THINKING OUT LOUD ON THURSDAY (1) Ben Pickman of Sports Illustrated has offered up a list of all-too-early Heisman Trophy candidates for 2020, a list that includes Bo Nix of Auburn and Jamie Newman of Georgia but no Kyle Trask. On his Other Players to Watch list you’ll find Mac Jones and Jaylen Waddle of Alabama but again no Trask. Trask put up better numbers than Nix and Newman last year while quarterbacking the Gators to an 11-2 record and an Orange Bowl win. I understand why Pickman would have Justin Fields (Ohio State), Chubba Hubbard (Oklahoma State) and Trevor Lawrence (Clemson). Any list that doesn’t have those guys is bogus, but Nix and Newman over Trask? If they gave out a Rodney Dangerfield Award (“I get no respect!”) for college football, Trask would be the hands-down winner. Trask, by the way, was a finalist for the Manning Award, won Wednesday night by LSU quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow. (2) Will Sammon, the fine writer/reporter for The Athletic who covers the University of Florida, reports that Diwun Black had a 3.77 GPA in his first semester at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and that MGCCC works regularly with UF staffers to ensure that Black will be on track to graduate and enroll at UF as part of the 2021 recruiting class. MGCCC defensive coordinator says, “Diwun is very much a Gator.” Sammon reports that Black tells every school that calls that his recruiting is shut down and that he is all Gator. He’s 6-4, 228 pounds and has brought his 40 time down from 4.66 to 4.6. (3) Apparently, Adidas isn’t the only shoe company paying high school and AAU basketball players. At the trial of lawyer Michael Avenatti, accused of attempting to extort millions from Nike, it was revealed Wednesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting an investigation into Nike making illegal payments to youth basketball players. This should come as no surprise to anyone in light of the corruption trials that involved former Adidas executives and other middlemen plotting with coaches from schools like Kansas, Arizona, LSU, North Carolina State, Southern Cal, Auburn, South Carolina and Miami to secure players. You have to know that if Adidas is spending lavishly to get players committed to Adidas schools, then Nike can’t be far behind. If the Feds ever get to the bottom of this, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to discover that Nike outspends Adidas 2-to-1 in illegal payments. I don’t think Under Armour is pure as the driven snow, either. (4) Since I’m on the subject of corruption in college basketball, I am starting to doubt the NCAA will send out any further Notices of Allegations until after the current season ends. Since the NCAA Tournament is the organization’s showcase championship event and biggest money maker, I can’t see the Committee on Infractions doing anything that would distract in any way. Kansas, Southern Cal and North Carolina State (among others) have already received their notices but none of these schools has been brought in for the hearings before the committee yet. I believe the NCAA will wait until sometime in May when it’s a fairly dead news cycle to announce punishment and further Notices of Allegations. Of course, this also means this stuff will drag into next season as every accused school will threaten lawsuits and utilize every appeal that is available to delay the inevitable. (5) Dayton, coached by former UF assistant and Alabama head coach Anthony Grant, is 19-2 after a 73-69 win over Duquesne Wednesday night. The Flyers are very capable of playing deep into March, led by Obi Toppin, who just might be the best college basketball player in the country. Toppin is an exceptional scorer and rebounder with range that extends beyond the three-point line. Anthony goes 11-deep on a bench that is a nice combination of size, athleticism and three-point shooters. The only losses were both in overtime, by six against Kansas and two against Colorado. Currently, Joe Lunardi of ESPN has Dayton a #3 seed in the Midwest while Jerry Palm of CBSSPorts.com has the Flyers a #2 in the West. