Gator Sports: Thoughts of the Day

June 24, 2023

A few thoughts to jump start your Saturday morning.

The marathon that is the college baseball season comes down to three games in Omaha and finally, we get the series that we never got to see in the regular season – Florida (53-15) vs. LSU (52-16) in a best-two-out-of-three all Southeastern Conference matchup to determine the NCAA championship.

There is juicy irony to this matchup that begins tonight (7 p.m., ESPN). Not only are the Gators and LSU the last two teams standing in this season that began back in February, but they’re both in the championship series of the College World Series for the first time since 2017. Florida took out LSU in two games in 2017 to capture the first NCAA baseball championship in school history.

To get to the College World Series in 2017, the Gators had to beat Wake Forest twice in three games in the Gainesville Super Regional. LSU had to play four straight days this past week, beating Wake Forest twice in three games to advance to the championship series against the Gators. Back in 2017, the Gators had to beat TCU twice in three games to advance to the championship series with LSU. The Gators eliminated TCU back on Wednesday evening, their third straight win in Omaha.

By winning their half of the Omaha bracket in three games, the pitching sets up nicely for Kevin O’Sullivan and the Gators who will go with Brandon Sproat (8-3, 4.66 ERA, 127 strikeouts) tonight and Hurston Waldrep (10-3, 3.99 ERA, 154 strikeouts) Sunday afternoon. If a third game is necessary Monday evening, the Gators may choose either Ryan Slater (10-1, 3.68 ERA, 48 strikeouts) or Cade Fisher (6-0, 3.22 ERA, 42 strikeouts) since the normal third man in the rotation – Jac Caglianone (7-3, 3.68 ERA, 85 strikeouts – would be working on four days rest since his Wednesday start against TCU.

The situation is less clear for LSU, which had to play four games last week including three against Wake Forest to get to the championship series. Ace Paul Skenes (12-2, 1.69 ERA, 209 strikeouts), worked eight innings on four days rest Thursday night, throwing 120 pitches. Skenes threw 123 pitches last Saturday against Tennessee in his first College World Series start. Would LSU coach Jay Johnson be willing to throw Skenes against the Gators with three or fewer days of rest this weekend? Most experts figure Skenes might be used in a 1-inning closer role Saturday or Sunday and if the series goes to Monday, perhaps two or three innings.

Tonight, LSU is expected to go with righthander Ty Floyd (7-0, 4.45 ERA, 103 strikeouts). Floyd pitched five innings of 2-hit baseball, striking out 10, in the Tigers’ 3-2 loss to Wake Forest back on Monday night. The Sunday starter could be Nate Ackenhausen (3-0, 2.86 ERA), who threw six shutout innings in his only start of the season to keep LSU’s hopes alive in an elimination win over Tennessee back on Tuesday.

Game notes: Heading into the championship series, Florida’s most likely MVP candidates seem to be shortstop Josh Rivera (4-12, 2 HR, 3 RBI) and closer Brandon Neely (2-0, 5 innings, 4 strikeouts) … Florida is 3-0 in Omaha despite the first five in the batting order (Cade Kurland, Wyatt Langford, Caglianone, Rivera and BT Riopelle) going a collective 6-38 (.157 batting average). Those five are due for a breakout series … Caglianone needs one home run (he has 31) to win the NCAA home run championship outright (tied with Wake Forest’s Brock Wilken). Caglianone needs one RBI to tie Preston Tucker for the UF single-season record of 85 … The Gators are 16-11 all-time at Charles Schwab Field … LSU is second in the NCAA in home runs (138) while Florida is third (136) … LSU has a team ERA of 4.30 (20th nationally) while Florida is 33rd at 4.48.

Adam Steinberg new UF men’s tennis coach

Adam Steinberg, who won an NCAA championship in 2006 at Pepperdine and the last nine seasons the head coach at Michigan, has been named Florida’s new men’s tennis coach, succeeding Bryan Shelton, who resigned to coach his son Ben Shelton on the pro tour. Shelton led Florida to the 2021 NCAA title.

Steinberg has been the head coach at St. John’s (76-23), Alabama (69-57), Pepperdine (282-105) and Michigan, compiling a 32-year record of 582-287. At Michigan Steinberg led the Wolverines to seven consecutive NCAA appearances and back-to-back trips to the quarter-finals. He was Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2022.

Castleton gets 2-way contract with the Los Angeles Lakers

Colin Castleton wasn’t taken in the two rounds of the NBA Draft Thursday night, but he landed a two-way free agent contract with the Los Angeles Lakers and their G-League affiliate South Bay Lakers. The two-way contract will allow Castleton to play in the G-League while being brought up to the Los Angeles Lakers in the event of an injury to the NBA team or a roster vacancy. Castleton’s contract with the Lakers will allow him to be paid at a higher salary than the typical G-League player.

