By Will Miles
Softball: #5 Gators go 2-1 against #3 Alabama
The Florida softball team went 2-1 against Alabama this weekend, winning the series and likely helping themselves move up in the polls this week.
More importantly, this now means that the Florida softball team has won each series against its SEC opponents this year. With only 9 SEC games left this season – 3 against South Carolina (2-12 SEC), 3 against Missouri (10-5 SEC) and 3 against Texas A&M (6-9 SEC) – the expectation is that trend will continue and Florida will go into the postseason as the class of the SEC.
Yet again, the story against the Tide was the pitching. Elizabeth Hightower shut out ‘Bama in the opener Friday night in a 2-0 victory. Natalie Lugo and Katie Chronister then gave up only two runs before the Gators put up a 5-spot in the top of the sixth to put the 9-2 win away. In the third game (lost 4-2), Hightower gave up 4 runs, but only one earned as the Gators made three errors.
I’m greedy. I wanted the sweep. The errors do indicate that maybe the team was a little bit overconfident coming into the third game of the series. But the reality is that this team is primed to make a deep run. Are they good enough to beat Oklahoma? Time will tell.
But thus far, they’ve been good enough to beat all comers in the SEC.
Baseball: Gators sweep Missouri
The Gators baseball team swept Missouri this weekend and has now won 5-straight games. The Tigers aren’t a very good team (11-23 overall, 4-11 SEC), but taking care of business against bad teams is what good teams are supposed to do.
I still worry about the pitching. Jack Leftwich pitched really well in game 2 (4 IP, 0 H, 0 R), but the Gators staff gave up 15 runs in the three games. Five runs per game will clearly get the job done against Missouri, but it isn’t going to get the job done against higher-level teams.
The team now has a cumulative ERA of 3.79, which doesn’t sound that bad. But when you compare it to other SEC teams like Vanderbilt (2.87), it does indicate that the Gators have work to do on that side of the ball. Add to that an average of 6.22 runs per game scored (compared to 7.56 for Vandy) and you start to see why the Gators profile like a good, but not great team.
However, confidence goes a long way on the baseball field. The 5-straight wins – including the walk-off by Kendrick Calilao against FSU – should have the Gators feeling good about themselves. Vanderbilt and Arkansas are coming up on the schedule in May so they’re going to have a chance that my characterization of good, but not great doesn’t apply anymore.
Dan Mullen doesn’t like the transfer rule
Demetrius Harvey of Sports Illustrated came out with an article last week detailing some of Dan Mullen’s concerns with the new one-time transfer rule.
Mullen was pretty measured, clearly saying he wants what’s best for the kids, but also pointing out some of the problems that are associated with the rule. The big takeaway is that Mullen is concerned that players who don’t get playing time won’t develop because of having to stick out the process or won’t have a place to play because of numbers restrictions by the NCAA.
First, I want to concede that both of those risks are real (more on that below). But if I’m going to conceded that, then I need the other side of this argument to concede that players who are 18-22 are legally adults. If that is true, then those players should be free to choose to live, work and play wherever they want, without restriction. Just because that comes with increased risk doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a choice. After all, those decisions also come with increased reward (more playing time, being able to start, better coaches, etc.).
The idea that players are somehow so limited in their ability to make decisions that we should protect them from themselves seems to me the complete antithesis of what college is supposed to be. I made plenty of mistakes in college. I learned from them.
If a player transfers and realizes it is a mistake after the fact, that was a learning experience. It should help him or her make better decisions in the future. Isn’t that what college is for?
Initial counters and transfers
The one place where I heartily agree with Mullen is that the new transfer rule makes the way players are counted on a roster a game changer.
For those who don’t know, each program gets 25 initial counters each season. Those counters can be taken-up by high school recruits or transfers. There are also rules about “counting back” to previous classes that allow a team to sign more than 25 players in a given recruiting cycle, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s not worry about that and say a team can sign 25 players per year.
The problem teams are going to run into is if a 2021 recruit signs and then decides to transfer, and then that same team wants to bring in a new player via transfer from the same class, those players will each take up one counter each. This has been my concern about Mullen using the transfer portal so heavily thus far in his time at Florida. He’s brought in high level talent, but he’s had to sacrifice depth somewhere because of the counting rules.
But it used to be that the player had to sacrifice by sitting out a year to transfer. That sacrifice no longer exists and so the expectation is that more and more players are going to transfer. So let’s say that a program loses 10 players to transfer and brings in 10 transfers to replace those guys. That’s 20 counters that are occupied for 10 roster spots.
The problem is obvious immediately. Those 25 spots are going to go much more quickly under this system, and players who enter the transfer portal who high-level programs would love to have are going to get passed over because of a limitation in the number of counters that program has.