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dayton as a #1 once the brackets get announced in March. (6) The early enrollee decisions don’t always turn out exactly as planned. Cornerback Malachi Moore (5-11, 171, Trussville, AL Hewitt-Trussville) signed with Alabama in December and planned to enroll early along with 13 other signees. A numbers crunch was created, however, when Najee Harris and Dylan Moses elected to return to Alabama for their senior seasons and Joshua McMillon was granted an extra year of eligibility by the NCAA. Moore was asked to wait until May to enroll in school when Alabama can get to or under the NCAA 85 scholarship limit. (7) I was asked to name the five best college basketball players I’ve ever seen by an old friend Wednesday afternoon. It’s difficult to name just five without leaving off some outstanding players so I gave him my top 25 instead. I’m limiting it to players I have actually seen play: (1) Pete Maravich, LSU; (2) Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, UCLA; (3) David Thompson, North Carolina State; (4) Michael Jordan, North Carolina; (5) Bill Walton, UCLA; (6) Larry Bird, Indiana State; (7) Elvin Hayes, Houston; (8) Earvin Johnson, Michigan State; (9) Dan Issel, Kentucky; (10) Christian Laettner, Duke; (11) Scott May, Indiana; (12) Phil Ford, North Carolina; (13) John Lucas, Maryland; (14) Bobby Jones, North Carolina; (15) Anthony Davis, Kentucky; (16) Ralph Sampson, Virginia; (17) Artis Gilmore, Jacksonville; (18) Bernard King, Tennessee; (19) Dwayne “Pearl” Washington, Syracuse; (20) Sidney Wicks, UCLA; (21) Leonard Bias, Maryland; (22) Larry Johnson, UNLV; (23) Darrell Griffith, Louisville; (24) Butch Lee, Marquette; (25) Clyde Drexler, Houston. SEC BASKETBALL Wednesday’s scores #13 Kentucky (16-4, 6-1 SEC) 71, Vanderbilt (8-12, 0-7 SEC) 62 #22 LSU (16-4, 7-0 SEC) 90, Alabama (12-8, 4-3 SEC) 76 South Carolina (12-8, 4-3 SEC) 79, Arkansas (15-5, 3-4 SEC) 77 Saturday’s games FLORIDA (12-8, 4-3 SEC) at Vanderbilt (8-12, 0-7 SEC), SEC Network Ole Miss (10-10, 1-6 SEC) at #22 LSU (16-4, 7-0 SEC), ESPN2 Texas A&M (10-9, 4-3 SEC) at Georgia (11-9, 1-6 SEC), SEC Network Tennessee (12-8, 4-3 SEC) at Mississippi State (13-7, 4-3 SEC), ESPNU Missouri (10-10, 2-5 SEC) at South Carolina (12-8, 4-3 SEC), SEC Network #13 Kentucky (16-4, 6-1 SEC) at #17 Auburn (18-2, 5-2 SEC), ESPN Arkansas (15-5, 3-4 SEC) at Alabama (12-8, 4-3 SEC), SEC Network GOOD QUOTES FOR THURSDAY Mel Kiper of ESPN on why Joe Burrow might have been the top choice in the NFL Draft even if Tua Tagovailoa hadn’t been injured: “Burrow was the better quarterback this year than anybody ever would have imagined. That was probably the greatest year you could have ever had from any quarterback in any year. It’s not like he has a weak arm. He has a good arm and you don’t need a howitzer to be a great quarterback or a Hall of Fame quarterback in this league. The way he moves, his instincts, his competitiveness, all of that’s off the charts and he played all those teams ranked in the top 10 or top five, so the schedule was very demanding as well … If all things would have been equal, and there was no injury concerns, I twould have been a debate – Tua or Burrow. It would have been a debate but it wouldn’t be a lock that Tua was going over Burrow, based on the kind of year Joe Burrow had.” From Stewart Mandel of The Athletic on the daunting task Sam Pittman faces as the new head coach at Arkansas: “It’s no stretch to say the Razorbacks have become the Kansas of the SEC, not remotely competitive in the conference the last few years, not even capable of beating middling Group of 5 teams like Western Kentucky and San Jose State. This could be a years-long rebuild. So it makes sense that [AD Hunter] Yuracheck would want a proven recruiter ostensibly capable of upgrading the roster. But man, it takes much more than that. We’ll just have to see if he can instill the type of culture and achieve the high degree of buy-in from the players necessary to pull it off. And keep it going while those guys get their brains beat in by Alabama, LSU and others.” RANDOM THOUGHTS: Miami (OH) cancelled its men’s basketball game vs. Central Michigan Tuesday and its women’s game with Western Michigan on Wednesday due to the coronavirus threat. Two off-campus students who returned after a trip to China with fever, coughing and shortness of breath are being tested for the virus … North Carolina graduate transfer tight end Carl Tucker (36 catches, 549 yards, four touchdowns in his UNC career) has committed to Alabama … Former University of South Carolina wide receiver Moe Brown, who played for Steve Spurrier from 2006-09, has announced he is running for the 5th Congressional District seat in the state of South Carolina … It is being reported by Cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot that Roger Goodell plans to reinstate Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett within the next 60 days. Garrett was suspended for the rest of the 2019 season back when he ripped the helmet off Pittsburgh quarterback Mason Rudolph and struck him in the head. Garrett unsuccessfully appealed the suspension, claiming Rudolph used a racial slur … This is weird. Kobe King, a 6-4 redshirt sophomore guard and Wisconsin’s second leading scorer at 10.0 points per game, has elected to leave the team and transfer out. Why quit in midseason and bail on your teammates? Maybe King has an excellent reason for making that decision, but it’s rather strange and likely will have an effect on who’s willing to take him as a transfer.

