O&B Musings, 04/14/2021
By Will Miles
Transfers, transfers and more transfers
Mike White is completely changing over the roster of the basketball team, after defections for the NBA and transfers completely gutted the roster. Is this going to work? Well, let’s look at the players he’s added thus far.
– Myreon Jones (Penn State) – 6’3”, 15.3 ppg, 40% from 3
– Brandon McKissic (Missouri-Kansas City) – 6’3”, 17.2 ppg, 43% from 3
– C.J. Felder (Boston College) – 6’7”, 9.7 ppg, 31% from 3
– Phlandrous Fleming (Charleston Southern) – 6’4”, 20.1 ppg, 32% from 3
Just from an offensive standpoint, that’s a lot of firepower. The defensive reputations of these players – and Felder in particular – are very good also, indicating they may improve that side of the ball considerably for the Gators. Overall, you have to be pretty happy with the transfer haul White’s brought in, especially given what a weird year this is for player movement due to expected immediate eligibility grants from the NCAA.
While star rankings aren’t everything in basketball – and these guys have proven their abilities on the court – they do point towards the ceiling of various players. Jones was a 3-star (179th overall) coming out of high school. Felder was also a 3-star (238th overall), while Fleming and McKissic were unranked. What this says to me is that the Gators have brought in a bunch of solid basketball players who have probably reached their ceiling.
That might be a good thing for White, who is just going to have to put together the pieces rather than develop raw, but talented players. But it also means that he’s losing NBA talent (Tre Mann, specifically) and is going to have to likely replace him by committee.
Mike White’s rotations
All of this would be fine if White was optimizing the players that he had and just struggling to develop them. In fact, that would make the transfer portal the right way to build for his skill set. Except, Eric Fawcett has a damning article up at Gator Country that indicates just the opposite.
Some examples from Eric’s article:
– Two seasons ago, White went away from having Omar Payne alongside Kerry Blackshear even though it was clearly his best lineup.
– Against Virginia Tech in the tournament this season, White’s first lineup change that included Mann-Locke-Lewis-Osifo-Castleton had only played 2 minutes together all season.
– Final 2:46 played against Oral Roberts: Mann-Appleby-Locke-Lewis-Castleton had a -14 net rating in 2021.
If you have less talent than the opposition, you can’t be throwing combinations with a negative net rating out in the final two minutes of the game. You could at least make the argument that sitting Payne for his elbow against Tennessee forced White into some tough choices against Virginia Tech, but no such limitations existed against Oral Roberts.
This also isn’t Monday Morning QBing, as Eric has been posting net ratings of various players sets all year, so Florida either is aware, or should be aware, that these numbers exist.
That’s why there’s hesitation on my part to embrace these transfers. It’s not that they aren’t good players. It’s not that they won’t represent Florida well. It’s that I truly wonder whether they’ll be combined in a way that allows them to be most successful.
Patience with college basketball coaches
One thing you’ll hear Mike White defenders talk about is the patience that both Baylor and Gonzaga have shown with their head coaches, Scott Drew and Mark Few. The logic is that those guys have struggled at times in the tournament and that it just takes longer to build a program.
That is true in some respects, but I don’t think it’s a particularly good argument in favor of Mike White. In terms of point differential, Drew took over a dumpster fire at Baylor, and that’s before you factor in that the previous head coach tried to make a murdered player look like a drug dealer to conceal recruiting violations.
But Drew built the Baylor program up from a negative point differential in his first three seasons to a team that outperformed White’s Florida teams in both years 5 and 6 by point differential. Baylor continued to improve from that point on, but the point is that there was considerable improvement in Baylor’s first 6 seasons under Drew, just that Baylor was coming from further away.
In Few’s case, he took over a team that was already pretty good. He then built on that, with teams that had higher than 15 ppg point differential in year 5, 10, 14, 16, and now 18-22. Essentially, Few built Gonzaga from a team that occasionally could make a run into a team that should be expected to make a run every year.
Yes, this takes time. But there were also signs of building throughout. Those signs are just not there for White. Perhaps he’ll figure things out now, but looking at the data doesn’t make me all that confident.
Softball: Oh Canada
Apparently it takes entire countries to beat the Gators softball team in 2021.
