By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Friday morning:
GATORS HALFWAY HOME TO AN SEC TOURNAMENT TITLE
Pitching and defense, Tim Walton says, are the hallmarks of this Florida softball team. In Thursday night’s 9-3 win over 4th-seeded Kentucky (35-17) in the quarterfinals of the Southeastern Conference Tournament at Katie Seashole Pressly, Tim Walton got the pitching and the defense, but for a second straight night there was exceptional offensive production, which bodes well as the Gators moved one game closer to claiming their sixth tournament title in Walton’s 17th year on the job.
The pitching came in the form of a solid start from Elizabeth Hightower (16-7, 2.39 ERA), who settled down after giving up two homers, five hits and three runs in the first two innings to hold the Wildcats hitless in the next 2-1/3 innings. Hightower threw an efficient 59 pitches and didn’t walk a batter. Rylee Trlicek (1.86 ERA, 4 saves) came on to get the save, holding the Wildcats scoreless while giving up just two hits in the next 2-2/3 innings. Trlicek walked just one.
“If you ask me what are the keys for the Florida Gators, it’s pitching and defense,” Walton said. “I heard them on the set [of the SEC Network] talk about our lack of home runs and I heard them again, ‘Woa, we just broke out with a bunch of hits again,’ but we pretty much hang out hats on our defense. We have a lot of players who work really hard on defense. I think the key is just make the routine plays and then make the special plays along the way but I haven’t seen anybody make as many special plays as we’ve made. We only struck out two batters tonight. We don’t strike out a ton so there’s a lot of balls put in play. I think they enjoy playing defense. We’ve got some really good defenders making some really good plays.”
The special plays on defense were back-to-back gems by catcher Emily Wilkie in the third inning and a running grab by second baseman Hannah Adams in the bottom of the fifth. Wilkie got the second out of the third inning when she gunned down Erin Coffel at second with a laser of a throw from her knees. When the next batter hit a little tapper in front of the plate, Wilkie barehanded the ball and whipped it to Avery Goelz at first in one motion for the final out of the inning. In the fifth, with the Gators leading 6-3, Kentucky’s Lauren Johnson singled to left field. Coffel hit a soft liner up the middle that seemed destined to sneak through for a hit but Adams literally outran the ball to make the catch in center field to end the inning.
The Gators backed up Hightower and Trlicek with an 11 hit attack that was supplemented by seven walks, a hit batter and one Kentucky error. The first seven batters in the Florida lineup were a combined 11-18 with Kendra Falby and Reagan Walsh each delivering three. Falby had two infield hits and a high bouncer over third base against a drawn in infield. She scored three times and stole a base. Walsh drove in three runs, two with a first inning single and one with a liner to left field in the second. Charla Echols had a 2-run ground rule double that missed clearing the fence in dead center field by about two feet. Skylar Wallace hit a sixth inning home run to dead center, her team-leading seventh of the season.
Perhaps the play that best showed what speed at the top of the lineup will do for you was a sixth inning double into the left center field gap by Adams. Falby had reached on a two-bounce grounder to shortstop that she simply outran the ball to first. Adams followed with an opposite field gapper. On the relay back to the infield, UK tried to catch Adams getting back to second base rather than try to gun down Falby at home. The throw sailed wide and wound up in the Kentucky dugout, allowing Adams to score.
“Hannah hits a ball in the gap with two strikes,” Walton said. “The shortstop did a really good job – most shortstops throw that ball to the plate to try to get that kid [Falby] but she recognized it, tried to back pick Hannah Adams at second base. Fortunately for us, Hannah had her foot on the bag and that’s when she threw it past the second baseman into the dugout. That kind of stuff. A normal runner she throws to the plate and there’s no extra run potential. She [Falby] just changes the way you play because you have to play faster.”
The win over Kentucky moves the Gators into the tournament semifinals against top-seeded Arkansas, a 3-0 winner over Ole Miss Thursday night. Through two games the Gators are already halfway home toward a championship. The Gators are certain to host an NCAA regional next week but with a win over Arkansas, which holds down the No. 5 national ranking, it could put UF in the conversation to also host a super regional.