WHITE STRUGGLES TO FIND ANSWERS FOR UF COLLAPSE Mike White had the look and the sound of a coach who has almost run out of answers. He struggled to find the words to explain why the Gators (12-8, 4-3 SEC) could play with such intensity and focus in one half only to lose it in the second. “It was one of the strangest games I’ve ever been a part of in terms of how each half was, both offensively and defensively,” White said after Florida dropped its third straight game, 78-71, to Mississippi State at the O-Dome. “In the first 20, as good as we’ve probably played offensively, downhill, transition, sprinting up and down the court. “Second half, first five minutes of the second half, I had a pit in my stomach because our level of energy wasn’t even close to what it was in the first half. We’re jogging back in transition and getting dunked on. They’re scoring and we’re walking the ball up the court. We couldn’t get our guys to find that same rhythm in transition offense.” It went from a first half when the Gators led by as many as 16 (36-20 at the 6:00 mark) and 10 at the break, to a final 10 minutes when Mississippi State grabbed the lead and the Gators struggled just to match baskets. The offense just fell off a cliff and a defense that hustled and swarmed in the first half stood around while Mississippi State got just about every shot it wanted. There are days when shots won’t fall and hot shooting first halves can give way to second halves when it’s hard to find the ocean from the end of the pier. That’s basketball. In previous seasons, White always knew that when the shots wouldn’t fall defense could keep the Gators within striking distance. As he has seen in the last three losses, however, there is no consistency when it comes to defensive intensity and focus. Instead the team he could rely on to play hard at the defensive end in the early part of the season only plays in spurts. “Our numbers aren’t very pretty and they’re getting uglier every day,” White said. With 11 games remaining in the regular season, the Gators don’t have much time to pretty things up on the defensive end. White is well aware that this team is running out of time to play up to its potential and if they don’t find their mojo in a hurry, they will struggle to even make the NIT field. The season is on the brink and that’s a very sobering thought. SEC BASKETBALL Tuesday’s scores Mississippi State (13-7, 4-3 SEC) 78, FLORIDA (12-8, 4-3 SEC) 71 Texas A&M (10-9, 4-3 SEC) 63, Tennessee (12-8, 4-3 SEC) 58 Missouri (10-10, 2-5 SEC) 72, Georgia (11-9, 1-6 SEC) 62 Auburn (18-2, 5-2 SEC) 83, Ole Miss (10-10, 1-6 SEC) 82, 2 OT Wednesday’s games Vanderbilt (8-11, 0-6 SEC) at #13 Kentucky (15-4, 5-1 SEC), SEC Network Alabama (12-7, 4-2 SEC) at #22 LSU (15-4, 6-0 SEC), ESPN2 South Carolina (11-8, 3-3 SEC), at Arkansas (15-4, 3-3 SEC), SEC Network WANDERING WEDNESDAY MIND (1) The decision of Kentucky freshman Khalil Whitney is truly bizarre as he says it’s his intention to transfer to another Division I school. Had Whitney elected to transfer after the fall semester (sometime in December) he would be eligible as soon as the fall semester of 2020 concluded. By transferring in January, he will have to sit until the 2021-22 season. Good luck on his part getting the NCAA to grant a waiver after he bailed in late January. Given his lack of productivity as a freshman and his unwillingness to devote himself to playing defense, good luck landing a job in the G-League or even in one of the overseas leagues. One last thought on Whitney: If he had no intention of playing defense then why did he sign with Kentucky where John Calipari is known to as a defense first coach? (2) Alabama defensive back Nigel Knott has entered his medically disqualified priror to the 2019 season only to be medically cleared to play once the season began. Since he signed with Alabama in 2016 he will probably be able to transfer as a graduate, which means he will be immediately eligible to play if he finds a Division