GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we talk about the great weekend for the Florida Gators as the softball team captured the SEC tournament title, baseball clinched the SEC and track and field won the SEC.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre break down the softball team as they gained the number two seed in the NCAA tournament and baseball clinched the SEC.

Andrew and Nick also talk about the big recruiting weekend for the Gators as they will host the first cookout event under Dan Mullen on Saturday.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, what a weekend. The trophy case had to be expanded this weekend, my friend.

Nick:                         Yeah. They need to start building these new buildings, just to have places to keep putting trophies.

Andrew:                 The whole everything school, everyone kind of makes fun of Florida about that, but let me just run you through what happened this weekend. First of all, baseball clinches the SEC regular season title. Congrats to Sully and the boys. Softball, not only did they clinch the regular season title and win that, this weekend they won the tournament title, SEC title. Men’s tennis advanced to the Sweet 16, third year in a row for them. Gator lacrosse went to the Elite 8. Men’s and women’s track won the SEC, swept the titles. Lot of trophies coming, and possibility for a lot more trophies. Wouldn’t surprise me at all to see track and field win the NCAA Outdoor Championship after winning the NCAA Indoor Championship. Then we all know what softball and baseball are capable of. Maybe lacrosse can get over that hump.

Nick:                         Softball, I know they’ve won the regular season title four years in a row. How many years have they won the tournament as well?

Andrew:                 They’ve won the tournament four years. The last time was 2013. When Florida started off the game against Alabama over the weekend, they were down 2-0 in the game, and a lot of people said, here goes another one of those things where Walton just says screw the tournament. Walton at times has not taken the SEC Tournament seriously. I say seriously, and I don’t mean that. I guess I shouldn’t say serious. He doesn’t overdo his team to win the tournament, just because it really doesn’t mean anything. He does take it seriously. He threw Barnhill in back to back days to get her some work, because she didn’t pitch very much in the games against Missouri over the weekend, after they clinched. Then timely hitting all weekend. Amanda Lorenz had three homeruns. Crazy stats. They played Missouri in Columbia, and then the SEC Tournament was in Columbia. They had 13 homeruns in six games there. It was homerun derby out there.

Nick:                         Those poor girls were out there for like two weeks.

Andrew:                 That’s what they were saying. I guess, let’s start with softball.

Nick:                         Real quick. Softball is a little different than baseball, in terms of pitching, but Kevin O’Sullivan kind of has the same outlook. Where I want to draw the parallel, both of these programs the goal is not to win the SEC Tournament. The SEC Tournament, that’s cool. Florida’s already locked up the 1 Seed for the tournament. They really have bigger fish to fry. They set their goals higher than winning an SEC Tournament.

They won the regular season, both softball and baseball. In two weeks, or next week, when Florida plays in the SEC Tournament, it’s you’re going to set your pitching up. Brady Singer will throw the first game. He’ll throw 70 pitches, 80 pitches. Same with Jackson Kowar. You’re just setting it up so you don’t have Brady and Jackson not throwing for two weeks before you get to a regional. I think both Sully and Tim Walton use that tournament just to get their teams ready for a regional,

GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we recap the latest news around the Florida Gators football program as the Gators saw two players transfer away.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre talk about the impact of Jake Allen and McArthur Burnett transferring away from Florida, plus we talk about the spring evaluation period for Florida’s coaches.

Andrew and Nick also talk about the latest around the baseball and softball team as both teams lead the SEC with just a few series remaining.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicolas, another big weekend in Gator Country. Baseball takes care of business, goes two out of three. Softball with the sweep. Gymnastics comes up a little bit short, but third in the country in the national championships. Not too bad. Women’s tennis makes it to the SEC Championship game. All around good weekend.

Nick:                         Great weekend. Florida goes two and two last week on the diamond, baseball diamond, but they remain #1 in the country by pretty much any metric. They really in the first two games just steamrolled Kentucky. I think a lot of attention from national guys. Kenny Cahill, Baseball America called him a freight train. I said, that’s absolutely right. Florida hadn’t won a series in Lexington since 2012, had lost the last two there. Kevin O’Sullivan was only 16-16 for his career against Kentucky, which is his worst record against any team. I think worse record of any team they play regularly, which is astonishing.

Andrew:                 That’s crazy. I forgot to mention that lacrosse also won the Big East regular season championship. That was big as well. Softball, they went out and took care of business. Swept a really good Mississippi State team, who hasn’t been swept at home.