After falling in an exhibition to Team USA earlier this season, the Gators fell to Team Canada in an exhibition on Saturday. Other than that, the team is 30-4 (10-2 SEC) after sweeping two against USF and taking one against Western Kentucky.
But get excited, because high-level competition is on the way. After a game against #23 UCF on Wednesday, the Gators get #3 Alabama for a three-game set in Tuscaloosa this weekend. The Tide are 31-5 (11-4 SEC), having dropped a game or two to the same teams that Florida has.
This is about as even as it’s going to get in the SEC, and is a great preview of which team is going to be able to make it out of the SEC and do some real damage in postseason tournaments. The games are on ESPN2 and SEC Network this weekend, so make sure to check them out.
Baseball: 6-6 in last 12
The Gators are 22-11 (6-6 SEC) after a walk-off home run in the 10th inning by Kendrick Calilao to avenge an earlier season drubbing at the hands of Florida State.
One can only hope that Calilao’s home run is the catalyst that the Gators need to right the ship. That’s because even with the win over FSU, Florida is just 6-6 in its last 12 games, and they’ve earned that record, outscoring its opponents by one run (61-60) over that stretch.
Perhaps more disturbing, in only three of those games did they keep the opposition under 4 runs and they gave up 6 or more runs in 6 of the games.
I’m excited about Calilao’s home run. But the entire telecast consisted of ESPN’s announcers telling us that Florida was better than its record and just hadn’t shown it yet. Well, I’m not so sure that is true looking at the numbers.
Normally, to make that kind of statement, you would expect the team to be getting unlucky (losing a lot of close games) or vastly underperforming its scoring differential. That’s not what’s happening to Florida.
The Gators are 7-7 in games decided by 2 runs or less. Their scoring differential (225-152) indicates a winning percentage of 68.6%, or 23 games, compared to the 22 the team has actually won.
What this says is that this team is exactly what their record says they are. A good team, with high-end potential on some nights. But not the elite squad we thought we might have heading into the season.
We’ll see if Calilao’s shot helps turn that around.
Gene Chizik
We had former Auburn coach (and former Florida linebacker) Gene Chizik on the Gators Breakdown podcast this week, and he had a bunch of fascinating points to make about Todd Grantham, Dan Mullen and the Florida program that I’ll summarize a little bit below.
But for those who don’t know (I didn’t), Chizik was a Gator under Charley Pell. He walked-on in 1981 and graduated in 1985 after a fairly injury-plagued season. He made it clear during the podcast though that even though he’s coached elsewhere, he considers himself a Gator through and through.
That made me wonder whether there are other guys out there – particularly from the Pell era – who feel the same way but don’t have the same relationship with Gators fans. I mean, I’ve never watched Chizik and felt some affinity for him because he was a Gator. Part of that is because I was born in 1981. But I also think some of that is because for many fans, the program didn’t really gain their attention until Steve Spurrier came to town as the head ball coach.
Certainly Spurrier lifted the Gators to new heights, but Pell started to show what the program could be back in the early 80s. My colleague Nick Knudsen wrote a series about the Pell era last offseason and you can tell when you listen to the quotes of the players that they feel forgotten in Florida history.
Chizik reminded me of that, and I think we could all do these guys a favor by looking into that history, and perhaps adding that 1984 SEC Championship banner to the Swamp.
Halftime adjustments
Chizik pointed out something that I hadn’t really thought about in reference to the loss of spring practice last year. He pointed out that Mullen’s ability to make in-game adjustments was tied to his abilities as a playcaller.
Essentially, Mullen has a rolodex of plays to choose from that the team has repped all season long. The further away from what was repped that week, the more difficult it becomes to make those changes at the half. The beauty of Mullen’s offense is both its simplicity and its ability to take advantage of mismatches. We saw that last year against Georgia where I guarantee you Mullen didn’t expect to throw 10 wheel routes to running backs and tight ends, but when Georgia left it open, he had the ability to keep pulling that card out of his rolodex.
We also saw it against Alabama, as the offense sputtered – for last season’s Gators – in the first half, but then exploded back in the second half. That was tied to a lot of motion for Kadarius Toney and taking advantage of the matchup nightmare he provided in one-on-one coverage.