Now, maybe this is good for college football. Perhaps teams like Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and Rutgers will be able to cull the transfer market. Perhaps this will actually cool down transferring after a few players get left standing in the game of musical chairs.
Regardless, this constraint is the reason coaches don’t like the rule, it’s the reason why nobody really knows how it’s going to affect things, and when combined with name, image and likeness rights, the College Football landscape is about to change.
Whether that’s a good or a bad thing, I don’t know. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing for Florida, I don’t know. But it is THE story to watch in the next few years, as it likely is going to impact roster construction – and thus, who wins and loses – more than any coaching change could.
Toney & Pitts bolting rather than developing?
The place I disagree with Mullen is that he stated that guys like Kadarius Toney and Kyle Pitts might not have stuck out their time at Florida and developed into the players that they were had they been free to transfer.
This is a little bit disingenuous.
It was obvious from the first time I saw Pitts catch a bubble screen in the spring game in 2018 that he was special. And I’ve been stumping for Kadarius Toney to get more snaps for years at this point. Maybe you don’t think I’m as good of a judge of talent as Mullen, but it didn’t take a genius to know those two were special.
Perhaps Mullen is right at the margins. Does a guy like Kemore Gamble – who was behind Pitts last year and perhaps might get beat out by Keon Zipperer this year – decide to transfer if there’s no penalty? Sure.
But if Pitts and Toney had transferred elsewhere because they weren’t getting playing time, that’s on the head coach. On Gators Breakdown last week, Gene Chizik listed the three things that make a great coach: on-field acumen, recruiting, and relationships with players.
Keeping elite, talented players happy while helping them develop seems to me to fit under the third designation. You’re not going to bat 1.000 with player relationships. Some will leave when they don’t get what they want. But let’s not just blame the players when they do.
Some of that is on the coach.
Recruitment of Jalen Kitna
I actually think Mullen saw this coming. That’s why Jalen Kitna is on the roster.
Did you ever wonder why Kyle Trask didn’t transfer elsewhere? Without any college film, and without any high school film, where was he going to go? The reality is that had Feleipe Franks excelled and he never got on the field, his time at Florida would have set him up for a terrific career as a coach moving forward.
Now, that’s not what happened and Trask was ready and able to excel when given the opportunity, but when Franks got hurt at Kentucky, I wasn’t the only Gators fan surprised that Emory Jones wasn’t the player that came in the game.
I think Mullen learned something from that experience. The starting QB battle may be Anthony Richardson and Emory Jones right now, but he now has Kitna – a player whose transfer opportunities would be limited to lower-tier programs, most likely – as insurance should those players transfer or get injured. I fully expect him to be in the Florida program for five years and contribute at some point should he be needed.
I mean, it was certainly nice to have Trask waiting in the wings two years ago. And 2013 jumps to mind as another season where depth at the position would have been key after injuries to Jeff Driskel and Tyler Murphy led to Skyler Mornhinweg starting. Even back in 2010 after Mullen had left, Urban Meyer had to play John Brantley, Jordan Reed and Trey Burton at QB. Reed and Burton have both become solid NFL contributors, but not at QB, which tells you something about that team’s depth.
That seems like a small detail, but with the increased number of transfers, having quality depth at the game’s most important position is critical. In fact, you have to wonder whether this is a strategy that would make sense at other positions as well.
Anthony Richardson or Emory Jones?
The backup QB is always the most popular guy in the room.
So it goes for Emory Jones, who went from being that backup and fans clamoring for him to get a larger role in 2018, to now being the presumed starter and some fans clamoring for Anthony Richardson to get a look now that he’s gotten a full spring under his belt.
First, that doesn’t appear to be what Mullen does. Dak Prescott played his redshirt freshman season, but Tyler Russell still threw 109 passes. Nick Fitzgerald spent a full year as Prescott’s backup before taking over as the starter as a sophomore in 2016. Other than that, we’re talking about players who had to wait their turns.
Jones has certainly done that. A big-time recruit in the 2018 class, big things were expected. Instead, Jones has had to wait as first Franks, and then Trask, led the Gators. He has put up big-time numbers (5.6 yards per rush) in limited action, yet still, I get the sense that the delay to him playing has put some fans on edge in terms of his ceiling.
But here’s something to consider. While Richardson is immensely talented, he only completed 53.2% of his throws in high school. That jumped to 64.5% his senior year, which is a great sign. But that was only in 6 games as he was injured in 2020. The good news is that his 11.7 yards per attempt that season profiles really well so this isn’t to be critical of Richardson, just to point out that he isn’t a “sure thing”.