I school as a landing spot. (3) Devin Cochran, who started the last nine games at left tackle (missed the first three due to an injury) for Vanderbilt in 2019, has transferred to Georgia Tech. He’s a grad transfer who will be immediately eligible. (4) One of the reasons Bo Pelini left Youngstown State where he was head coach for LSU, where he will be Coach O’s defensive coordinator, is money. LSU gave him a three-year contract worth $2.3 million per year. He was making a base salary of $213,894 at Youngstown State, supplemented by $150,000 a month payments from his termination at Nebraska. The Nebraska payments came to an end recently. (5) Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated makes a legitimate point in his interview with Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin, who is 44 years old and is now on his FIFTH head coaching job. Dellenger asks has anyone in football coaching history had more Division I and NFL HBC jobs in history at such an age? Kiffin has been the head coach in the NFL (Oakland Raiders), SEC (Tennessee), Pac-12 (Southern Cal) and Conference USA (Florida Atlantic) before landing the Ole Miss (SEC) gig. (6) Keep a close eye on what happens with Miami quarterback Jarren Williams, who has entered his name in the NCAA transfer portal. Williams has hired attorney Thomas Mars, the same guy who represented Justin Fields (Georgia to Ohio State) and Tate Martell (Ohio State to Miami) and got them immediate eligibility. Williams threw for 2,197 yards and 19 TDs as a redshirt freshman in 2019 while playing behind an O-line that allowed 51 sacks (128th out of 130 teams nationally) and despite an offensive philosophy that at times was borderline bizarre. A couple of places I could see him transferring to: (1) Baylor, where Charlie Brewer has had multiple concussions and probably needs to give up football for future health considerations; and (2) Tennessee, where he could be coached by Jim Chaney and would represent an upgrade from Jarrett Guarantano. (7) With a week to go before National Signing Day we probably won’t see much of a dip with Georgia. This year. Next year? That could be quite the different story since Kirby Smart lost probably his top three recruiters in Sam Pittman (now Arkansas HBC), Scott Fountain (now special teams coordinator at Arkansas) and James Coley (now tight ends coach at Texas A&M). Pittman was the reason Georgia has landed so many outstanding O-linemen and there is a chance Georgia couls lose commits Broderick Jones and Sedrick Van Pran in this recruiting cycle. Fountain recruited Jacksonville and down through Central Florida while Coley opened the pipeline to South Florida. GOOD QUOTES FOR WEDNESDAY Seth Davis of The Athletic on how Kobe Bryant’s decision to bypass college and go straight to the NBA changed the game from the grassroots level all the way to the NBA: “In the years that followed, may of the top high school players tried to be like Kobe and go straight to the NBA. When it became apparent just how good he was, every NBA team went hunting for the next one. His decision to bypass Nike and sign a huge contract with Adidas ignited a sneaker war in grassroots basketball that still simmers to this day. For the players who weren’t quite good enough to go straight to the league out of high school, the next best thing was to leave college after a year or two. The surge of defections was so intense that in 2006 the NBA mandated an age minimum of 19 years, the so-called ‘one-and-done’ rule. The purpose of the rule wasn’t to keep future Kobe Bryants from entering the league, but rather to discourage the players who wanted to be like Kobe but weren’t nearly good enough.” David Lombardi of The Athletic, Richard Sherman talks about his decision to sign with Kyle Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers for an incentive-based contract rather than take a contract with more guaranteed money with the Detroit Lions back in 2018: “That’s what I appreciate about Kyle. His culture and the way he did things was very similar to how we did things in Seattle and what I was accustomed to. That made a huge difference. Hey I can get this $20 million guaranteed and be in Detroit and lose football games. Or I can go to a place where I’m very comfortable with the scheme, coach and culture and I’m very comfortable with the things they do and I really believe we can win.” Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated on Lane Kiffin and what he has learned as an assistant working for Pete Carroll (Southern Cal) and Nick Saban (Alabama): “His time as head coach at USC taught him plenty, but Kiffin says he learned the most as an assistant for seven years under Pete Carroll and three with Saban, something he describes as getting two degrees in football, one from Harvard and one from Yale. When he’s faced with a decision, he often asks himself what both Carroll and Saban would do. Many times, the answers to those questions are not the same. ‘You can’t get two more different coaches,’ he says. They do share a similarity, Kiffin points out: They each failed early in their careers. Saban won more than seven games once in five years at Michigan State and lasted just two years in the NFL. Carroll was fired by both the Jets and Patriots.” RANDOM THOUGHTS: Here’s a little factoid that you may or may not know. Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is the son of former Major League Baseball pitcher Pat Mahomes (42-39 career record) … With the Boston Red Sox contemplating trading outfielder Mookie Betts, Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated points out that of players 5-9 or shorter, only Mel Ott (242 home runs) had more home runs than Betts (139) and that only eight outfielders 5-9 or shorter had 139 homers in their entire careers ... The Associated Press is reporting that the Houston Astros are nearing a deal to hire Dusty Baker as its manager … A Pennsylvania judge rejected a request by former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky to have his 30-60 year child molestation sentence reduced ... Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw says he’s not seeing any remorse from the Houston Astros over their sign-stealing scandal. The Dodgers lost to the Astros in the 2017 World Series when the Astros were using electronic surveillance to steal signs from opponents.

If you ask Andrew Nembhard, the reasoning is fairly simplistic in theory. “I just think we weren’t playing hard enough on the defensive side of the ball.” The Florida Gators point guard stood in a scrum of reporters following the Gators 72-61 loss to No. 1 Baylor and the sophomore, notoriously known for already being the quiet one on a team bursting with personalities, spoke even lower than normal in a tone that could be considered somber if it weren’t for the words that were carrying with them a message he wanted resonated. “They’re a great team and all. I definitely wanna give them their credit but I think it was more of what we didn’t do compared to what they were doing. “[We] lost it, focus in the first half, defensively and offensively. Started relaxing defensively and they capitalized.” The relaxation came on the heels of a hot start. Florida led by four at the first media timeout and had shot 70% up to that point. On the other end, the defense was smothering, leaving Baylor wide open for some shots but also forcing the Bears into five early turnovers. Each set was poised for success as guys moved with ease, set proper screens and were in place for an assist with impeccable timing. Then, a little more than 12 minutes in, they let themselves look away from each other, assumed each shot would fall like they had been and things began to fall apart. “Maybe [it’s] comfortability with a lead,” pondered Nembhard, continuing, “just not understanding that we gotta play 40 minutes to beat any team in our league, any team that’s a caliber of [Baylor].” From the bench, head coach Mike White saw the shift as well. What’s worse, he’s seen it before. “We didn’t defend very well in Baton Rouge. We were, this team early in the season was—” here White gave a long pause allowing the silence to speak to his slight befuddlement at this team’s progression paralleling regression. “—our defensive numbers were a lot better than they are right now. Our offensive numbers are much better right now than they were a month ago, we all know that. We’ve gotten a lot better offensively. Defensively, there’s a bunch of factors right as to why we didn’t give Baylor a better game. Accountability is probably first and foremost and the more that we can grow our bench defensively, I think the more we can hold our starters more accountable. “Some of it obviously is experience. Some of it is at times maybe playing a couple of guys that we rely on pretty heavily, extended minutes, maybe too often; that’s on me, we gotta evaluate that. And then again, going back to earlier, some of I think is the fact that we’ve lost a little bit of edge as we see the ball going through the net more.” Acknowledging the problem is the first step, but then comes the painful step…how