Thursday’s scores
3 Tennessee (39-15) 1, 11 Mississippi State (33-24) 0; 13 innings
7 Missouri (35-19) 3, 2 Alabama (41-11) 0
5 FLORIDA (43-15) 9, 4 Kentucky (35-17) 3
1 Arkansas (42-9) 3, 8 Ole Miss (39-17) 0
Friday’s semifinals
3 p.m.: 7 Missouri (35-19) vs. 3 Tennessee (39-15)
5:30 p.m.: 5 FLORIDA (43-15) vs. 1 Arkansas (42-9)
UF BASEBALL: GATORS TRAVEL TO MISSOURI
With Tennessee’s 5-2 win over Georgia Thursday night, the gap between fourth place Florida and second place Georgia in the SEC East narrowed a bit. Should Georgia (32-17, 13-12 SEC East) lose at least one more to the No. 1 ranked and SEC East champ Vols this weekend and the Gators (30-18, 11-13 East) earn a sweep at last place Missouri (25-20, 7-17 SEC East), the Gators have a chance to climb into second, something practically unheard of just three weeks ago when UF was swept by Tennessee.
Here is what has to happen for the Gators to take over sole possession of second: Tennessee (44-6, 21-4 SEC East) sweeps Georgia; Vanderbilt (32-15, 12-12 SEC East) drops two out of three to Arkansas (36-12, 16-8 SEC West). Should Georgia lose all three to Tennessee, Vanderbilt wins only one of three at Arkansas and the Gators take two of three at Missouri, there would be a three-way tie for second heading into the final weekend of SEC play.
The Gators are expected to go with a weekend rotation of Brandon Sproat (6-4, 4.26 ERA), Brandon Neely (2-0, 3.45 ERA) and Nick Pogue (2-2, 4.96 ERA this weekend).
UF LACROSSE: GATORS FACE MERCER IN NCAA FIRST ROUND
Winners of their last 13 games, Florida’s 7th-seeded Gators (15-4) face Mercer today at Donald Dizney Stadium (noon) in the first round of the NCAA Women’s Lacrosse Tournament. The Gators own a 19-5 regular season win over Mercer. In the other first round game at Dizney, Stanford and Jacksonville will square off.
SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL
Alabama: Corner Eli Ricks, who transferred to Alabama from LSU, was charged with driving 91 in a 70 zone, no auto insurance and possession of one gram of marijuana valued at $20 when he was arrested earlier in the month ... Basketball coach Nate Oates says potential transfers have shied away from considering Alabama. At a pro-am golf tournament in Birmingham, Oates told reporters, “Couple guys we’ve gone after have gotten a little scared of our current roster. We need somebody that’s willing to fight for minutes. We’ve got a pretty good roster right now.”
Arkansas: Guard Jaxon Robinson, who had four starts and averaged 3.4 points an 1.3 rebounds last year, has transferred to Texas A&M.
Auburn: Charles Barkley on the difference Bruce Pearl has made for Auburn basketball: “I never thought we would get to the point where we win an NCAA game and people would be disappointed. That’s a credit to him.”
Georgia: The contract for Trayvon Walker, the No. 1 pick in the recent NFL Draft, is for four years for $37 million, fully guaranteed.
Missouri: Wide receiver Javian Hester, who was the top ranked player in Missouri’s 2020 recruiting class, is transferring to Oklahoma. Last season he caught 12 passes for 225 yards and two touchdowns in seven games for Mizzou.
THIS NUGGET FROM ACC COMMISSIONER JIM PHILLIPS
“Just because you have the most money doesn’t mean you win all the time.” Phillips actually said that at the ACC Spring Meetings over at Amelia Island this week.
Perhaps Phillips was alluding to the fact that he helped torpedo expansion of the College Football Playoff. He would like the playoff to be eight teams even though an 8-team model won’t substantially increase revenues (12 will) and he’s the commish of a conference that desperately needs revenue.
The SEC most recently distributed $56.4 million to each of its 14-member schools. Forbes Magazine estimates that when Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC the revenues per team will exceed $80 million. The Big Ten will once again distribute more than $50 million and some economists believe the conference could wind up with the first billion a year television contract within the next couple of years.