And if you compare that to Jones’ senior year in high school, you’re talking about a player who completed 61.8% of his passes and averaged 13.3 yards per attempt. You could criticize that he only threw the ball 144 times his senior year, but Richardson only threw the ball 124 times his senior year. The samples are pretty close.
If these numbers are to be trusted, you have a player in Jones who likely is a little bit better throwing the deep ball and a player in Richardson who is likely a little bit better on intermediate throws. Richardson has shown at the high school level that he can run (250 carries for 1633 yards), but Jones has shown he can do that at the college level as well.
The point is that I’m not looking at anything statistically that tells me that Richardson is significantly better than Jones. Combine that with Dan Mullen’s history of starting guys who have waited in-line, and you should expect a heavy dose of Emory Jones in the fall.
What does Todd Grantham need to do to win back Gators fans?
One thing that’s been on my mind a little bit recently is, what could Todd Grantham do to win back Gators fans?
I mean he is still the defensive coordinator, after all. I hope that Florida fans root for and support him (though Mike White might have some advice for him). But the reality is that after this season, there has to be some sort of metric that we measure him by to decide whether he is worth retaining or not. So the question is, what should those metrics be?
Florida was 82nd in total defense in 2020 at 5.8 yards per play allowed. They were 78th in yards per rush allowed (4.6) and 85th in yards per pass allowed (7.8). The Gators were also 71st in third down conversion percentage allowed (41.1%) and 97th in fourth down conversion percentage allowed (65.2%). Woof.
This is a complete reversal from 2019, where the Gators ranked 21st in yards per play, 13th in yards per rush, 35th in yards per pass, 29th in third down conversion percentage and 4th in fourth down conversion percentage.
Normally, I’m much more inclined to look at the yards per play information, as I think it correlates with preventing scoring at a really high level. But in this case, the fourth down conversion percentage just jumps out at me. What could have possibly caused Florida to go from 4th to 97th in fourth downs being converted?
The only way that happens is the fourth downs in 2019 were much longer than the ones in 2020. That ties in to being poor against the run and against the pass in 2020. It ties into third down conversion percentages that were much worse in 2020 as well.
I’m not sure there’s anything Grantham can do to win back the hearts of Gators fans. But if you’re someone who’s open to having their mind won back, look at fourth down conversion percentage. If Florida isn’t in the top-10 next season, then Grantham’s defense is just going to be average, or worse.
Stricklin says Swamp will be full in the Fall
It wasn’t much of a surprise, but Scott Stricklin came out and said what other Athletic Directors around the country have been saying this spring: stadiums are going to be full in the fall.
Obviously, he had the same caveats as always (will do what UF Health thinks is best, masks will be required, etc.) but the fact that he’s willing to commit to such a statement in April suggests that his information is that by September, COVID is going to be a minor nuisance rather than a major problem like it was in 2020.
That’s not to make light of anyone who’s had it. I got it last month and it was a miserable experience. It’s no joke when you wake up one morning and you breathe but it just doesn’t feel like your lungs are absorbing any oxygen. But the reality is that with the relatively successful vaccine rollout in Florida targeting the elderly and the expectation of herd immunity at some point in the not-too-distant-future, programs like Florida are not going to forgo the dollars associated with home games two years in a row.
Whether you want to go or not is an individual risk decision that you’re going to have to make. But man, is it going to feel good to see a full Swamp again.
Where is our Spring Game?
Against the backdrop of Stricklin saying the stadium will be full in the fall is the dichotomy of Florida having no spring game. There were six SEC spring games this weekend. Those programs can figure out how to have fans in the stands, put on a scrimmage and provide content for their fans on TV. Why can’t Florida?
I’m not really all that upset that I didn’t get to see Florida play a glorified scrimmage. What I’m upset about is that the spring game is a marker of the offseason and a time for hope. It’s also a time for families to come see the Gators play. That’s because tickets are either too expensive to go as a group during the season, or because little kids want to leave before halftime. There’s no way I’m dealing with a whining 6-year old in the fourth quarter against Alabama.
But the other reason is because the Gator Nation is a family. I suspect we (I know I did) took for granted the ability to tailgate, to hang out with old friends and to live and die with the Gators together. The spring game is one more opportunity to do that and to remember the things we have in common.
Supposedly there’s going to be a 2-hour SEC Network special. I’m a lunatic so I’ll watch that and try to decipher some sort of football-related conclusion out of the video evidence. And maybe missing the spring game will impact recruiting negatively in a way that prevents a player or two from coming to Florida.
But that’s not why I wanted a spring game. I wanted a spring game so that me and my friends could finally hang out again after months and months of not being able to do so.