Nick:                         It is so hard to sweep at home, baseball or softball. To do it on the road is very impressive.

Andrew:                 That was the thing. You went out and swept a team who hadn’t been swept at home in two years. Mississippi State is a team who’s on the rise, a team who a couple years ago that was an easy, go out to Starkville and you were going to sweep them. Mississippi State came into the weekend #22 in the country, but ninth in the SEC. That’s what’s crazy. Ninth in the SEC, but 22 in the country.

Nick:                         Like you said, a very good program in Mississippi State. Good for the girls. Good for the girls who, still a great a team, but maybe have struggled at times more than maybe even you expected, or they expected themselves to. That’s a huge confidence boost.

Andrew:                 It’s like you said just a second ago. This team has struggled at times. I think they’re still a team who is very inconsistent. When you’re looking at two more SEC series to go, that’s not something you really want to say about a team. Also, when you have a pitcher in Kelly Barnhill out there, most of the time when she’s out there one or two runs is going to win a lot of games. We’ll talk softball and baseball here in a minute, Nick.

Let’s start talking a little recruiting. Let’s start with some football new. Post spring always brings the news out, always brings the transfer news out. That’s exactly what we got. Quarterback Jake Allen announced he was transferring away, and then McArthur Burnett announced he was transferring away. I would say neither are really surprises. Both were down on the depth chart. I personally didn’t know if Jake would transfer. I thought he would try to ride it out, but not surprising. Best of luck to those two guys, especially Jake. Jake’s a good dude and works hard.

Nick:                         Obviously, being from the same area and knowing Jake a little bit, knowing people who know him and worked out with him back home in South Florida, where we’re both from,

GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we recap the Orange and Blue game for the Florida Gators that took place on Saturday.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre break down the game and why it was a success under Dan Mullen and the coaching staff.

Andrew and Nick also break down how recruiting went for the Gators on Saturday and the big news around recruiting.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, spring football is over. I say it to you now, and that is it went by fast. It seemed like this year was a little bit different than last year. It was a lot quicker spring. Maybe it’s because we were so busy. Who knows?

Nick:                         Those first two weeks where everything was open, I’ll tell you that did not seem fast. We were at three practices and three hours. Some of the older beat reporters, they call it Meyer time, where practice doesn’t really end when they say it’s going to end. I started joking and saying, “Never had that problem with McElwain. How many periods is practice? 13. We’ve done 10 good ones, let’s get out of here.” There was never waiting around.

Then over the last two weeks, when things were kind of closed, there was some stuff for first responders and the police around Gainesville. We’ve talked about when we’ve had the past couple years where games have been cancelled because of weather, just how big the scope is and how many people it takes to create a safe game day environment. They had some stuff open for people like that. There was a practice open to university employees. There was still stuff, even though it wasn’t open to the media. Still stuff that was open.

We’ll get into the spring game, but I think as a spring as a whole I think Dan Mullen did a good job. The coaching staff did a good job. They probably got out of it exactly what they hoped to.

Andrew:                 I mean, it’s something guys have told us, and Mullen talked about, and that was the first 13 practices were the work practices. This game was more fun, have fun, let loose a little bit. Don’t get anyone injured, even though a couple guys did get injured in the game, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. You had that, and this was a game to get the fans involved and the former players involved. They got the former players involved. You had Lawrence Wright and you had Travis McGriff both catching a touchdown pass. Listen, was that gimmicky? Sure. Lawrence Wright and Travis McGriff are talking about that with everyone. Those guys had family members, young family members have never seen them play. They got to do that. It was just fun.

I told you this off the air, and that is which spring game is fun? There isn’t spring games that are fun. There is no winning a spring game, because if the offense looks good, your defense sucks. If the defense looks good, your offense sucks. We talk about the Feleipe Franks long 60-yard run, was that a long run? No, it wasn’t, but you had to do something. There again, who knows if he does get tackled. You don’t know. I don’t know how you make the game more fun. There’s probably nothing you can do really. We can go back to the Muschamp or McElwain seven-on-seven days, if you want.

Nick:                         Those were not fun. Man, those Muschamp ones where there were four healthy offensive linemen, those were not fun. I think the only thing, and I’ve seen something on Twitter, I got to meet him on Saturday. He’s GatorRyan on Twitter. I think he probably said the best way. He said, “Just let us know,” as far as fans, “Let us know that that’s what it’s going to be.” I think what he means is don’t build it up to where you think it’s going to be something, and I’m driving a couple hours, or somebody’s driving up from Miami, and they’re driving six hours, expecting to see something, and that’s not what they get.

GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we preview the Orange and Blue spring game for the Florida Gators on Saturday.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre break down what they’re looking for on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball on Saturday.

Andrew and Nick also break down the huge recruiting visitors list for the Gators on Saturday as Dan Mullen and his staff are set to host many top prospects.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, couple days left of spring practice, and the Gators kick it off for the finale, I guess is what you would say. The Orange & Blue game on Saturday. We’re taping this on Thursday. They practice on Friday, or do a little walkthrough on Friday, and then have the game on Saturday. The pack the Swamp thing, that’s kind of getting out there. Put you on the spot, does Florida break the 68,000 mark?

Nick:                         I say no.

Andrew:                 I’m going to say yes.

Nick:                         Here you go. They announced what, like 40,000 last year? That wasn’t close to being right. If they’re close, do they just announce it as more? Maybe. I don’t think so. That’s a lot of people. That 68,000 was coming off of a national championship going into Tebow’s senior year.

Andrew:                 I’m going to say they do. I’m going to say that it’s a big one. I’m going to say they break it, and I’m going to say it’s a legit break.

Nick:                         That’s a lot of people.

Andrew:                 Yeah. I think that fans are so hungry for something different, and I think Mullen’s done a good job. This is going to be crazy when I say this, but I think that it may be in part due to the students showing up. You and I both know that the students haven’t shown up in a long, long time. If they show up, that’s a good thing.

Nick:                         Another thing is it’s free. It’s a free ticket, and there’s so much going on campus. They’ve really made a big push for what they’re calling the We Chomp Weekend. You’ve got softball is in town. Baseball is in town. I think tennis?

Andrew:                 Lacrosse.

Nick:                         Lacrosse. A lot of stuff going on. Dan Mullen has been really a huge champion of really pushing this pack the Swamp movement that they’re trying to do. It’s not just a spring game, and that’s kind of what they’re saying. Sure, you’re going to come in for the Spring game on Saturday at 3:00. You and I were both big fans of McElwain moving it to Friday and making it a big event, but the pushback there was people coming in from out of town. Listen, I have work till 5:00 on Friday, I can’t get Gainesville if I’m coming from Tennessee, or if I’m coming from upstate Georgia, or if I’m coming from Miami. I can’t get to a 7:30 Friday night game, but I can get there for a Saturday game. I think that was probably the thought process of moving it back, to get a bigger attendance, even though we both did like that Saturday night feel where you were the only team, the only show in the country.

Andrew:                 I think that a lot of the reason, especially for you and I talking about the big push for that Friday night, was that there wasn’t a lot of momentum. There wasn’t a lot of excitement.

Nick:                         It was good for recruiting, because you didn’t have kids making a decision. I want to go to Florida State’s spring game, or I want to go to Georgia’s spring game, and I want to go to Florida’s too. I can go to Florida’s Friday, and then go somewhere else Saturday. Maybe that’s not good for recruiting, because you got kids leaving right away.

Andrew:                 Right. That’s what I’m saying. I think it was good for that point, because you didn’t have the excitement to really compete, but if you’re Mullen and those guys,

GatorCountry.com brings you a new podcast as we recap the Florida Gators scrimmage and talk about spring practice.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre break down how the offense looks and focus on the quarterbacks and how they’re performing this spring.

Andrew and Nick also talk about recruiting and the amount of visitors the Gators are hosting and who they will host this coming weekend.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, we’re back doing our podcast. Easter weekend kind of threw the podcast schedule off, because we usually tape on Sunday. But never fail, we’re back. Guess what? This one will just be even more eventful. We’ll talk about the scrimmage from the last week, and then the Gators will scrimmage again on Saturday. We’ll talk a little bit about recruiting. Guess what, Nick? More top prospects are coming to campus this weekend.

Nick:                         Yeah. More top prospects. Easter weekend was good. I had family in town. Florida swept the baseball team. They’ve won seven now, seven straight, heading up to Tennessee this weekend. Tennessee is young, but they’re good. We will, unfortunately, since we’re only doing one this week, we’ll have less softball and baseball talk, because there’s a lot of football to talk about.