While earning All-SEC first team in 2023 and All-SEC second team in both 2021 and 2022, Castleton averaged 14.9 points, 7.8 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game during his UF career. He scored 1,165 points at UF after transferring from Michigan.

The best college basketball league?

If the NBA Draft is the measuring stick, then the top conference in all of NCAA basketball is the SEC. Thursday night, 10 SEC players were taken (six in the first round, four in the second) in the draft, and if you count the fact former Gator Keyontae Johnson and Toumani Camara (formerly of Georgia) went in the second round, that’s 12 (20 percent) of the players taken in the two rounds. The Big Ten had seven drafted in the first and second rounds, while the Big East and ACC had five each and the Pac-12 and Big 12 had four each.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: LSU football and basketball were dealt an embarrassing blow by the fine folks at the NCAA. The infractions committee vacated 37 wins from LSU in years 2012-15 because offensive lineman Vadal Alexander’s father was paid $180,150 by a booster who embezzled the money from a Baton Rouge hospital. The 37 wins were also vacated from the record of former LSU head coach Les Miles. Instead of a career record of 145-73, Miles’ record dips to 108-73, a .597 winning percentage which makes him ineligible for the College Football Hall of Fame.

Former LSU basketball coach Will Wade, now the head coach at McNeese State, was given a 2-year show cause for major recruiting violations that surfaced during the FBI investigation into college basketball corruption. Wade will be suspended the first 10 games of the 2023-24 season at McNeese.

It’s bad publicity for LSU, but in reality, that’s about it because the NCAA is essentially a toothless Tiger. Football got three years of probation and reduced official visits and fired offensive line coach James Cregg got a 3-year show cause. Basketball also got three years of probation and a $5,000 fine.

That’s it. It is embarrassing for the school in one sense, but embarrassment is like water running off a duck’s feathers. The duck keeps on swimming along, unimpeded. In private, LSU athletic director Scott Woodward probably feels like throwing a victory party.

Meanwhile, up at Kansas, Bill Self has to be giggling. If this is all the NCAA can do to LSU, he has to figure that if the NCAA tries hitting him with anything worse, he’ll take it to court. Given the NCAA’s abysmal record in court cases – it only seems like they are Oh and Three Zillion – you have to know they will lose this case, too.

Charley Pell must be rolling over in his grave about now. Not only is cheating legal now that there is such a thing as NIL (Now It’s Legal!), but the harsh penalties the Gators received back in 1984 would likely be nothing more than a slap on the wrist in today’s NCAA.

What we have is an NCAA that is completely incapable of getting anything right. Under the likes of Cedric Dempsey, Myles Brand and the incredibly inept Mark Emmert, we have an organization that spent nearly three full decades doing a dandy impersonation of Don Quixote, charging up a hill to do battle with windmills rather that address legitimate problems that are like chickens coming home to roost. The NCAA’s horrendous responses to issues that date back before any current college football or basketball players were even born have created such a mess that politician Charlie Baker was hired to go to the United States Congress seeking relief. As if an organization that rewards itself with pay raises while the country keeps ringing up debts that may never be paid can fix the mess that is college athletics. Charlie Baker will fail, just as his predecessors failed. For all his stupidity and ineptitude, the NCAA kept rewarded Mark Emmert with pay raises.

There is but one solution and that is to ditch the NCAA completely. Burn down that house and form a brand new organization with its own set of rules and a commissioner cut from the same cloth of the late, great Pete Rozelle. Pete Rozelle ruled the National Football League with an iron hand, but he also transformed the NFL into the modern, streamlined organization that it is today. Notice you don’t see any NFL franchises going broke. That’s because of the work Pete Rozelle did decades ago. In the NFL there is a salary cap and there are restrictions on free agency. In collegiate sports, thanks to the lack of leadership from the NCAA, there are no rules or limits for NIL money and the transfer portal allows athletes to sell themselves to the highest bidder. It is an unsustainable model that is the result of unqualified academics trying to run a multibillion-dollar business. Prior to running the NCAA, Charlie Baker was the governor of Massachusetts and before that he ran non-profit health benefits company. He played JV basketball at Harvard, hardly what you would consider adequate training to run a successful multisport business.

The lack of leadership tells us that if the football-playing Division I schools don’t secede from the NCAA we are going to see schools dropping some of their non-revenue sports because they can’t pay the bills. If and when that doesn’t work, we’ll start to see some athletic programs contemplating bankruptcy. It could happen, sooner and not later. We’re closer than ever before to some Division I school going belly-up financially.