By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning:
BILLY NAPIER: TAKE THAT PAUL FINEBAUM!
In the humble (maybe) opinion of Paul Finebaum, Florida fans need to brace themselves for a long, difficult 2022.
On the Birmingham radio show “McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning” Finebaum said Monday, “I think fans better beware that this is not going to be a great team. I never in my life thought saying that getting to a decent bowl game would be considered a success at Florida. That’s blasphemous. But I think that’s about it because they’ve got a difficult schedule. You really can’t find a more treacherous beginning than they have. And I think they’ll be struggling.”
In so many words Tuesday night in Tampa, Florida coach Billy Napier told a Gator Club meeting that Paul Finebaum can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.
“I could [not] care less what Paul Finebaum says,” Napier told the crowd. “We’ve got a group of great individuals here. We have some positions where we gotta hope they stay healthy. We need to be aggressive in the transfer portal. We got a group of good ones.”
Finebaum might turn out to be prophetic. Might. It’s also possible that in the next few weeks Billy Napier is going to reshape Florida’s roster through the portal much the same way his buddy Mel Tucker did at Michigan State last year. Tucker and the Spartans were picked to be among the bottom feeders of the Big Ten, but 21 transfers later they challenged for the Big Ten title and made a New Year’s Six bowl game.
What Napier does in the portal is going to go a long, long way toward determining how well the Gators play in the fall. Right now, too soon to tell.
WITH THE NO. 1 VOLS COMING TO TOWN, BAD NEWS FOR THE GATORS
The very last thing the Gators (23-14, 6-9 SEC) need with the No. 1 Tennessee Vols (34-3, 14-1 SEC) coming to town is for Hunter Barco to be sidelined with an elbow issue that will keep him out indefinitely. Barco (5-2, 2.50 ERA) is a surefire first round choice when Major League Baseball drafts this summer. He’s also the only consistent starting pitcher the Gators have had all season. With him on the mound, you figure the Gators have a very good chance to win at least the first game of every SEC series. Without him? Matters look bleak for Kevin O’Sullivan. Where will he find the starting pitcher to compensate for the loss of Barco?
The Gators are one of the youngest teams in all of collegiate baseball and Barco is the only starting pitcher with experience, which shows in a team ERA of 4.54. Only once in O’Sullivan’s tenure as the Florida baseball coach have the Gators posted a higher team ERA.
Sophomore Brandon Sproat (4-3, 4.91 ERA; 6-4 career, 5.15 ERA) likely takes over as the Friday night starter. His best outing this season was a 5-2/3-inning stint against then No. 2 Arkansas in which he gave up seven hits and just one run while striking out eight. The likely No. 2 will be freshman Brandon Neely (1-0, 4.30 ERA), who threw an impressive six innings in Florida’s only win of the Vanderbilt series, when he gave up three hits, one run and struck out seven in 6-1/3 innings.
The third starter could turn out to be Ryan Slater (2-1, 3.52 ERA), who has had a couple of strong relief appearances lately. He has gone five innings twice this year, giving up one hit and no runs against Jacksonville and five hits and two runs against Alabama. Both those appearances were in relief. The problem with moving Slater into the weekend rotation is that he’s Florida’s best middle reliever.
In Tennessee, the Gators are facing a team that not only ranks No. 1 in the polls, but also dominates the SEC in most statistical categories. The Vols lead the SEC in batting average (.317), runs scored (359, 59 more than any other team), home runs (88, 17 more than second place Florida), pitching (2.09 ERA, nearly 1 run lower than second place Arkansas) and strikeouts (427 in 331 innings).
The Vols would have been highly favored to win this series even if Barco were healthy. Without him, some pitchers are going to have to grow up in a hurry for the Gators to have a punchers’ chance.
SEC SOFTBALL: GATORS BLANK SOUTH FLORIDA, 1-0
Speed kills. Just ask the South Florida Bulls who saw their hopes of springing an upset of the 8th-ranked Gators about Skylar Wallace and Kendra Falby. All Wallace did in the bottom of the sixth inning Wednesday night at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium was prove you don’t need a base hit to score a run, and in this case, the game winner. Falby used her speed in left field to make a sliding catch of a foul ball for the game’s final out with two USF runners in scoring position.