But that got me thinking about Todd Grantham. Grantham’s defense is notoriously complex. Without a spring practice, his rolodex was essentially limited to the plays that had been repped the last week or two. If the offense did anything unexpected – or if a player underperformed – there just wasn’t any card he could pull.
I think that’s a fundamental problem with Grantham’s defense, but I do think it’s a problem that gets mitigated by being able to fill the rolodex with more cards during spring and fall camp. People ask me all the time why I’d expect the defense to improve, and this is the main reason. Spring practice means a lot more for Grantham’s defense than it does for Mullen’s offense.
Making changes on staff
Chizik also made some interesting points about when it’s time to make changes on staff.
He said that an elite coach has to have high coaching acumen, big-time recruiting ability, and strong relationships with players. Three out of three and you have a home run. Two out of three and you can live with it. One out of three and it’s time to make a change.
Through this framework, I think it’s easy to see why Grantham is so polarizing.
I happen to not like his scheme all that much. It gets a ton of pressure on the QB but seems to break down when a QB is experienced and able to diagnose that pressure quickly. Essentially, it is good enough for 11-2 but not good enough for 13-0, and this seems to have been proven out at Georgia and Florida thus far.
It does appear that Grantham has strong relationships with his players. This spring, the players have strongly defended him, said they love him and supported him against the outside criticism. Now, some of that may be a smokescreen, but the players could have said very little and have instead defended Grantham strongly. I do think that points towards strong relationships with his guys.
That means the line between “live with it” and “make a change” comes down to recruiting. The defensive recruiting at Florida has been good, but not great. Without a distinct talent advantage against high-level teams, Florida has struggled, particularly on defense and especially on third down.
That’s why I called for a change after last season. If the scheme isn’t making a huge difference and the coach isn’t moving the needle in recruiting, then you’ve got one of the three things Chizik said are necessary.
I’m still rooting that I’m wrong about the scheme and that Grantham has two of the three. But with a full spring and fall camp, there aren’t any excuses after this season.
Name, image and likeness impact
Chizik seemed completely perplexed by how name, image and likeness laws and rules are going to impact the college football landscape. That surprised me a bit.
I figured a guy who’s been a head coach in the past and might get into coaching again would have a clear grasp on how to game the system to your advantage. Instead, it was just confusion.
I don’t think that’s all on Chizik. I think part of it is that the NLI rules may be different state-to-state. I think it’s because the NCAA hasn’t given any clear guidance on what they’re going to do, and have been arguing amateurism in the Supreme Court just a few weeks ago.
I do agree with Chizik that it is unfair to coaches to ask them to build a program over a 4-year period when they don’t know what the rules are going to be 3 or 4 years from now. But that’s why you get paid $6 million, to figure that stuff out.
It does point out to me the disconnect between the coaches and the rule makers though. Chizik clearly is looking out for coaches and their well-being, but he is right to say that there are unintended consequences with the freedoms that are being given out to players.
You can see that right now in both the basketball and football transfer portals. When the merry-go-round stops, there are going to be players who won’t have a place to go. The freedom to transfer is great for those who can use it to their advantage, but the freedom to transfer also has a risk associated with it.
I’m fine with giving players that freedom so long as the NCAA is clear about teaching them the risks. I’m not sure they’re doing that well enough right now.
Not outcoaching Saban
The last thing Chizik said that stuck with me is that “you’re not outcoaching Nick Saban.”
This fundamentally is why I’ve harped so heavily on recruiting ever since Dan Mullen arrived. Mullen is a great coach. He schemes well, makes good adjustments and put players in a position to succeed. But so does Saban.
The flaw in thinking that stars don’t matter is that you’ll be able to out develop everyone. But all the other programs have hired coaches who are trying to develop their players as well. Certainly, the jury is still out on whether Kirby Smart has that skill, as he’s been a recruiting dynamo but has lost a bunch of games that he probably shouldn’t have.
But nobody can say that about Saban. He’s always in the hunt for a championship and has won way more than he’s lost. You might get him every once in a while (i.e. Auburn or LSU when they have a special QB), but to consistently compete is going to require competing not just in player development, but in recruiting as well.
Alabama is losing a lot of firepower from last year’s championship squad. Florida’s losing a lot of firepower from its 2020 team as well. They play in week 3 this year. I suspect we’ll see the power of recruiting in that one.