Meanwhile, the ACC distributed something like $33 million last year, currently the worst distribution of any of the Power Five conferences. ACC television revenues won’t exceed $200 million per year until 2025, which means the ACC won’t see any dramatic increase in revenue distribution for quite awhile. And lest we forget, the ACC a television deal that ESPN refuses to renegotiate that runs through 2036.
From a purely Florida perspective, within three or so years, the Gators could be taking in more than $50 million per year than their ACC cousins in Tallahassee and Dade County.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Gary Barta, the well-intentioned athletic director at the University of Iowa believes he can slow down both NIL and transfers with one simple legislative act: Repeal the one-time transfer rule that allows players transferring the first time to move to another school without having to sit out a year.
Here is what Barta said on the “Fight Iowa” podcast:
“The transfers – again, allowing a student to transfer without having to sit a year – if it wasn’t for NIL, it’s a good move, a good idea. Now, when you combine it with NIL, it has become what many have called it: the ‘Wild, Wild West.’ One idea, and I’m pursuing this and throwing it out [there] is if we can’t totally control NIL, then let’s go back and put a one-year [sit out]. If you transfer you don’t have to lose your scholarship but you must sit out a year because we can control that. And I think would slow down the NIL deals because a booster isn’t going to offer a student-athlete a big sum of money if they know they come to their university and have to sit out a year.”
Theoretically, Barta is 100 percent correct. If athletes have to go back to sitting a year when they transfer, there will be fewer transfers. If athletes have to sit a year, boosters in these NIL collectives will be less inclined to offer inducement money to get a kid to transfer. In theory, you can’t argue those ideas and win.
Two things to keep in mind: NIL is here to stay and so is the transfer portal. There may be some ways to add rules and regulations to NIL but it won’t change the fact that the kids who play the game now have access to money. Changing the transfer portal would almost certainly result in lawsuits that would argue – probably with great success – that this would restrict an athlete’s opportunities to make money. So you can all but rule out either of these ideas being adapted.
Something needs to be done, for sure, but it will have to be something that can actually work in reality and not just in theory.
A few thoughts to jump start your Friday morning:
GATORS HALFWAY HOME TO AN SEC TOURNAMENT TITLE
Pitching and defense, Tim Walton says, are the hallmarks of this Florida softball team. In Thursday night’s 9-3 win over 4th-seeded Kentucky (35-17) in the quarterfinals of the Southeastern Conference Tournament at Katie Seashole Pressly, Tim Walton got the pitching and the defense, but for a second straight night there was exceptional offensive production, which bodes well as the Gators moved one game closer to claiming their sixth tournament title in Walton’s 17th year on the job.
The pitching came in the form of a solid start from Elizabeth Hightower (16-7, 2.39 ERA), who settled down after giving up two homers, five hits and three runs in the first two innings to hold the Wildcats hitless in the next 2-1/3 innings. Hightower threw an efficient 59 pitches and didn’t walk a batter. Rylee Trlicek (1.86 ERA, 4 saves) came on to get the save, holding the Wildcats scoreless while giving up just two hits in the next 2-2/3 innings. Trlicek walked just one.
“If you ask me what are the keys for the Florida Gators, it’s pitching and defense,” Walton said. “I heard them on the set [of the SEC Network] talk about our lack of home runs and I heard them again, ‘Woa, we just broke out with a bunch of hits again,’ but we pretty much hang out hats on our defense. We have a lot of players who work really hard on defense. I think the key is just make the routine plays and then make the special plays along the way but I haven’t seen anybody make as many special plays as we’ve made. We only struck out two batters tonight. We don’t strike out a ton so there’s a lot of balls put in play. I think they enjoy playing defense. We’ve got some really good defenders making some really good plays.”
The special plays on defense were back-to-back gems by catcher Emily Wilkie in the third inning and a running grab by second baseman Hannah Adams in the bottom of the fifth. Wilkie got the second out of the third inning when she gunned down Erin Coffel at second with a laser of a throw from her knees. When the next batter hit a little tapper in front of the plate, Wilkie barehanded the ball and whipped it to Avery Goelz at first in one motion for the final out of the inning. In the fifth, with the Gators leading 6-3, Kentucky’s Lauren Johnson singled to left field. Coffel hit a soft liner up the middle that seemed destined to sneak through for a hit but Adams literally outran the ball to make the catch in center field to end the inning.