With two out in the sixth, Wallace stole second, breaking the school single season record along the way. When Josie Foreman’s late throw dribbled into center field, Wallace was on her feet racing to third where Tim Walton waved her home. Wallace slid in just ahead of the throw for the game’s only run as the Gators scored a 1-0 win over the Bulls of the American Athletic Conference.
It took speed to win this one because South Florida’s Georgina Corrick (27-5) was brilliant. She gave up a second inning single to Cheyenne Lindsey, but otherwise was untouchable, finishing the game with seven strikeouts and three walks.
Elizabeth Hightower (12-3, 2.41 ERA) was every bit as impressive as Corrick. Hightower gave up three hits, walked two and struck out six. In the seventh, she wiggled her way out of a second and third, two-out jam by inducing Dezarae Maldonado to hit that seventh inning liner to left that Falby ran down to save the game.
The Gators (35-9, 11-7 SEC) will be home this weekend when sixth-ranked and league-leading Arkansas (32-8, 11-4) pays a visit to KSP for the biggest weekend series in the SEC.
SEC GOLF CHAMPIONSHIPS: UF FIFTH AFTER FIRST ROUND
After one day at the SEC Golf Championships at the Sea Island Golf Club in Georgia, the 16th-ranked Gators find themselves tied for fifth with Missouri, nine shots behind 3rd-ranked Vanderbilt, which came in at 7-under par Wednesday. In second is 12th-ranked Georgia (-4), followed by LSU (-3) and 19th-ranked Texas A&M (-1).
Yuxin Lin shot an opening round 68 (-2), which is good for a tie for 8th. Ricky Castillo and Fred Biondi both shot 1-over 71s. They’re in a 14-player logjam for 20th place.
SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL
Alabama: Wide receiver Argiye Hall, only two weeks removed from the Alabama program, has committed to Texas … Fifth-year defensive lineman Stephon Wynn, who played in seven games and had five tackles last season, is in the transfer portal.
Arkansas: The Hogs are making a run at Memphis transfer Emoni Bates, who just a year ago before he skilled his senior season in high school, was considered a generational talent.
Georgia: Walk-on defensive back Jehlen Cannady, who was with the second unit defense during Georgia’s G-Day, is in the transfer portal.
Kentucky: National Player of the Year Oscar Tshiebwe is returning to Kentucky for one more season. Tshiebwe averaged 17.4 points and led the nation with 15.2 rebounds per game. Projected as a late first/early second NBA Draft choice, Tshiebwe would take a pay cut to go pro when compared to what he will make NIL from Kentucky.
LSU: Coach O, discussing on 1010XL what the expectations should be for Brian Kelly as the LSU HBC: “I don’t know that it’s fair, but [national title] is eh expectation. Great players, great support. You should be able to win a national championship in three years.”
Ole Miss: Last year’s leading scorer Jarkel Joyner (6-1, 180) is transferring to North Carolina State while guard Luis Rodriguez (6-6, 210) is transferring to UNLV and guard Grant Slatten (6-5, 195) is transferring to Tennessee Tech. Joyner averaged 13.2 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game while Rodriguez averaged 6.6 points and 5.5 rebounds. Slatten played in six games and averaged 2.5 points.
South Carolina: Former 4-star wide receiver Rico Powers, a 2020 recruit, is in the transfer portal. He caught two passes for 12 yards in 2021.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Villanova basketball coach Jay Wright is going to retire and that troubles me. Enormously. He is one of the classiest coaches ever to grace a college sideline and he’s proven you can win big without cheating and without loading up your roster every year with one-and-done types. More important, he proved that you can win and win big with guys who actually go to class and graduate. His graduation rate: 100 percent. Let me repeat that. 100 percent. I’ve long felt that Jay Wright embodies everything that college sports should be about.
