By Will Miles
Gators baseball swept by Georgia
I said last week that we’d find out a lot about Florida’s team coming up because of all of the ranked opponents on the schedule. Well, that sound you heard was the thud of championship expectations hitting the floor after being swept by Georgia over the weekend.
You’re going to see some pundits point towards clutch hitting as being the problem in the games. I know it may even feel that way, but it is inaccurate. The reason I say that is because Florida left less men on base (19) in the three games than Georgia did (20).
The reason Florida lost these games is the same reason they’ve lost games all season long: pitching. They gave up 7, 6 and 14 runs in the three games. Last year’s National Champions – the Mississippi State Bulldogs – averaged 7.0 runs per game. That means if you’re going to compete with Georgia while giving up 9 runs per game, you have to have an offense better than last year’s champions.
That seems like an unrealistic expectation.
The Gators have played nine SEC games and have given up an average of 8.2 runs per game in those nine. That just isn’t going to be good enough to achieve any of the goals that this team had going into the season. There’s still time to fix some of those issues, but it’s become clear what the main issue is for this team: pitching.
Here comes Arkansas
The Gators now stand at 19-10 after its 13-3 victory over Florida A&M Tuesday night, but now take on a very difficult SEC schedule. Perhaps more importantly, the Gators now stand at 3-6 in the SEC.
That is likely going to get worse with three games against #2 Arkansas this weekend and three games against #1 Tennessee on April 22-24. Sandwiched in-between those 3-game series is a single game against Florida State (#20) and a three-game series on the road against Vanderbilt (#16). It’s quite possible that the Gators come out of that stretch with a record somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-18 or 21-17.
So that’s the test. Thus far, the Gators haven’t been able to rise up to meet the challenge, but they are talented enough to do so. The question will be whether they can get a win in any game that Hunter Barco isn’t starting. Barco had an average start against Georgia (5 IP, 3 ER) and Florida got swept. Barco had a good start against LSU (7 IP, 0 ER) and the Gators took 1 of 3.
Someone else has to step up. You aren’t going to win any regionals or super regionals with one starting pitcher. That’s the reality. The good news is the rest of the Gators pitchers will get an opportunity in the next month to see whether they can step up and give Barco some help. That opportunity might be some bad news too though.
Softball takes 2 of 3 from Auburn (and beats Central Florida)
Meanwhile, the Gators softball team extended its record to 30-6 (7-5 SEC) by taking 2 of 3 against #17 Auburn and beating #20 Central Florida in a single mid-week game.
This is significant for a few reasons. First, taking 2 of 3 from ranked teams is what will be necessary once the tournament season starts. You can get by a Regional or Super Regional and still lose one, so finding that path to victory is significant.
But the other reason this particular series against Auburn is significant is that the Gators lost the first game 3-1 after Elizabeth Hightower gave up 3 runs in 6 IP. She then shut down the Tigers in the third game over 7 IP in a 3-0 victory, but the 7-6 victory in between is the significant part. That indicates that Florida is showing an ability to win games even when Hightower isn’t the pitcher.
Yes, it was a 7-6 win, but the Gators were up 7-2 before giving up 2 runs in the sixth and seventh inning each. You’d like to see that cleaned up, but the reality is that winning games when Hightower isn’t pitching is all you need those pitchers to do. Plus, if Hightower has two good outings, then it means you sweep the series.
The non-Hightower pitchers got it done against Auburn. We’ll see if they can keep getting it done moving forward.
Wilcox Career-Ending Injury
Billy Napier announced this week that Gage Wilcox – who hadn’t been seen at any recent practices – suffered a career-threatening injury and so wouldn’t be available.
From a personal perspective, this is devastating news for Wilcox. You work your entire life to become the best football player you can be, and then an injury takes that away from you. The nature of the injury has yet to be revealed, but Wilcox was the 311th nationally ranked recruit in the 2021 class. Sometimes guys with that ranking don’t work out, but there’s a whole host of them who have become solid NFL contributors, or even stars. For Wilcox to not get that chance is just sad.