The Gators backed up Hightower and Trlicek with an 11 hit attack that was supplemented by seven walks, a hit batter and one Kentucky error. The first seven batters in the Florida lineup were a combined 11-18 with Kendra Falby and Reagan Walsh each delivering three. Falby had two infield hits and a high bouncer over third base against a drawn in infield. She scored three times and stole a base. Walsh drove in three runs, two with a first inning single and one with a liner to left field in the second. Charla Echols had a 2-run ground rule double that missed clearing the fence in dead center field by about two feet. Skylar Wallace hit a sixth inning home run to dead center, her team-leading seventh of the season.
Perhaps the play that best showed what speed at the top of the lineup will do for you was a sixth inning double into the left center field gap by Adams. Falby had reached on a two-bounce grounder to shortstop that she simply outran the ball to first. Adams followed with an opposite field gapper. On the relay back to the infield, UK tried to catch Adams getting back to second base rather than try to gun down Falby at home. The throw sailed wide and wound up in the Kentucky dugout, allowing Adams to score.
“Hannah hits a ball in the gap with two strikes,” Walton said. “The shortstop did a really good job – most shortstops throw that ball to the plate to try to get that kid [Falby] but she recognized it, tried to back pick Hannah Adams at second base. Fortunately for us, Hannah had her foot on the bag and that’s when she threw it past the second baseman into the dugout. That kind of stuff. A normal runner she throws to the plate and there’s no extra run potential. She [Falby] just changes the way you play because you have to play faster.”
The win over Kentucky moves the Gators into the tournament semifinals against top-seeded Arkansas, a 3-0 winner over Ole Miss Thursday night. Through two games the Gators are already halfway home toward a championship. The Gators are certain to host an NCAA regional next week but with a win over Arkansas, which holds down the No. 5 national ranking, it could put UF in the conversation to also host a super regional.
Thursday’s scores
3 Tennessee (39-15) 1, 11 Mississippi State (33-24) 0; 13 innings
7 Missouri (35-19) 3, 2 Alabama (41-11) 0
5 FLORIDA (43-15) 9, 4 Kentucky (35-17) 3
1 Arkansas (42-9) 3, 8 Ole Miss (39-17) 0
Friday’s semifinals
3 p.m.: 7 Missouri (35-19) vs. 3 Tennessee (39-15)
5:30 p.m.: 5 FLORIDA (43-15) vs. 1 Arkansas (42-9)
UF BASEBALL: GATORS TRAVEL TO MISSOURI
With Tennessee’s 5-2 win over Georgia Thursday night, the gap between fourth place Florida and second place Georgia in the SEC East narrowed a bit. Should Georgia (32-17, 13-12 SEC East) lose at least one more to the No. 1 ranked and SEC East champ Vols this weekend and the Gators (30-18, 11-13 East) earn a sweep at last place Missouri (25-20, 7-17 SEC East), the Gators have a chance to climb into second, something practically unheard of just three weeks ago when UF was swept by Tennessee.
Here is what has to happen for the Gators to take over sole possession of second: Tennessee (44-6, 21-4 SEC East) sweeps Georgia; Vanderbilt (32-15, 12-12 SEC East) drops two out of three to Arkansas (36-12, 16-8 SEC West). Should Georgia lose all three to Tennessee, Vanderbilt wins only one of three at Arkansas and the Gators take two of three at Missouri, there would be a three-way tie for second heading into the final weekend of SEC play.
The Gators are expected to go with a weekend rotation of Brandon Sproat (6-4, 4.26 ERA), Brandon Neely (2-0, 3.45 ERA) and Nick Pogue (2-2, 4.96 ERA this weekend).
UF LACROSSE: GATORS FACE MERCER IN NCAA FIRST ROUND
Winners of their last 13 games, Florida’s 7th-seeded Gators (15-4) face Mercer today at Donald Dizney Stadium (noon) in the first round of the NCAA Women’s Lacrosse Tournament. The Gators own a 19-5 regular season win over Mercer. In the other first round game at Dizney, Stanford and Jacksonville will square off.
SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL
Alabama: Corner Eli Ricks, who transferred to Alabama from LSU, was charged with driving 91 in a 70 zone, no auto insurance and possession of one gram of marijuana valued at $20 when he was arrested earlier in the month ... Basketball coach Nate Oates says potential transfers have shied away from considering Alabama. At a pro-am golf tournament in Birmingham, Oates told reporters, “Couple guys we’ve gone after have gotten a little scared of our current roster. We need somebody that’s willing to fight for minutes. We’ve got a pretty good roster right now.”
Arkansas: Guard Jaxon Robinson, who had four starts and averaged 3.4 points an 1.3 rebounds last year, has transferred to Texas A&M.
Auburn: Charles Barkley on the difference Bruce Pearl has made for Auburn basketball: “I never thought we would get to the point where we win an NCAA game and people would be disappointed. That’s a credit to him.”
Georgia: The contract for Trayvon Walker, the No. 1 pick in the recent NFL Draft, is for four years for $37 million, fully guaranteed.
Missouri: Wide receiver Javian Hester, who was the top ranked player in Missouri’s 2020 recruiting class, is transferring to Oklahoma. Last season he caught 12 passes for 225 yards and two touchdowns in seven games for Mizzou.
THIS NUGGET FROM ACC COMMISSIONER JIM PHILLIPS
“Just because you have the most money doesn’t mean you win all the time.” Phillips actually said that at the ACC Spring Meetings over at Amelia Island this week.
Perhaps Phillips was alluding to the fact that he helped torpedo expansion of the College Football Playoff. He would like the playoff to be eight teams even though an 8-team model won’t substantially increase revenues (12 will) and he’s the commish of a conference that desperately needs revenue.
The SEC most recently distributed $56.4 million to each of its 14-member schools. Forbes Magazine estimates that when Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC the revenues per team will exceed $80 million. The Big Ten will once again distribute more than $50 million and some economists believe the conference could wind up with the first billion a year television contract within the next couple of years.
Meanwhile, the ACC distributed something like $33 million last year, currently the worst distribution of any of the Power Five conferences. ACC television revenues won’t exceed $200 million per year until 2025, which means the ACC won’t see any dramatic increase in revenue distribution for quite awhile. And lest we forget, the ACC a television deal that ESPN refuses to renegotiate that runs through 2036.
From a purely Florida perspective, within three or so years, the Gators could be taking in more than $50 million per year than their ACC cousins in Tallahassee and Dade County.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Gary Barta, the well-intentioned athletic director at the University of Iowa believes he can slow down both NIL and transfers with one simple legislative act: Repeal the one-time transfer rule that allows players transferring the first time to move to another school without having to sit out a year.
Here is what Barta said on the “Fight Iowa” podcast:
“The transfers – again, allowing a student to transfer without having to sit a year – if it wasn’t for NIL, it’s a good move, a good idea. Now, when you combine it with NIL, it has become what many have called it: the ‘Wild, Wild West.’ One idea, and I’m pursuing this and throwing it out [there] is if we can’t totally control NIL, then let’s go back and put a one-year [sit out]. If you transfer you don’t have to lose your scholarship but you must sit out a year because we can control that. And I think would slow down the NIL deals because a booster isn’t going to offer a student-athlete a big sum of money if they know they come to their university and have to sit out a year.”
Theoretically, Barta is 100 percent correct. If athletes have to go back to sitting a year when they transfer, there will be fewer transfers. If athletes have to sit a year, boosters in these NIL collectives will be less inclined to offer inducement money to get a kid to transfer. In theory, you can’t argue those ideas and win.
Two things to keep in mind: NIL is here to stay and so is the transfer portal. There may be some ways to add rules and regulations to NIL but it won’t change the fact that the kids who play the game now have access to money. Changing the transfer portal would almost certainly result in lawsuits that would argue – probably with great success – that this would restrict an athlete’s opportunities to make money. So you can all but rule out either of these ideas being adapted.
Something needs to be done, for sure, but it will have to be something that can actually work in reality and not just in theory.