Although he hasn’t said why he’s getting out at age 60 with a 520-197 career record at Villanova (642-282 if you add in his record at Hofstra), two national championships, four Final Fours, eight Big East regular season championship and five Big East Tournament titles, I suspect it has something to do with all this NIL money that is about to make it so that the only teams that will win national championships in the future are the ones that can buy the most talent and a transfer portal that is totally out of control.
I think Jay Wright knows all too well that it is actually way too late to reel things in. As they say, you can’t put toothpaste back in the tube and when it comes to college sports – particularly football and basketball – the toothpaste is out of the tube to stay. We’re only fooling ourselves if we think there are practical solutions. There were some to be had, but that was BEFORE the NCAA decided to do its best Pontius Pilate routine by giving the mob what it wanted and then washing its hands. We are certifiably nuts if we think the United States Congress is going to get involved and do anything close to reasonably intelligent. Half those people can’t remember to unzip before they pee, so why should we think they can fix college sports?
Now, please understand that I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for players to get some sort of compensation from universities that make millions off their particular skills, just as I don’t blame the kids who play the games for wanting the freedom to go someplace else when they discover a particular coach or school isn’t all that it was cracked up to be when they were recruited. I also don’t blame them for believing that if a school can pay its head coach 10 or 20 times more than we pay the president of the United States then the school can afford to give them a small slice of the pie. The problem isn’t the kids, it’s the people who run the NCAA, the college presidents and administrators who swept all this stuff under the rug for more than 20 years rather than deal with the issues in an intelligent, responsible way. Now we have kids who are getting millions even before they’ve ever played a college game and they’re telling the coaches that recruit them what they’re asking price is. The portal? It’s estimated that more than 2,000 scholarship football and basketball players will not have a scholarship next year because they weren’t recruited or offered when they were in the portal.
College sports will survive NIL and the transfer portal, although we won’t recognize them four or five years into the future. I suspect that’s exactly what Jay Wright was thinking today when he said sayonara to college basketball.
A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning:
BILLY NAPIER: TAKE THAT PAUL FINEBAUM!
In the humble (maybe) opinion of Paul Finebaum, Florida fans need to brace themselves for a long, difficult 2022.
On the Birmingham radio show “McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning” Finebaum said Monday, “I think fans better beware that this is not going to be a great team. I never in my life thought saying that getting to a decent bowl game would be considered a success at Florida. That’s blasphemous. But I think that’s about it because they’ve got a difficult schedule. You really can’t find a more treacherous beginning than they have. And I think they’ll be struggling.”
In so many words Tuesday night in Tampa, Florida coach Billy Napier told a Gator Club meeting that Paul Finebaum can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.
“I could [not] care less what Paul Finebaum says,” Napier told the crowd. “We’ve got a group of great individuals here. We have some positions where we gotta hope they stay healthy. We need to be aggressive in the transfer portal. We got a group of good ones.”
Finebaum might turn out to be prophetic. Might. It’s also possible that in the next few weeks Billy Napier is going to reshape Florida’s roster through the portal much the same way his buddy Mel Tucker did at Michigan State last year. Tucker and the Spartans were picked to be among the bottom feeders of the Big Ten, but 21 transfers later they challenged for the Big Ten title and made a New Year’s Six bowl game.
What Napier does in the portal is going to go a long, long way toward determining how well the Gators play in the fall. Right now, too soon to tell.
WITH THE NO. 1 VOLS COMING TO TOWN, BAD NEWS FOR THE GATORS
The very last thing the Gators (23-14, 6-9 SEC) need with the No. 1 Tennessee Vols (34-3, 14-1 SEC) coming to town is for Hunter Barco to be sidelined with an elbow issue that will keep him out indefinitely. Barco (5-2, 2.50 ERA) is a surefire first round choice when Major League Baseball drafts this summer. He’s also the only consistent starting pitcher the Gators have had all season. With him on the mound, you figure the Gators have a very good chance to win at least the first game of every SEC series. Without him? Matters look bleak for Kevin O’Sullivan. Where will he find the starting pitcher to compensate for the loss of Barco?