Andrew:                 Baseball’s doing well, like you said. We’ll talk about that. Softball, we’ll talk about softball. They’re doing well, despite dropping, I guess now they’re going to call themselves the Softball National Champion UCF Golden Knights. Dropped that game 1-0. That was a weird game.

Nick:                         Every national championship the road goes through Orlando. We’ll just say that.

Andrew:                 Oh brother. Here we go. Let’s just go ahead. Let’s get into it, Nick. You got to go to the scrimmage last Friday. Give me a recap just of what you were able to see, and then let’s talk about that and break it all down.

Nick:                         First thing is that I think the offense, as a whole, is still behind the defense in the first scrimmage, and I want to say this, and we’re not supposed to talk about scheme. The thing was, and some people were angry. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, video, or talk about schemes. I couldn’t say like, “Kadarius Toney’s doing a wildcat.” That’s scheme. I couldn’t say, “Florida’s running a lot of trips to one side of the field with tight end on the other side of the field and a running back.” Can’t talk about scheme.

But I can tell you that there was a lot of read option stuff. That’s not me talking about scheme that’s just you watch Dan Mullen’s offense for 15 years.

Andrew:                 Let me guess. There’s a lot of quarterback run too.

Nick:                         Yeah. So, the part is, and it’s human nature. When the quarterbacks are in a non-contact situation, which they were, and you’re running that read option, the defense knows they’re not going to run the quarterback, because we’re not getting anything out of that. We can’t hit the quarterback, so the defense isn’t going to get anything out of that. The offense isn’t going to get anything out of that. So, a lot of these running plays that aren’t going anywhere, you’re losing an element of that play. Now it becomes a play where we know exactly where the running back is running the ball to, because if he’s standing to Feleipe Franks, Kyle Trask, Emory Jones’s right, he’s running left. We’re going to crash left. I think that had a lot to do into now we’re running 2nd and long, because we ran the ball on 1st down, and now the defense knows where we’re going. There were a lot of three and outs, and I think some of that led to it.

In the second half, they kind of let the quarterbacks carry it a little more, but then again, then you’re looking at it’s wide open,

GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we recap Florida Gators spring practice for week number two as we talk about how the players are doing under Dan Mullen.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre break down which positions are doing well on offense and defense, plus how the practices are different under Mullen.

Andrew and Nick also talk about how recruiting is different under Mullen and recap the new facility news that was announced on Friday.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, lot of things going on over the weekend, and it’s another busy week in Gainesville. Let’s not forget, it’s Opening Week for baseball.

Nick:                         Yeah. Let’s see. Last weekend, little recap, Florida wins two out of three against Arkansas, after losing on Friday. You’re always surprised when they don’t a game that Brady Singer starts.

Andrew:                 Yeah.

Nick:                         Softball did well.

Andrew:                 Yeah. Softball, of course, plays on Monday night. We’re taping this on Monday, so we’re not going to be able to recap that. Florida’s 2-0, 3-0 on the week. They beat Jacksonville, and then they have the two games against A&M so far. Excuse me, they beat South Florida. You guys beat Jacksonville. Then Georgia loses a game, so Florida’s now right in the top of the SEC standings. Just a game behind South Carolina, who’s played three less games in the SEC. Everything seems to be going well. Gymnastics, they kind of had a good meet, except for a couple flaws, and they ended up finishing third in the SEC Gymnastics Championship. Overall, good week.

Good week of recruiting. Good week of spring practice.

Nick:                         Florida will play Florida State in Jacksonville this week, so that’s always a fun one. Then Vanderbilt comes in over the weekend.

Andrew:                 Florida has a non-SEC weekend this weekend in softball. With Vanderbilt not having a team, you always have one weekend throughout the year that you don’t play an SEC series. That weekend will be this weekend for Florida. They’ll host a few teams in kind of, I guess you could say a mini tournament this weekend. Then they’ll tilt it back up as they get ready to finish the SEC play. I mean, when you talk about SEC play, Nick, not only in baseball, but softball, South Carolina is really good this year. You look at what Mississippi State is doing this year. This is a really good SEC conference.

Florida started the RPI that was just released last week fifth in the RPI. I mean, when you think about it, it’s going to go way up. Texas A&M is #8 in the country, and Florida may very well sweep. You got Alabama. You got South Carolina. You got Mississippi State. You got LSU still to play. You got top 10 teams. That RPI is going to be way up there.