do you fix it? “If I knew we would’ve defended better [Saturday],” quipped White. “I don’t know how to fix it honestly,” echoed Nembhard. Part of the issue is that this exist much more in the mindset than the game plan. Asking someone to change how they view the game is infinitely more difficult than simply changing a play. As Mike White explained early in the season, his role as a head coach this year has been more about directing the psychology of the athlete as opposed to the offense or defense. There are still lessons to be learned for the young team but immaturity is no longer an excuse. “We’ve got to continue to develop our young guys for sure. I’m not going to sit here and say we lost that game because we’re young, we lost that game because Baylor is better than us,” admitted White. “And our young guys have to improve, but our sophomores do too, and KJ [Kerry Blackshear Jr.] does too, and I do too. All of us, we just have to get better. We don’t sit here with our team and talk about how young we are. We’ve got to find a way regardless of age, experience, girth, how many summers we’ve had in the weight room.” So age isn’t a reason. This far into the calendar, gelling isn’t a reason. But what was it that allowed Baylor to go on a 15-6 run to pull ahead and close out the first half? What was it that gave up enough three pointers that the Bears shot sheet looked like a rainbow? Luckily for the Gators, this is an answer they do have. “Just know that every possession counts,” said sophomore forward Keyontae Johnson. “Just playing, playing the full 40 minutes on both sides of the floor and staying connected and playing together, biggest thing,” echoed Nembhard as to what they learned in the loss. And just in case the message wasn’t getting across with the team leaders, Mike White has preached it ad nauseam of late. “We’ve gotta learn, this team has to learn—and this is what we’ve been preaching lately—that every position potentially is the winning possession of the game, every possession and we’ve gotta stay in that position. And that takes maturity and we’re immature team right now and from a mental toughness standpoint, we’re nowhere near what it takes to be a championship level team.” There has been one freshman who has stood out in this way. Guard Scottie Lewis is oft lauded for his defensive prowess and deservedly so. But when the Gators got down and appeared lackadaisical, it was Lewis who demanded they stay focused on the game at hand. He yelled from the bench, he blocked shots, he gathered his teammates around him after a foul and calmed them down for the next possession. And when the officials called a ball Baylor’s way when it appeared to be Florida’s, Lewis argued his case then stood in defense for the in-bounds and harassed the pass to the point of a turnover. "He’s always been that guy that gives us energy and I think when he has a lot of energy, it makes our team a lot better cause we all feed off of his energy so we need that be consistent all day and every day honestly, for us to win,” pointed out Nembhard. If there was any time for a message to sink in and a new motto adapted, for Lewis, the freshmen and the entire team, it’s now. The Gators have 12 regular season games left. The harrowing stretch of Auburn, LSU and Baylor now behind them with at least one win to show with their scars means Florida turns its attention to Mississippi State (12-7, 3-3), Vanderbilt (8-11, 0-6) and Georgia (11-8, 1-5) before heading to Oxford to face the Ole Miss team they beat 71-55 in mid-January. Said Nembhard, “this is the time, this is the time, definitely. We’re kinda counting down our games, I think 12 more games left, regular season, so we gotta make that turn right now, get kinda a streak going for sure.”

WHITE EMPHASIZES BETTER REBOUNDING, DEFENSIVE ACCOUNTABILITY Mike White only has to look at the Mississippi State starting lineup to know what an uphill battle the Gators (12-7, 4-2 SEC) face tonight when they face the Bulldogs (12-7, 3-3 SEC) at the O-Dome (7 p.m., ESPN2). The Bulldogs go 6-11, 6-10, 6-7, 6-6 and 6-2 in their starting lineup and they bring three 6-8s and a 7-footer off the bench. Based on size alone, it’s not difficult to understand why they lead the Southeastern Conference in rebounding differential (8.5 rebounds per game) and that is precisely White’s concern tonight. “They’re extremely talented, top four in the SEC in both offensive and defensive efficiency, one of the best shot blocking teams in the country,” White said Monday prior to Florida’s practice at the O-Dome. “I