The Gators are one of the youngest teams in all of collegiate baseball and Barco is the only starting pitcher with experience, which shows in a team ERA of 4.54. Only once in O’Sullivan’s tenure as the Florida baseball coach have the Gators posted a higher team ERA.
Sophomore Brandon Sproat (4-3, 4.91 ERA; 6-4 career, 5.15 ERA) likely takes over as the Friday night starter. His best outing this season was a 5-2/3-inning stint against then No. 2 Arkansas in which he gave up seven hits and just one run while striking out eight. The likely No. 2 will be freshman Brandon Neely (1-0, 4.30 ERA), who threw an impressive six innings in Florida’s only win of the Vanderbilt series, when he gave up three hits, one run and struck out seven in 6-1/3 innings.
The third starter could turn out to be Ryan Slater (2-1, 3.52 ERA), who has had a couple of strong relief appearances lately. He has gone five innings twice this year, giving up one hit and no runs against Jacksonville and five hits and two runs against Alabama. Both those appearances were in relief. The problem with moving Slater into the weekend rotation is that he’s Florida’s best middle reliever.
In Tennessee, the Gators are facing a team that not only ranks No. 1 in the polls, but also dominates the SEC in most statistical categories. The Vols lead the SEC in batting average (.317), runs scored (359, 59 more than any other team), home runs (88, 17 more than second place Florida), pitching (2.09 ERA, nearly 1 run lower than second place Arkansas) and strikeouts (427 in 331 innings).
The Vols would have been highly favored to win this series even if Barco were healthy. Without him, some pitchers are going to have to grow up in a hurry for the Gators to have a punchers’ chance.
SEC SOFTBALL: GATORS BLANK SOUTH FLORIDA, 1-0
Speed kills. Just ask the South Florida Bulls who saw their hopes of springing an upset of the 8th-ranked Gators about Skylar Wallace and Kendra Falby. All Wallace did in the bottom of the sixth inning Wednesday night at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium was prove you don’t need a base hit to score a run, and in this case, the game winner. Falby used her speed in left field to make a sliding catch of a foul ball for the game’s final out with two USF runners in scoring position.
With two out in the sixth, Wallace stole second, breaking the school single season record along the way. When Josie Foreman’s late throw dribbled into center field, Wallace was on her feet racing to third where Tim Walton waved her home. Wallace slid in just ahead of the throw for the game’s only run as the Gators scored a 1-0 win over the Bulls of the American Athletic Conference.
It took speed to win this one because South Florida’s Georgina Corrick (27-5) was brilliant. She gave up a second inning single to Cheyenne Lindsey, but otherwise was untouchable, finishing the game with seven strikeouts and three walks.
Elizabeth Hightower (12-3, 2.41 ERA) was every bit as impressive as Corrick. Hightower gave up three hits, walked two and struck out six. In the seventh, she wiggled her way out of a second and third, two-out jam by inducing Dezarae Maldonado to hit that seventh inning liner to left that Falby ran down to save the game.
The Gators (35-9, 11-7 SEC) will be home this weekend when sixth-ranked and league-leading Arkansas (32-8, 11-4) pays a visit to KSP for the biggest weekend series in the SEC.
SEC GOLF CHAMPIONSHIPS: UF FIFTH AFTER FIRST ROUND
After one day at the SEC Golf Championships at the Sea Island Golf Club in Georgia, the 16th-ranked Gators find themselves tied for fifth with Missouri, nine shots behind 3rd-ranked Vanderbilt, which came in at 7-under par Wednesday. In second is 12th-ranked Georgia (-4), followed by LSU (-3) and 19th-ranked Texas A&M (-1).
Yuxin Lin shot an opening round 68 (-2), which is good for a tie for 8th. Ricky Castillo and Fred Biondi both shot 1-over 71s. They’re in a 14-player logjam for 20th place.
SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL
Alabama: Wide receiver Argiye Hall, only two weeks removed from the Alabama program, has committed to Texas … Fifth-year defensive lineman Stephon Wynn, who played in seven games and had five tackles last season, is in the transfer portal.
Arkansas: The Hogs are making a run at Memphis transfer Emoni Bates, who just a year ago before he skilled his senior season in high school, was considered a generational talent.
Georgia: Walk-on defensive back Jehlen Cannady, who was with the second unit defense during Georgia’s G-Day, is in the transfer portal.
Kentucky: National Player of the Year Oscar Tshiebwe is returning to Kentucky for one more season. Tshiebwe averaged 17.4 points and led the nation with 15.2 rebounds per game. Projected as a late first/early second NBA Draft choice, Tshiebwe would take a pay cut to go pro when compared to what he will make NIL from Kentucky.
LSU: Coach O, discussing on 1010XL what the expectations should be for Brian Kelly as the LSU HBC: “I don’t know that it’s fair, but [national title] is eh expectation. Great players, great support. You should be able to win a national championship in three years.”
Ole Miss: Last year’s leading scorer Jarkel Joyner (6-1, 180) is transferring to North Carolina State while guard Luis Rodriguez (6-6, 210) is transferring to UNLV and guard Grant Slatten (6-5, 195) is transferring to Tennessee Tech. Joyner averaged 13.2 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game while Rodriguez averaged 6.6 points and 5.5 rebounds. Slatten played in six games and averaged 2.5 points.
South Carolina: Former 4-star wide receiver Rico Powers, a 2020 recruit, is in the transfer portal. He caught two passes for 12 yards in 2021.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Villanova basketball coach Jay Wright is going to retire and that troubles me. Enormously. He is one of the classiest coaches ever to grace a college sideline and he’s proven you can win big without cheating and without loading up your roster every year with one-and-done types. More important, he proved that you can win and win big with guys who actually go to class and graduate. His graduation rate: 100 percent. Let me repeat that. 100 percent. I’ve long felt that Jay Wright embodies everything that college sports should be about.
Although he hasn’t said why he’s getting out at age 60 with a 520-197 career record at Villanova (642-282 if you add in his record at Hofstra), two national championships, four Final Fours, eight Big East regular season championship and five Big East Tournament titles, I suspect it has something to do with all this NIL money that is about to make it so that the only teams that will win national championships in the future are the ones that can buy the most talent and a transfer portal that is totally out of control.
I think Jay Wright knows all too well that it is actually way too late to reel things in. As they say, you can’t put toothpaste back in the tube and when it comes to college sports – particularly football and basketball – the toothpaste is out of the tube to stay. We’re only fooling ourselves if we think there are practical solutions. There were some to be had, but that was BEFORE the NCAA decided to do its best Pontius Pilate routine by giving the mob what it wanted and then washing its hands. We are certifiably nuts if we think the United States Congress is going to get involved and do anything close to reasonably intelligent. Half those people can’t remember to unzip before they pee, so why should we think they can fix college sports?
Now, please understand that I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for players to get some sort of compensation from universities that make millions off their particular skills, just as I don’t blame the kids who play the games for wanting the freedom to go someplace else when they discover a particular coach or school isn’t all that it was cracked up to be when they were recruited. I also don’t blame them for believing that if a school can pay its head coach 10 or 20 times more than we pay the president of the United States then the school can afford to give them a small slice of the pie. The problem isn’t the kids, it’s the people who run the NCAA, the college presidents and administrators who swept all this stuff under the rug for more than 20 years rather than deal with the issues in an intelligent, responsible way. Now we have kids who are getting millions even before they’ve ever played a college game and they’re telling the coaches that recruit them what they’re asking price is. The portal? It’s estimated that more than 2,000 scholarship football and basketball players will not have a scholarship next year because they weren’t recruited or offered when they were in the portal.
College sports will survive NIL and the transfer portal, although we won’t recognize them four or five years into the future. I suspect that’s exactly what Jay Wright was thinking today when he said sayonara to college basketball.
