By Franz Beard
Thoughts of the Day: June 3, 2022
NCAA GAINESVILLE REGIONAL: THE ROAD TO OMAHA BEGINS TODAY FOR UF
Rock bottom was back on April 24 when the Gators had just been swept by Tennessee to drop to 6-12 in Southeastern Conference play. It wasn’t just losing three straight to the Vols that was the problem, either. It was the way they were losing them. In the final game against Tennessee, for example, the Gators blew a 4-1 lead in the ninth inning then lost 6-4 in the 11th.
“Well, you’ve seen it all year,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said Thursday morning. “I mean we’ve lost games in the ninth inning. I think four games in the ninth in the league alone. We were 6-12. I think we lost another game in the eighth. It’s been challenging for sure.”
It isn’t like O’Sullivan hasn’t been there and done that before. He’s had young pitching staffs before although none quite as young as this one which is comprised mostly of freshmen with only two or three sophomores sprinkled in. Like most young pitchers in a league that is as good as the SEC, there is a learning curve so it takes a lot of patience for a coach to wait for what’s between the ears to catch up with arm talent.
Fortunately, for Sully, he’s had an abundance of patience to see the Gators through from rock bottom to the 21 games they’ve played since the Tennessee disaster. Back in April, even getting to the NCAA Tournament seemed a longshot. Hosting a regional seemed well beyond Florida’s capabilities, they’ve won 16 games since the Tennessee weekend and they played so well in Hoover at the SEC Tournament that the NCAA seeded the Gators 14th and gave them a regional.
“We’ve gotten to Omaha nine times,” O’Sullivan said Thursday morning before the Gators (39-22) went through their final preparation for today’s Gainesville regional matchup with Central Michigan (42-17). “When you’ve had the success that we’ve had I don’t think there’s any other choice but to stay patient and confident. At the end of the day, the players have to go out and perform and they did. They figured it out.”
So, the question now is can they continue to figure it out? Once NCAA play begins, at each of the three levels – regional, super regional and College World Series in Omaha – two losses ends the season. Home field advantage usually stands for something but a year ago the Gators were hosting and it was two and through with an unceremonious 5-3 loss to South Florida and a 19-1 kneecapping by South Alabama.
There is a different feeling to this Florida team and the one that was dumped on in the regional last year. Last year’s team struggled all year to find some consistency with the pitching. This year, O’Sullivan keeps sending newbies out to the mound and they keep delivering. Last week in Hoover, Nick Ficarrotta was virtually untouchable for 6-1/3 innings in a loser goes home game against Alabama. Later that same day, Timmy Manning and Fisher Jameson combined to shut out Texas A&M on six hits. Sunday against Tennessee, O’Sullivan got a strong 4-2/3 innings from Timmy Manning to start the game. Now Sully has a starting rotation of Brandon Sproat, Brandon Neely and Nick Pogue, a closer in Ryan Slater and all these kids who pitched well in Hoover for middle relief.
There is consistency now that wasn’t there before, but even when things weren’t going well it was a fun ride for Sully.
“You know, the 2011 team was a really fun team to coach, too,” he said. “You kind of saw the progress. And 2010, all those kids were freshmen too and had to figure out a way to get to Omaha. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. It has. It’s been frustrating at times of course, but where we were not too long ago to where we are now, yeah, from my standpoint it’s been satisfying.”
Today’s schedule: Oklahoma (37-20) vs. Liberty (37-21), 2:30 p.m.; Central Michigan (42-17) vs. FLORIDA (39-22), 6:30 p.m.
LUGO TO THE RESCUE: GATORS ADVANCE AT THE WCWS
Natalie Lugo seems to be channeling her inner Houdini these days. No pending disaster is too big for Florida’s escape artist to wiggle the Gators out of. The Virginia Tech Hokies found out the hard way back on Sunday when Lugo took over for Lexie Delbrey in the third inning and shut down the 3rd-seeded Hokies on one hit the rest of the way to advance the Gators to the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City.