think they’re second in all of college basketball in offensive rebounding.” Rebounding – or lack of it – was one of the chief reasons the Gators failed to knock off Baylor at the O-Dome Saturday night. The Bears dominated the boards (37-26) and had a +5 margin on offensive rebounds. It was the second consecutive game in which the Gators had lost the rebounding battle by double figures (LSU beat UF 84-82 and outrebounded the Gators by 10). In both the LSU and Baylor games, a rebound here or there could have led to extra shots that could have altered the outcomes. So how do the Gators reverse the trend on the backboards? White emphasizes the Gators have to do a better job of valuing each possession. He pointed to a handful of possessions in each half of the Baylor game in which UF slacked off either defensively or in boxing out on the boards. “You can’t have average possessions and beat a high-level team,” White said. “You can’t compete for a championship if you have five or six possessions both offensively and defensively a half to where we don’t execute and we’re not as accountable as we need to be defensively and on the glass.” Point guard Andrew Nembhard, whose last two games total 31 points and 18 assists, knows to win against Mississippi State the Gators can’t have empty possessions offensively and a lack of intensity on the defensive end. Everybody, he says, has to become more accountable. “I think it’s everybody on the team,” he said. “We just think we can get away with taking plays off sometimes and we just gotta all mature and understand that it’s a full 40 minutes for us to win and we gotta play the whole 40 minutes.” SEC BASKETBALL Tuesday’s games Mississippi State (12-7, 3-3 SEC) at FLORIDA (12-7, 4-2 SEC), ESPN2 Texas A&M (9-9, 3-3 SEC) at Tennessee (12-7, 4-2 SEC), SEC Network Georgia (11-8, 1-5 SEC) at Missouri (9-10, 1-5 SEC), SEC Network #17 Auburn (17-2, 4-2 SEC) at Ole Miss (10-9, 1-5 SEC), ESPNU Wednesday’s games Vanderbilt (8-11, 0-6 SEC) at #13 Kentucky (15-4, 5-1 SEC), SEC Network Alabama (12-7, 4-2 SEC) at #22 LSU (15-4, 6-0 SEC), ESPN2 South Carolina (11-8, 3-3 SEC) at Arkansas (15-4, 4-2 SEC), SEC Network CRUNCHING NUMBERS With a little more than a week before National Signing Day, Dan Mullen has 10 players already in school, 11 who signed their National Letters of Intent back in December and two transfers (wide receiver Jordan Pouncey and running back Lorenzo Lingard) signed and enrolled. Committed are grad transfer wide receiver Justin Shorter, wide receivers Xzavier Henderson and Leonard Manuel and athlete Marc Britt. Based on those numbers, that leaves a maximum of three the Gators can sign for the recruiting class of 2020, one of which almost certainly will be 4-star safety Avantae Williams of DeLand. There is a possibility that neither Manuel nor Britt will qualify due to test scores and one – or both – may not sign next Wednesday. That could open up two more scholarships. SOME STUFF FOR TUESDAY (1) The on again/off again hire of Bo Pelini as the defensive coordinator at LSU is on again, this time for good. It was reported last week that Pelini would be Coach O’s new DC, but then Pelini reportedly denied it. Monday, Pelini officially took the job, which brings Pelini back to LSU, where he was the DC for the 2007 national championship team. In the years since, Pelini has been the head coach at Nebraska (fired even though he went 67-27 and won a minimum of nine games every single year) and Youngstown State. This is a Grade A hire for Coach O, who has not yet named his replacement for Joe Brady. (2) Former Florida offensive line coach Joe Wickline, who played at UF for Charley Pell, is the new offensive line coach at Baylor where he’s being reunited with Larry Fedora, Baylor’s new offensive coordinator. Fedora and Wickline worked together at Middle Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma State. This is a very solid hire for Dave Aranda. (3) Former Gator safety Marquand Manuel has been hired to coach the secondary of the Philadelphia Eagles. Manuel played eight years in the NFL and has spent his entire coaching career in the league. He was the defensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons in 2017-18. Manuel has a Super Bowl ring from his time working for Pete Carroll with the Seattle Seahawks (2013) and was Dan Quinn’s DC when the Falcons lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2018 Super Bowl. (4) Auburn reports athletic department revenues of $152.4 million in 2019 with a net profit of $13.2 million. It’s the most revenue in