Nick:                         Yeah. I guess for Florida there’s times, I almost think for Florida it doesn’t even matter. I don’t know Florida’s RPI right now.

Andrew:                 What does it matter?

Nick:                         Just because they’re not going to be a team that’s like on the bubble to get into a regional. Yeah. Just by the sheer fact of who they’re playing, and who they have to play, absolutely.

Andrew:                 Yeah. It goes the same way with you guys over in baseball. It doesn’t matter, because you’re going to get in. Especially this year with softball, there’s a few good teams out in the Pac-12, and Florida has taken a loss already to Georgia, #6 team in the country right now. When you look at being one of those top teams to host through the Super-Regionals, that’s kind of where the RPI comes up. It may end up being a factor for baseball as well, but you want to have that high RPI. Again, baseball and softball both doing well.

GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we recap the open spring practices for the Florida Gators that took place this past weekend.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre recap what happened at spring practice for the Gators and how the team looked under Dan Mullen and his coaching staff.

Andrew and Nick also recap the basketball season for the Gators and recap what happened on the diamond for the Gators this past weekend.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, spring football, baseball, softball, and the end of the basketball season. That all took place this weekend.

Nick:                         Yeah. Tough weekend, or tough Saturday for Gator sports, but a packed weekend.

Andrew:                 Saturday was rough. I mean, baseball and softball took one on the noggin, and basketball, man oh man, that will go down as one of the worst officiating games I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I have watched a lot of basketball, and, Nick, that was terrible. When at one time in the game you have five guys with four fouls for one team, and another team that has one guy with two fouls, something’s wrong.

Nick:                         Yeah. Great game. If you take your fandom away from it, it was a great basketball game.

Andrew:                 It was a great game.

Nick:                         Back and forth. That was fun to watch. Tough to lose and go out, especially when you see FSU make it to the sweet 16. I think Mike White is a good coach, and they’ve got a good recruiting class coming in. Interested to see what they’ll look like next year, when you get those big guys back.

Andrew:                 Let me ask you this. I’m asking you this, because I’m just wondering your take on things. Do you feel like Mike White has improved since he got to Florida? Me, personally, I think he has. I hear a lot of people say, he’s still struggling with the X’s and O’s and this and that. Listen, I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m not the smartest when it comes to basketball X’s and O’s like I am with football and baseball, but to me, personally, I think he’s improved from Year 1 to now Year 3.

Nick:                         I think this was just kind of an incredibly frustrating team for him.

Andrew:                 Injuries, Nick. I mean, it seemed like every time you turned around. Gorjok Gak had a concussion, Ballard had a concussion. Then you lose John Egbunu and Isaiah Stokes for the year, when at the beginning of the year Mike White says, “We should be able to get those guys back for conference play.” Let’s just be honest here. He played without a big man. I mean, Kevarrius Hayes gave Florida minutes.

Nick:                         Chase Johnson never played.

Andrew:                 Chase Johnson never played. Kevarrius Hayes shouldn’t be your starter inside, and that wasn’t the plan. Again, Mike White had a tough year with injuries, and to do what he did is still pretty good. I mean, let’s just be honest with each other. He’s a three-pointer away from going to overtime with a chance to go to the Sweet Sixteen. Every year you get to the Sweet Sixteen, I think that’s a successful year for most teams.

Nick:                         I really like Mike Okauru. I don’t think I’ve ever said that right the first time I tried to say it. Mike Okauru. Chase Johnson, interested to see what he is. I think Keith Stone comes back. Dontay Bassett is back. KeVaughn Allen should come back.

Andrew:                 Allen’s coming back.

Nick:                         Has to, right?

Andrew:                 My question is Jalen Hudson.

Nick:                         He’s probably the biggest one.

Andrew:                 Some people say he’s a late first-rounder, second-rounder. I think if you’re Jalen Hudson you probably need to come back.

GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we preview the start of Florida Gators spring football that starts on Friday afternoon.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre talk about the things they’re looking forward to seeing, plus what Dan Mullen had to say on Tuesday at his press conference.

Andrew and Nick also preview who the baseball and softball teams play this weekend as they take on SEC opponents on the road this weekend.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, baseball, softball, and spring football, and March Madness. What more can you ask for? And Tiger is on the course.

Nick:                         Yeah. Tiger’s on the course. March Madness is starting right now, as we’re recording this. We’re going to be watching Trae Young in the background. In case one of us starts yelling, he probably hit a 60-foot shot. Baseball is on the road. Softball is on the road?