Thursday night, against Oregon State in the top of the second inning of Florida’s first WCWS game, Lugo entered the game in relief of Delbrey once again. This time there was nobody out, the bases loaded and the Beavers led, 1-0. Getting out of the jam with minimal damage would have been quite an accomplishment, but as she’s been doing throughout the NCAA Tournament, Lugo went full Houdini. It took nine pitches for Lugo to induce a line drive out to right field, a strikeout and an inning-ending ground out to Hannah Adams at second base.
With the threat ended, it was like a trigger mechanism for the Gators, who pushed across two runs in their half of the inning to take a lead they never relinquished. Pitching with a 2-1 cushion was all Lugo needed. Over the next five innings, the Beavers managed one harmless single. That’s it. No walks. No hit batters. No Florida errors.
In earning the win to improve to 12-5 on the season (1.84 ERA), Lugo ran her impressive string of near perfect relief jobs in the NCAA Tournament to six games. Since pitching one perfect inning against Canisius in Florida’s first game in the Gainesville regional, Lugo has gone 14-1/3 innings, allowing just three hits, one walk and striking out 12 batters.
When you’re throwing that well, you don’t need a whole lot of support but the Gators piled on another five runs Thursday night for a dominant win over the Beavers of the Pac-12. The Gators finished with 13 hits, their third straight game with at least 10 and their sixth in seven NCAA Tournament games. Typically, Florida’s hit parade has been led by the top of the lineup, but Kendra Falby, Hannah Adams and Skylar Wallace went a combined 2-11 against Oregon State. That didn’t matter, because Charla Echols (2-4 with a homer and a triple), Cheyenne Lindsey (3-3), Katie Kistler (2-3) and Avery Goelz (2-3, 3 RBI) picked up the slack.
The win snapped a 4-game losing streak for the Gators at the WCWS dating back to 2018. Florida (49-17) will face Oklahoma State, a 4-2 winner over Arizona, Saturday night in a game that will match UF coach Tim Walton against his former assistant, Oklahoma State head coach Kenny Gajewski.
Other WCWS games: Texas 7, UCLA 2; Oklahoma 13, Northwestern 2
Today’s schedule (losers go home): UCLA vs. Northwestern (7 p.m.); Oregon State vs. Arizona (9:30 p.m.)
WILL THE SEC ANNOUNCE ITS NEW SCHEDULING MODEL TODAY?
Amid all these reports that the athletic directors and presidents of the Southeastern Conference’s 14 schools can’t reach agreement on a new scheduling model, take this into consideration: SEC commissioner Greg Sankey wants a new model sooner, not later, and his preference is no divisions, nine conference games, three permanent opponents and every school guaranteed to play every other school in the league home-and-home at least once every four years.
When Sankey was leaving a meeting of the presidents and athletic directors at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin Thursday afternoon, he was asked specifically if there had been a vote on a new scheduling model. His response was, “Come back tomorrow. We’ll see.”
Some reporters who have been following everything that’s been going on in Destin closely read that as no deal is imminent while others construe it as a hint that there will be an announcement that is favorable. Folks who know Sankey best believe that he favors adding one conference game (from eight to nine) and a 3-6 scheduling model where each team in the league has three permanent opponents with a guarantee that every team in the league will play every other team in the league home-and-home at least once every four years.
That model does make the most sense but supposedly there are bottom tier teams in the league that favor staying with eight games but with one permanent opponent and seven other opponents on a rotating basis. In that you’ve got some long-established rivalries that would be knocked out if there is only one permanent opponent, so it seems almost certain that the league will go to nine games.
But when? If not tomorrow, it certainly will be done soon because the SEC has big issues that have to be tackled quickly, among them adding Texas and Oklahoma to the league sooner and not later plus the expansion of the College Football Playoff.
Sankey is a no-nonsense kind of guy and the last thing he wants is to leave Destin without a mandate from the presidents and athletic directors to do what is necessary to keep the SEC at the top of the heap. There is that old grandmother’s saying “strike while the iron is hot.” Well, the SEC iron is scorching hot these days both on the field and at the bank. SEC schools received a $56.4 million paycheck from the league for the 2020-21 COVID year. Compare that to the Pac-12 whose payout was less than $20 million per school or the ACC, whose payout was more than $20 million less than the SEC.
