By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:
THE SEASON ENDS MERCIFULLY; LET THE TODD GOLDEN ERA BEGIN
Painful. That’s the only way to describe Florida’s 72-56 loss to Xavier in the second round of the NIT Sunday afternoon. All the injuries and the lack of consistent outside shooting caught up with the Gators (20-14) whose season came to a merciful ending in Cincinnati, officially bringing the curtain down on the Mike White Era. The moment the clock flatlined at 0:00 the Todd Golden Era officially began.
Once again, the Gators played without Anthony Duruji (ankle) and CJ Felder (hip) so there was no help for Colin Castleton on the inside. Take Kowacie Reeves, who hit 3-8 on his 3-pointers, and the rest of the Gators were a combined 3-22 from beyond the arc.
Too many injuries. Too many bad shooting nights. That is the story of Mike White’s final season as the Florida coach. Although he wasn’t on the sideline for either of the two NIT games, it was still White’s team and it ended with a loss, the same as the previous six seasons.
The inconsistency of White’s seven years give way to the hope that new coach Todd Golden can reverse seven years of a program stuck in a rut.
EMORY JONES TO THE TRANSFER PORTAL
Nobody is certain what happened between Tuesday and Saturday, but at some point Emory Jones decided to put his name in the transfer portal. Tuesday he was talking about competing for a job. Saturday he was transferring. Did he decide after a few days of competing with Anthony Richardson, Jack Miller III, Carlos Del Rio-Wilson and Jalen Kitna that he wasn’t going to win the job so it’s best to cut the losses now? Or did he simply figure that there is no time like the present to pull the plug so he can get a head start on his next landing spot?
My guess is it is a combination of the two. Emory Jones is a good football player, but I don’t think he throws the ball nearly as well as the other four guys. By choosing to enter the portal now, Jones can spend the next month and a half visiting potential transfer destinations. He graduates from the University of Florida in May, so it will be extremely helpful if he has a new place to play already lined up rather than spending a month visiting.
There is a bit of method to this madness. The reason Jones didn’t transfer somewhere new in January is because he actually has two years of eligibility remaining since 2020 was a COVID year. He can take his one-time transfer and will be eligible to play next season at his new destination. If he then chooses a super senior year and has another destination in mind, he can transfer as a graduate.
UF GYMNASTICS: TWICE THE CHAMPIONSHIPS, TWICE THE FUN
This Florida gymnastics team has serious momentum heading into the NCAA regionals after the SEC Gymnastics Championships in Birmingham. Already with their fourth straight regular season championship, the Gators blew away the field in Birmingham with the second highest team score – 198.200 – in the 41-year history of the event. Second place Alabama (197.825) was .375 points behind UF and third place Auburn was even farther back at 197.225.
This was a blowout. Using a football analogy, this was the equivalent of the Gators beating Auburn by 14 points and Auburn by 21.
The Gators had the highest team totals for vault, balance beam and floor. Trinity Thomas won the all-around (39.825), vault (9.975) and floor (9.975). Leanne Wong won the balance beam (9.975), a rotation that the Gators scored a 49.700 with all six gymnasts scoring 9.90 or higher.
Next up for the Gators will be the NCAA Regionals, which will be announced on Tuesday. Florida is likely to be sent to the Raleigh regional hosted by North Carolina State.
MINUS KIKI SMITH, THE GATORS WERE IN TROUBLE AGAINST UCF
Kelly Rae Finley isn’t about to use the absence of Kiki Smith as an excuse for the Gators losing their NCAA Tournament first round game to UCF. She doesn’t have to make excuses. We saw it for ourselves just how badly the Gators (21-11) missed their leader. They played hard and did their best against a very good UCF team, but without Kiki the Gators just aren’t the same team.
So a storybook season ends for Florida, which was everyone’s pick to finish dead last in the SEC only to rally behind Finley, who along the way shed the interim tag. The Gators aren’t the only SEC team that didn’t survive the weekend: Ole Miss, Kentucky, Georgia and Arkansas also flamed out, leaving only South Carolina, Tennessee and LSU standing.
UF BASEBALL: GATORS WIN OPENING SEC SERIES
There was no shortage of power on display in Tuscaloosa over the weekend as the 9th-ranked Gators (15-5, 2-1 SEC) hit 10 home runs and won two out of three from Alabama (13-8, 1-2 SEC) in the opening SEC series for both teams. The problem for the Gators was the bullpen, which nearly blew the opener (Gators won 6-4) and allowed the Tide to come from behind in the last two innings Sunday to salvage one game in the series with an 8-7 win on Sunday.
Wyatt Langford went 7-14 with three homers and six RBI for the weekend while Jud Fabian hit a 2-run homer in both the first and final games. Also homering for the Gators were BT Riopelle (2), Sterlin Thompson, Kendrick Calilao and Kris Armstrong. The Gators scored 26 runs and hammered out 41 hits in the three games.
Hunter Barco had an outstanding (4-1, 1.72 ERA) had an outstanding outing in the series opener when he gave up four hits and struck out 10 over eight innings, but the rest of the staff had their struggles as the team ERA rose to 3.18.
The Gators host Bethune-Cookman Tuesday and LSU next weekend.
UF SOFTBALL: RUN-RULE WIN OVER AGGIES GIVES UF SERIES WIN
Bouncing back from a 5-0 shutout loss on Saturday, Cheyenne Lindsey and Reagan Walsh each homered and drove in three runs Sunday to lead the 5th-ranked Gators to an 11-3 run-rule win over Texas A&M in College Station. Lindsey hit a 3-run homer as part of a 5-run outburst in the fourth while Walsh delivered a 3-run homer in the sixth that gave the Gators two out of three for the weekend.
