight end.
Conventional wisdom says it is not. The reason is that tight ends tend to have shorter careers and tend to get injured more often. But then you look at recent high flying NFL offenses and just about all of them have high-level tight end play.
Perhaps more significantly, look at the low flying NFL offenses from last year. Who’s the Jet’s tight end? What about Jacksonville, Cincinnati, Denver or the New York Giants? Noah Fant was pretty good for the Broncos, but he only averaged 10.9 yards per catch. Evan Engram was decent for the Giants, but only averaged 10.4 yards per catch.
George Kittle averaged 13.2. Travis Kelce averaged 13.5.
Kelce averaged 16.0 yards per attempt his last season at Cincinnati in college and averaged 14.8 yards per catch in his career. Pitts averaged 17.9 yards per attempt last year and 14.9 in his career. So he profiles as a faster, taller version of Travis Kelce as a floor.
Yeah, that’s probably worth a top-5 pick.
Randy Shannon is an FSU analyst
I have to admit, I laughed out loud when I saw that Randy Shannon was announced as an analyst for FSU. For as upset as I’ve been that Dan Mullen has been unable to take major advantage of FSU and Miami on the recruiting trail, he is running circles around the Seminoles when it comes to staff success.
Shannon seems like a good man. But he was a poor recruiter when he was at Florida under Jim McElwain. He was the defensive coordinator under Larry Coker when the Hurricanes started going south and when he took over as head coach, the Hurricane’s defense went from solid to bad. The same thing happened in Gainesville when he took over as defensive coordinator at Florida in 2017 as the defense went from excellent in 2015 and 2016 to terrible in 2017.
Shannon was just never able to adjust when he was in Gainesville. The Gators either showed a cover-2 shell and stayed in it or showed a single-high safety look and stayed in it. There wasn’t a whole lot of innovation or scheme disguise that made things difficult for the opposing offense. The result is that Florida got torched through the air in 2017, even though they had Chauncey Gardner-Johnson, Duke Dawson and C.J. Henderson in the secondary.
Mullen is keeping the door open in the state of Florida because he has not been able to rule the recruiting scene the way he should be with the success he is having. But I am way more worried about Miami than I am about FSU for a lot of reasons.
Randy Shannon isn’t at the top of that list, but he’s on the list of reasons.