Sankey clearly has power and momentum on his side. He can be the one who dictates the terms for what happens next in college football but only if the presidents and commissioners allow him to move now on the critical issues.
Despite some reports to the contrary, I believe Sankey either leaves Destin with a vote to implement the 3-6 scheduling model or an agreement from the presidents and athletic directors that summer will not pass without making the move.
SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL
Arkansas: HBC Sam Pittman has been given a raise to a $5 million base salary in an incentive-laced contract extension that will run through the 2026 season. With incentives If he guides the Razorbacks to a 7-win season, it adds another year to the contract.
Georgia: Kirby Smart expects an improved Stetson Bennett IV at quarterback this year largely because he got the starter’s reps in the spring. Smart told Paul Finebaum that last spring Bennett “wasn’t the guy. He was the third string last spring.”
Kentucky: Defensive lineman Quentel Jones, a 3-star signee in the 2022 recruiting class, has been arrested and charged with battery in connection with the death of a 37-year-old man in Peach County. Also arrested and charged with murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime was Tyler Jones, Quentel’s 26-year-old brother.
Mississippi State: Point guard Jamel Horton, who averaged 12.8 points, 3.4 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game at Albany last year, is transferring to Mississippi State.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, who is the chairman of the College Football Playoff, says the playoff’s governing body of presidents from the 10 Division I conferences and the president of Notre Dame, will meet in August regarding expansion. Ever the optimist, Keenum says he hopes something can be done within a year to expand the playoff, but we know what happened when expansion was on the table before.
Keenum has spent the week in Destin at the SEC Spring Meetings. He’s had plenty of time to talk things over with commissioner Greg Sankey. My hope is that Sankey has given Keenum some sort of ultimatum for the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC that goes something like this: “We can have our own version of a playoff that includes 12 teams and not a one of them have to be from your leagues. Networks will gladly pony up and we’ll be splitting up more money that we do now. We’ll make more money if you join us, but we’ll done fine without you. You, however, won’t do so well. So, either get with the program and join us, or try explaining to your fans, boosters and creditors how it is you left multiple millions because of your foolishness.
Thoughts of the Day: June 3, 2022
NCAA GAINESVILLE REGIONAL: THE ROAD TO OMAHA BEGINS TODAY FOR UF
Rock bottom was back on April 24 when the Gators had just been swept by Tennessee to drop to 6-12 in Southeastern Conference play. It wasn’t just losing three straight to the Vols that was the problem, either. It was the way they were losing them. In the final game against Tennessee, for example, the Gators blew a 4-1 lead in the ninth inning then lost 6-4 in the 11th.
“Well, you’ve seen it all year,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said Thursday morning. “I mean we’ve lost games in the ninth inning. I think four games in the ninth in the league alone. We were 6-12. I think we lost another game in the eighth. It’s been challenging for sure.”
It isn’t like O’Sullivan hasn’t been there and done that before. He’s had young pitching staffs before although none quite as young as this one which is comprised mostly of freshmen with only two or three sophomores sprinkled in. Like most young pitchers in a league that is as good as the SEC, there is a learning curve so it takes a lot of patience for a coach to wait for what’s between the ears to catch up with arm talent.
Fortunately, for Sully, he’s had an abundance of patience to see the Gators through from rock bottom to the 21 games they’ve played since the Tennessee disaster. Back in April, even getting to the NCAA Tournament seemed a longshot. Hosting a regional seemed well beyond Florida’s capabilities, they’ve won 16 games since the Tennessee weekend and they played so well in Hoover at the SEC Tournament that the NCAA seeded the Gators 14th and gave them a regional.
“We’ve gotten to Omaha nine times,” O’Sullivan said Thursday morning before the Gators (39-22) went through their final preparation for today’s Gainesville regional matchup with Central Michigan (42-17). “When you’ve had the success that we’ve had I don’t think there’s any other choice but to stay patient and confident. At the end of the day, the players have to go out and perform and they did. They figured it out.”
So, the question now is can they continue to figure it out? Once NCAA play begins, at each of the three levels – regional, super regional and College World Series in Omaha – two losses ends the season. Home field advantage usually stands for something but a year ago the Gators were hosting and it was two and through with an unceremonious 5-3 loss to South Florida and a 19-1 kneecapping by South Alabama.