Andrew:                 Yes. Softball’s on the road at Georgia this weekend.

Nick:                         Spring football. Friday, Saturday will be open to the public. I already gave you the warning. Be prepared to see guys in shirts and shorts and not a ton of football stuff. It starts this week. Busy week in Gainesville.

Andrew:                 Everyone wanted open practice, and why not? Here’s the thing. Mullen had a good answer. It was something that kind of caught my attention a little bit. It almost was like someone told him to say this. He said he wanted open practice because he wanted the fanbase and the players and the team to come together as a whole again. You’ve said it more than I have in the past, and that is that there is a big disconnect under Mac between fans and team. What better way to do it than to have an open practice?

Nick:                         Yeah. We have dates and stuff. There will be open portions to the media. These are the only two practices open up until that spring game, which is technically just another spring practice. We don’t know what kind of portions will be open. We will be talking to assistant coaches and coordinators throughout spring practice, but we don’t know if it’s going to be like it was with McElwain, where we’re watching three portions of practice, or if we’re watching the full practice, but we can’t report on certain stuff. We’re still kind of working that out with Florida as to what we’re going to be allowed to see throughout the spring. That’s kind of still up in the air.

Andrew:                 Before we move on to talk baseball and softball, we’re going to preview spring practice here after we talk baseball and softball. I wanted to say that the one thing you won’t see from a Mullen practice is dropped passes like there were under Mac’s. I’m afraid Mullen will shut it down and say, “Restart.”

Nick:                         There was a lot. That was a lot of dropped passes with no one covering.

Andrew:                 Mullen made no guarantees, except for one thing, and that was you’re going to have guys working hard. They’re going to go hard. He said, “They don’t have a choice.”

Big weekend on the diamond. Big week, it depends, we’re taping this on Thursday, so possibly Florida could be out of the tournament. If not, big weekend on the hardwood for the Gators. Let’s talk baseball and softball before we get into talking football. Nick, Kevin O’Sullivan, does he just have Mike Martin’s jersey hanging up in his house, and he says, “I own you, dude.” Because Sully doesn’t lose to Florida State. What a performance on Tuesday night in Gainesville.

Nick:                         Sully, Florida State kind of had Florida’s number for the longest time, and Sully right now is 27-11-1 against Florida State, and Florida still trails by 20 games in the overall series. Sully’s that far ahead, over 500. Kind of tells you where Florida was before his...

GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we break down how the Florida Gators basketball fared on Selection Sunday on Sunday.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre are joined by Eric Fawcett who breaks down the Gators match-up in the tournament as Florida earned the number six seed in the East Region.

Andrew and Nick ask Eric the tough questions about the Gators after they took a tough loss in the SEC tournament to Arkansas on Friday.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre, with our man, Eric. We’re joining you guys after Selection Sunday. It’s one of the popular days. TBS just ruined that day for us all.

Nick:                         That was pretty maddening to release 69 teams alphabetically. Just give me the bracket. Just say, here are the teams. Here is when they’ll play and who they’ll play against. Here you go.

Andrew:                 Then break it down. I don’t need to hear it alphabetically.

Eric:                          At least we’re lucky, Florida got announced pretty quick what bracket they’re in. For those of you listening, the Gators were announced in their bracket, and like four minutes later we’re recording this. No need for us to stick around. We just went right to it. The bracket is actually still being announced as we record this, but luckily, we know where Florida is playing.

Nick:                         I was fully mentally preparing myself for Florida to be the 68th team named, and we’d be sitting here until like 8:00 on Sunday night waiting to talk about it.

Eric:                          Can you imagine? Let’s announce every other matchup first. We’ll do alphabetically, but just say Florida last. How about Florida getting booed when they weren’t even doing seeds? They were just alphabetically saying what teams had at large bids, and Florida got booed by the old Atlanta crowd there, the 23 people that are there. That was kind of funny. Got a chuckle out of that.

Andrew:                 I don’t know about this whole live deal. To me it just screams TV advertising. It’s retarded, but that runs the business. Florida gets the six seed in the East region, will take on the winner of the play-in game of Saint Bonaventure and UCLA in a Thursday bracket out in Dallas, Texas. Overall, I think after Friday’s performance we all probably agree that Florida was going to get a six-seed heading into Sunday, right?