Elizabeth Hightower (8-0, 1.68) got the win for the Gators (25-3, 4-2 SEC), allowing eight hits, walking three and striking out four. She gave up single runs in each of the first, third and fifth innings.
Next up for the Gators are midweek games with Stetson, in DeLand on Tuesday and Gainesville on Wednesday.
UF MEN’S TENNIS: DOMINANT WEEKEND FOR UF MEN
The No. 1-ranked Gators (14-2, 6-0 SEC) scored a pair of cruise control wins over the weekend, taking down Ole Miss (11-6, 1-3 SEC), 6-1, on Friday and then finishing off the weekend with a 7-0 Sunday shutout of Mississippi State (11-8. 1-5 SEC). The Gators have won nine consecutive matches.
Next up for the Gators is a Friday road trip to face Arkansas (10-8, 1-4 SEC).
OTHER UF SPORTS: With their 6-1 win over Missouri (6-12, 1-4 SEC) Friday and their 4-3 win over Arkansas (11-4, 4-1 SEC) Sunday, the 16th-ranked UF women’s tennis team (12-4, 4-2 SEC) have won four consecutive matches. The Gators will play host to Ole Miss (8-6, 2-4 SEC) and Mississippi State (9-8, 1-5 SEC) next weekend … Anabelle Fuller (8-under par) had a top three finish at the MountainView Collegiate Tournament in Tucson, Arizona but the Florida women’s team managed only a 6th-place finish, 15 shots off the winning pace of Texas Tech ... Fred Biondi shot 4-under Sunday as the Florida men’s golf team stood third, five shots behind Vanderbilt in the Linger Longer Tournament in Eatonville, Georgia … The 12th-ranked Gators evened their lacrosse record at 4-4 Sunday with a 10-9 win over Drexel in Philadelphia. The Gators will travel to Arizona State next Sunday.
SEC COACHING CHANGES
LSU: Jeff Goodman is reporting that Murray State coach Matt McMahon has emerged as the favorite to replace the fired Will Wade.
Mississippi State: The Bulldogs have hired Chris Jans from New Mexico State, where he was 143-44 in five years. The Aggies were 27-7 this year, losing to Arkansas in the NCAA second round. Jans also coached one year at Bowling Green where he was 21-12. Jans spent six years as a juco head coach including a 32-5 season at Chipola.
Missouri: Mizzou awaits approval from its board of trustees to hire Dennis Gates away from Cleveland State. The former Florida State assistant was 50-40 at Cleveland State.
South Carolina: Now that Sean Miller elected to take the Xavier job over an offer from South Carolina, all eyes have turned to Furman coach Bob Richey and Chattanooga coach Lamont Paris.
BAD DAY (WEEKEND, ACTUALLY) AT BLACK ROCK FOR SEC HOOPS
And then there was Arkansas. That’s all that is left of the Southeastern Conference in the NCAA Tournament and the Razorbacks did their dead level best to give the league an oh-fer by going white knuckles with New Mexico State. The Razorbacks’ stay in the tournament shouldn’t last much longer. They play No. 1 seed Gonzaga Thursday night in the Sweet 16. If the game were played in Bud Walton Arena, you’d like the Hogs’ chances. Away from Fayette Nam? If I were a gambler I wouldn’t bet against the Zags.
When the tournament began, there was a lot of talk that both Kentucky and Tennessee could duplicate what SEC football brethren from Alabama and Georgia did by making half of the Final Four. Kentucky couldn’t get past 15-seed Saint Peter’s and the Vols couldn’t find the ocean from the end of the pier when it came to shooting 3-pointers. LSU and Alabama died first round deaths.
Auburn? Oh please. How could a team with that much size miss that many 2-footers?
About the only thing we can conclude from the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament is that the SEC was vastly overrated. Rather than howl that Texas A&M was jobbed by the Selection Committee, in hindsight we should have been complaining that the league got at least two too many teams in to begin with.
Of course, we can pretty much say the same thing about the Big Ten. Nine teams started the tournament and only two remain, one of which is Michigan. Sunday, the Big Ten was 1-4 with Purdue the only team advancing to the Sweet 16.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Thursday at the NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships, a biological male from the University of Pennsylvania who was ranked 452nd among male swimmers last year, won the 500 freestyle, beating three biological females, all of whom have won silver medals at the Olympics.
Lia Thomas, whom many in the broadcast media are gushing over, is taking hormones to suppress testosterone as part of a transition from male to female. The hormones do make Thomas more feminine but cannot change biology and the physical advantages a male athlete has over a female.
Reka Gyorgy, a biological female from Hungary who has represented her country in the Olympics and who has won All-America honors swimming for Virginia Tech, penned an open letter to the NCAA to protest that Thomas was allowed to compete as a female in the championships.
Gyorgy wrote, “It doesn’t promote our sport in a good way and I think it is disrespectful against the biologically female swimmers who are competing in the NCAA … One spot was taken away from the girl who got 9th in the 500 free and didn’t make it back to the A final, preventing her from being an All-American. Every event that transgender athletes competed in was one spot taken away from biological females throughout the meet.”
That Thomas and other biological males can compete as women and take away scholarships from biological women bothers me enormously. I’ve been writing about women’s sports for years and it makes me happy that talented, athletic women are afforded more and more opportunities to compete at the collegiate level. I’m bothered when I think that some 6-10, 250-pound biological male may decide to identify as a female and switch from men’s basketball to women’s basketball. Or that a bigger, stronger, faster male may elect to change genders and take away a scholarship for a softball or volleyball player or dominate in lacrosse.
Don’t think it can happen? Well, did you think you’d ever see the day when the 452nd ranked male swimmer would decide to be a female, start taking hormones and then win an NCAA championship?
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