There is a different feeling to this Florida team and the one that was dumped on in the regional last year. Last year’s team struggled all year to find some consistency with the pitching. This year, O’Sullivan keeps sending newbies out to the mound and they keep delivering. Last week in Hoover, Nick Ficarrotta was virtually untouchable for 6-1/3 innings in a loser goes home game against Alabama. Later that same day, Timmy Manning and Fisher Jameson combined to shut out Texas A&M on six hits. Sunday against Tennessee, O’Sullivan got a strong 4-2/3 innings from Timmy Manning to start the game. Now Sully has a starting rotation of Brandon Sproat, Brandon Neely and Nick Pogue, a closer in Ryan Slater and all these kids who pitched well in Hoover for middle relief.
There is consistency now that wasn’t there before, but even when things weren’t going well it was a fun ride for Sully.
“You know, the 2011 team was a really fun team to coach, too,” he said. “You kind of saw the progress. And 2010, all those kids were freshmen too and had to figure out a way to get to Omaha. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. It has. It’s been frustrating at times of course, but where we were not too long ago to where we are now, yeah, from my standpoint it’s been satisfying.”
Today’s schedule: Oklahoma (37-20) vs. Liberty (37-21), 2:30 p.m.; Central Michigan (42-17) vs. FLORIDA (39-22), 6:30 p.m.
LUGO TO THE RESCUE: GATORS ADVANCE AT THE WCWS
Natalie Lugo seems to be channeling her inner Houdini these days. No pending disaster is too big for Florida’s escape artist to wiggle the Gators out of. The Virginia Tech Hokies found out the hard way back on Sunday when Lugo took over for Lexie Delbrey in the third inning and shut down the 3rd-seeded Hokies on one hit the rest of the way to advance the Gators to the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City.
Thursday night, against Oregon State in the top of the second inning of Florida’s first WCWS game, Lugo entered the game in relief of Delbrey once again. This time there was nobody out, the bases loaded and the Beavers led, 1-0. Getting out of the jam with minimal damage would have been quite an accomplishment, but as she’s been doing throughout the NCAA Tournament, Lugo went full Houdini. It took nine pitches for Lugo to induce a line drive out to right field, a strikeout and an inning-ending ground out to Hannah Adams at second base.
With the threat ended, it was like a trigger mechanism for the Gators, who pushed across two runs in their half of the inning to take a lead they never relinquished. Pitching with a 2-1 cushion was all Lugo needed. Over the next five innings, the Beavers managed one harmless single. That’s it. No walks. No hit batters. No Florida errors.
In earning the win to improve to 12-5 on the season (1.84 ERA), Lugo ran her impressive string of near perfect relief jobs in the NCAA Tournament to six games. Since pitching one perfect inning against Canisius in Florida’s first game in the Gainesville regional, Lugo has gone 14-1/3 innings, allowing just three hits, one walk and striking out 12 batters.
When you’re throwing that well, you don’t need a whole lot of support but the Gators piled on another five runs Thursday night for a dominant win over the Beavers of the Pac-12. The Gators finished with 13 hits, their third straight game with at least 10 and their sixth in seven NCAA Tournament games. Typically, Florida’s hit parade has been led by the top of the lineup, but Kendra Falby, Hannah Adams and Skylar Wallace went a combined 2-11 against Oregon State. That didn’t matter, because Charla Echols (2-4 with a homer and a triple), Cheyenne Lindsey (3-3), Katie Kistler (2-3) and Avery Goelz (2-3, 3 RBI) picked up the slack.
The win snapped a 4-game losing streak for the Gators at the WCWS dating back to 2018. Florida (49-17) will face Oklahoma State, a 4-2 winner over Arizona, Saturday night in a game that will match UF coach Tim Walton against his former assistant, Oklahoma State head coach Kenny Gajewski.
Other WCWS games: Texas 7, UCLA 2; Oklahoma 13, Northwestern 2
Today’s schedule (losers go home): UCLA vs. Northwestern (7 p.m.); Oregon State vs. Arizona (9:30 p.m.)