From a personnel perspective, Wilcox’s injury leaves Florida in a bind. With Jonathan Odom and Nick Elksnis also out with serious injuries of their own, Florida’s tight end room has just been ravaged. That means having guys like Griffin McDowell, Noah Keeter and Dante Zanders taking snaps at tight end. Not only does that mean having guys learning a new position, but it means robbing depth from another position that might suffer injuries either later in the spring or in the fall.
Depth is always an issue with any coaching transition. But to have the depth decimated at a position that Billy Napier emphasizes so much on offense is a significant blow. I’m really interested to see whether he adjusts to fit the personnel that he has, or whether he tries to get his personnel to adjust to his scheme. The latter rarely works out as well as the former, so we’re going to see how malleable he can be.
Zanders the Godsend
Billy Napier called Dante Zanders a “Godsend” when asked about players transitioning to tight end this week. Zanders has some experience at the position, so it’s not a complete shock to his system and he’s probably the most equipped to make the switch.
When Dan Mullen was let go, Zanders entered the transfer portal. That he decided to stay means that he is now getting this opportunity. It’s an interesting metaphor for life, really.
Oftentimes, we spend our time looking at what other people have or looking at other jobs, just knowing that they will be better. Then we move into that role or get to peek behind the curtain at those other peoples’ real lives and realize those situations are just as screwed up as the one we are in.
For Zanders, he might have been able to get playing time somewhere else. But now he has an opportunity to get playing time at a school where he feels comfortable and knows all of his teammates. All of his hard work – even if it seemed fruitless at the time – is about to pay off.
We’ll see whether Zanders plays a prominent role in the offense when the ball is kicked off in September. But if he does, it’s a good lesson for all of us. Sometimes going through the work is God’s way of preparing us for when an opportunity does pop up, even if putting in that work seems fruitless at the time.
NIL vs. an Employee
I’m happy that players can make money through name, image and likeness rights now. It never made sense that players couldn’t use their status as a football player to make money when that restriction was never placed on a concert pianist or artist training at UF.
But the Wilcox injury brings into stark view that NIL just isn’t enough.
One of the reasons that the NCAA so ardently uses the term “student-athlete” is that the word has a meaning, and that meaning is not “employee”. That’s because the definition of the word employee brings with it certain rights to the employee and certain obligations to the employer. One of those is worker’s compensation insurance, but there are other ramifications, including minimum wage and overtime rules.
I’m not an employment lawyer, but there is absolutely a cost to insuring and hiring employees, especially in a sport as violent as football. For too long, the NCAA has been able to skirt the rules every other company abides by simply because they are tied to colleges and because the sport originated as an amateur extracurricular that morphed into a massive business.
My first concern with Wilcox is that he gets the best medical care he can for his injury. But what about 15 or 30 years from now if his quality of life has been reduced because of the injury? I hope that doesn’t happen, but right now I’m not sure what’s out there to help in those circumstances.
The NCAA is right in its commercials that a large percentage of its student-athletes don’t go pro in the sport they’re participating in. But there are significant consequences to participating in those sports in college. It shouldn’t be all on the players to bear the burden of those consequences.
GatorMade Program
Chris Pronger – the hall of fame NFL defenseman – took to Twitter this week to talk about how athletes can squander their fortunes even when they make a lot of money.
Whether we feel sorry for these folks who make all this money and find a way to lose it is really immaterial to the fact that it happens. And many times, it happens because these are 20-22 year old people who have been given a significant amount of money with no training on how to handle it.
The mistakes I made when I was 20 was with $100 or $1000. The mistakes these guys are making have significantly more zeroes, by virtue of their salaries. Given that 20-year olds don’t really have any line-of-sight into the future when those paydays might end, it makes sense that they would make bad choices.
That’s why I’ve been happy to hear about the GatorMade program. This program is something that UF has put in place to help with financial literacy, career and personal skills development, personal brand building and social media development. The goal is to combine these things to set up student-athletes for success.
Whether or not a player takes advantage of the training is an open question. But the fact that the training is available means that hopefully there are less cautionary tales of athletes who squandered their fortunes coming out of UF than of other places. That would mean that the university has lived up to its obligations of training young people to survive and thrive in the real world.