Eric:                          That’s what they deserved. It’s really not too bad. It’s crazy. The difference between like a one and a two seed, or a two and a three seed, that is kind of big difference. Once you get to the difference between a five or a six seed, it isn’t a huge deal. The difference between playing the 11th and the 12th team is not a major deal. Again, the whole bracket hasn’t even been announced yet, because we are recording this as it happens. Loyola Chicago is an eleven seed, and Davidson is a twelve. The difference between those two teams is not that large. The difference between a five and six for Gators is not a huge deal.

Andrew:                 If you’re Florida, if you’re lucky enough to make it to the Sweet Sixteen, would you rather play Villanova or Purdue?

Eric:                          That’s a great point too. I’ll say Purdue every time.

Andrew:                 Yeah. Let’s just look at this. Obviously, Florida’s opponent is not known yet, because of the Saint Bonaventure-UCLA play-in game on Tuesday. Eric, quick, I know you had a chance to briefly look at this. You told me that you thought a surprise could happen in this game. What do you see this game?

Eric:                          I mean, when you see the big brand-name UCLA, and then you see Saint Bonaventure, you’re probably thinking power conference team, Florida is going to see UCLA. If I was doing one of the brackets where you pick who you think is goi...

GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we preview the Florida Gators softball team’s opening weekend of SEC play this weekend.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre also talk about how the baseball team is doing as they have one more weekend before SEC play starts next weekend.

Andrew and Nick also get into talking spring football and what positions they’re looking forward to watching this spring.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, we talked basketball, and that’s kind of dominating the storylines and everything in Gator Nation, and that’s cool. Basketball deserves its spotlight. Playing well right now. Across the campus a little bit, the diamond sports. Softball, #2 in the country. Baseball, #1, maybe next weeks. I don’t know. They got swept by UCF this weekend. Biggest question is is UCF national champions now?

Nick:                         That was the joke of the week. No. They’re not claiming a national championship. It’s certainly a good win for UCF. It’s not like UCF is a bad team. They’re going to be a regional team. They threw their Saturday guy on Wednesday, and that’s baseball.

Andrew:                 It is. Man, Florida won’t see very many guys that throw like that guy. That is an old-school lefty pitcher. Barely hitting the radar gun at what, 85, Nick? I saw at times it was 83, 84. I can’t say I heard him hitting 90 all night, but maybe I was wrong. He was very sporadic. At the beginning of the game he was pretty sharp, and then he loses his control a little bit, and then some bad calls. We’ll get into that in a second. Then JJ Schwarz flies out to the warning track, almost hits a grand slam.         I thought Sully and Wil Dalton were about to get chumped.

Nick:                         Wil Dalton, he runs the count to 3-0, two questionable strike calls, and then now it’s 3-2, and you get two bad calls. You swing at a bad pitch. You strike out. Dalton pointed his bat at the umpire and said, “That’s on you.” You might be able to get away with telling the umpire that’s on you. A lot of times you’re not going to get away with pointing a bat at him. I think Sully came out of the dugout quick kind of to just get in the way of Dalton, in case he got too hot.

Andrew:                 I also think Sully was letting him know, listen, that sucked. That called sucked. First of all, the 3-0 pitch maybe, because it’s just to get me over fastball. A lot of times umpires are lenient with that pitch. I guess I can understand that a little bit, but then the 3-1 pitch was just as bad.

Nick:                         There was a lot of frustration the night before in Orlando. The strike zone was terrible. You’re looking at a team in Florida who has the best, from a pitching standpoint, the best walk to strikeout ratio and walk per night in the country, and then for them to have 10 walks in a game that’s not a bad game, that’s just a bad strike zone. The umpire Wednesday had nothing to do with the game on Tuesday, but Florida’s players did, and there was definitely some frustration carrying over.

Andrew:                 I don’t even know. I don’t even know what to say. It was bad. That was bad, bad umpiring. Let’s move on a little bit. Kind of talk about what we’re going to talk about in this podcast.

Nick:                         Real quick. There’s a lot, you’ll get it too with softball, and we talk about it more than once, there’s a lot of football mentality when it comes to being a fan and watching these. I get that everyone isn’t a diehard baseball guy like us, but losing to UCF is not embarrassing. It’s baseball. Florida lost two games last year to Florida Gulf Coast, and then won a national championship. It’s not embarrassing.

We’ve talked about the scholarships. There’s a ton of teams and guys in the state of Florida that can’t go to Florida,