WILL THE SEC ANNOUNCE ITS NEW SCHEDULING MODEL TODAY?
Amid all these reports that the athletic directors and presidents of the Southeastern Conference’s 14 schools can’t reach agreement on a new scheduling model, take this into consideration: SEC commissioner Greg Sankey wants a new model sooner, not later, and his preference is no divisions, nine conference games, three permanent opponents and every school guaranteed to play every other school in the league home-and-home at least once every four years.
When Sankey was leaving a meeting of the presidents and athletic directors at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin Thursday afternoon, he was asked specifically if there had been a vote on a new scheduling model. His response was, “Come back tomorrow. We’ll see.”
Some reporters who have been following everything that’s been going on in Destin closely read that as no deal is imminent while others construe it as a hint that there will be an announcement that is favorable. Folks who know Sankey best believe that he favors adding one conference game (from eight to nine) and a 3-6 scheduling model where each team in the league has three permanent opponents with a guarantee that every team in the league will play every other team in the league home-and-home at least once every four years.
That model does make the most sense but supposedly there are bottom tier teams in the league that favor staying with eight games but with one permanent opponent and seven other opponents on a rotating basis. In that you’ve got some long-established rivalries that would be knocked out if there is only one permanent opponent, so it seems almost certain that the league will go to nine games.
But when? If not tomorrow, it certainly will be done soon because the SEC has big issues that have to be tackled quickly, among them adding Texas and Oklahoma to the league sooner and not later plus the expansion of the College Football Playoff.
Sankey is a no-nonsense kind of guy and the last thing he wants is to leave Destin without a mandate from the presidents and athletic directors to do what is necessary to keep the SEC at the top of the heap. There is that old grandmother’s saying “strike while the iron is hot.” Well, the SEC iron is scorching hot these days both on the field and at the bank. SEC schools received a $56.4 million paycheck from the league for the 2020-21 COVID year. Compare that to the Pac-12 whose payout was less than $20 million per school or the ACC, whose payout was more than $20 million less than the SEC.
Sankey clearly has power and momentum on his side. He can be the one who dictates the terms for what happens next in college football but only if the presidents and commissioners allow him to move now on the critical issues.
Despite some reports to the contrary, I believe Sankey either leaves Destin with a vote to implement the 3-6 scheduling model or an agreement from the presidents and athletic directors that summer will not pass without making the move.
SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL
Arkansas: HBC Sam Pittman has been given a raise to a $5 million base salary in an incentive-laced contract extension that will run through the 2026 season. With incentives If he guides the Razorbacks to a 7-win season, it adds another year to the contract.
Georgia: Kirby Smart expects an improved Stetson Bennett IV at quarterback this year largely because he got the starter’s reps in the spring. Smart told Paul Finebaum that last spring Bennett “wasn’t the guy. He was the third string last spring.”
Kentucky: Defensive lineman Quentel Jones, a 3-star signee in the 2022 recruiting class, has been arrested and charged with battery in connection with the death of a 37-year-old man in Peach County. Also arrested and charged with murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime was Tyler Jones, Quentel’s 26-year-old brother.
Mississippi State: Point guard Jamel Horton, who averaged 12.8 points, 3.4 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game at Albany last year, is transferring to Mississippi State.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, who is the chairman of the College Football Playoff, says the playoff’s governing body of presidents from the 10 Division I conferences and the president of Notre Dame, will meet in August regarding expansion. Ever the optimist, Keenum says he hopes something can be done within a year to expand the playoff, but we know what happened when expansion was on the table before.
Keenum has spent the week in Destin at the SEC Spring Meetings. He’s had plenty of time to talk things over with commissioner Greg Sankey. My hope is that Sankey has given Keenum some sort of ultimatum for the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC that goes something like this: “We can have our own version of a playoff that includes 12 teams and not a one of them have to be from your leagues. Networks will gladly pony up and we’ll be splitting up more money that we do now. We’ll make more money if you join us, but we’ll done fine without you. You, however, won’t do so well. So, either get with the program and join us, or try explaining to your fans, boosters and creditors how it is you left multiple millions because of your foolishness.