A Motivated Shorter
If you’ve read any of the profiles of Justin Shorter recently, you now know that he committed to come back to Florida and was going to do so regardless of who the head coach was. The fact that he came back is significant though as Florida – just like at other positions – is lacking depth at wide receiver.
Shorter’s 5-star profile got all of us excited when he decided to transfer to Florida two years ago. It didn’t feel like he had improved that much early in the season of 2021, but he ended up with 16 more catches in 2021 and averaged nearly 3 more yards per catch.
Starting with the LSU game, Shorter had games of 6 for 113 (LSU), 5 for 92 (USCe), and 6 for 93 (Samford). That sort of ability is clearly in there and it is up to the new staff to make it more consistent.
I’m also curious to see how Napier and Co. use Shorter. Dan Mullen had him catch bubble screens quite a bit, but to me that never seemed to fit what he was good at. He’s 6’5” tall and 228 pounds. That’s someone who should be able to get a jump ball deep, should be able to box out a slot corner on inside routes, and should be able to provide some “tight end” character because of his size if Napier decides he needs to use more one tight end sets. Asking him to be shifty on bubble screens just seems like a waste.
Regardless, Shorter’s motivation to come back – especially after his scary injury against Central Florida – cements him as a leader in that room. And if he continues the growth he showed from 2020 to 2021, he’s going to catch around 60 balls for 900 yards.
I think we’d all be happy with that.
Mining the Portal
The one thing that is hovering over all of spring camp is one of the newer roster building mechanisms in college football: the transfer portal.
Everybody got excited with Kamryn Waites and O’Cyrus Torrence transferred over. We all anticipate that Montrell Johnson is going to contribute. But Napier has now been able to watch his team, see who has and has not bought in, and can go out and get his type of guys for those spots where the squad might be particularly weak.
That means we can look at the wide receiver position and talk about how they are thin, but there might be two more receivers in the fold by the time fall camp rolls around. The same could be said for the tight ends position or the defensive tackle position.
We saw that last year, as the previous staff brought in Newkirk, Valentino and Truesdell to fill holes at tackle that were both numbers and talent related. Truesdell didn’t even come in until the season had started.
So we can make all sorts of generalizations about where Florida is weak and where they need to see improvement, but the roster is going to look different in August. There’s no guarantee that the transfers are going to be significant difference makers (we saw that last year as well), but massive depth concerns at any spot is going to be unlikely.
Changes to the Swamp
Ben Hill Griffin Stadium is going to be renovated prior to 2024. Some of the modifications will be seating bowl upgrades (i.e. chairbacks), ADA upgrades, bench seat width adjustments, scoreboard upgrades and east and south concourse upgrades. The likely ramifications of these modifications will be less total people in the stadium, but a better experience for those who are there.
I’m all for these sorts of changes, but there are a few more changes that could be made if Stricklin wanted to make the fan experience better. First, allow re-entry. We used to leave and go next door to all of the bars. It made the student experience both unique and fun. If I were a student now and had to make a choice between boiling in the sun for a game against USF or drinking at a bar with the game on the big screen, it’s an easy choice.
The second change Stricklin could make is allow the students to resell their tickets. I get that this would hurt the secondary market and lower resale prices for the alumni. But it would also mean that student tickets that go unused for cupcake games (because they are subsidized and so cheaper) could be bought up by people who otherwise are priced out of the games.
I have small kids. They would love to go to a game, but I have to be sure they’ll enjoy it before I drop $200 on taking them. And if I can only take them to one, I’m going to take them to LSU or Auburn, not USF. That changes if the cupcake game is significantly cheaper.
I fell asleep in the first half of North Carolina-Kansas national championship basketball game the other night. My kids were asleep before the game tipped off. How do the basketball powers that be expect to grow their sport if nobody watches it?
I get that every AD is tasked with growing and maximizing revenue. But sacrificing long-term growth for short-term wins is a balance that they need to strike. Because I love going to Gators games, but I’ve only taken one of them so far.
So go ahead and make seats more comfortable and have wider concourses. But in my view, the problem of empty seats isn’t because of HDTVs and cell phones giving people better options. It’s because the pipeline of fanatics relies on constantly sacrificing short-term revenue to fill that pipeline.