school history (more than $5 million more than 2018) and the most profitable year ever. (5) New York Giants HBC Joe Judge, who played his college football at Mississippi State, is putting a rather Southeastern Conference stamp on his first coaching staff. In addition to hiring former SEC head coaches Bret Bielema (Arkansas; defensive line) and Derek Dooley (Tennessee; offensive staff), Judge has hired Burton Burns (formerly Alabama running backs coach) and Kevin Sherrer (former Tennessee linebackers coach). It’s thought Judge will add Freddie Kitchens (former Alabama QB) to coach tight ends. (6) Ken Pomeroy, whose analytics are the best in all of college basketball reports that LSU’s combined margin of victory – 15 points – is the lowest for a six-game winning streak since 1997. LSU, off to a 6-0 start in SEC play, has four-point wins over Texas A&M and Ole Miss on the current run with the others two or fewer. (7) Former Stanford quarterback KJ Costello visited Mississippi State over the weekend and is now expected to declare he’ll spend his grad transfer year playing for Mike Leach in Starkville. If Costello goes ahead and announces MSU as his transfer destination, the top quarterbacks still on the grad transfer market are Anthony Brown (Boston College), Chase Brice (Clemson) and Peyton Ramsey (Indiana). Ramsey threw for 2,454 yards and 13 touchdowns in 2019 in seven starts. (8) Just in case someone thinks I forgot the Super Bowl will be played Sunday, I have not. I will actually watch the game from start to finish as I do every year. It’s the regular season that I find boring. I start watching the NFL once we get past the wild card weekend of the playoffs. And, just to prove that I actually know who’s playing – it’s the Kansas City Chiefs, going for their first Super Bowl since 1969, and the San Francisco 49ers, who have won five but none since 1994. GOOD QUOTES FOR TUESDAY Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports on Kobe Bryant placing family first, which is why he lived in Huntington Beach and flew to Lakers practices and games in a helicopter to maximize time with his wife and kids: “Billionaire Mark Cuban often says there is one thing his money can’t buy6y: time. Well, Kobe gave it a shot. By flying over the traffic, he found a way to embrace his dual passions: playing all-out for the Lakers while being the suburban dad of his dreams. Suddenly he could get to the Lakers training facility in 15 minutes flat. He could perform his legendary workload and still act like a work-at-home dad.” Stewart Mandel of The Athletic on giving a C grade to Missouri hiring Eli Drinkwitz as its head coach even though Drinkwitz has only one year of head coaching experience and that in the Sun Belt Conference: “Mizzou made the classic mistake of getting sucked in by a one-year wonder. Drinkwitz, 36, went 12-1 in his first year as a head coach, but he took over a ready-made Appalachian State program that won 40 games in its four previous seasons under Scott Satterfield. We have no idea if he can build a program. Before that he oversaw above-average offenses at Boise State and NC State. And for that, Mizzou gave him a six-year contract worth $4 million annually – the same salary LSU’s Ed Orgeron made during his team’s national title run last season.” Dane Brugler of The Athletic on Van Jefferson’s outstanding week at the Senior Bowl: “As the son of a former NFL receiver and current NFL receivers coach, Jefferson learned the art of route running at a young age, sharpening those skills throughout high school and college. And it was that refinement that created a buzz during practices, relying on pace, tempo and timing mid-pattern to tie defensive backs in knots. Scouts knew he held a master’s degree in route running coming in, but seeing his effectiveness versus talented corners during practice amplified his strengths. It felt like Jefferson was going to be squeezed out of the first two days of the draft because of the vast depth at receiver in this class. But talking to scouts at the end of the week, the words ‘third round’ were mentioned, as opposed to a month ago when it was ‘fourth or fifth’ round.” Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated on when Major League Baseball will decide to expand by two teams, one for each league: “Owners want two expansion teams in part because scheduling is far easier with 16-team leagues. But [MLB commissioner Rob] Manfred says baseball will not expand until the [Oakland] Athletics and [Tampa Bay] Rays secure plans for new ballparts – somewhere.” RANDOM THOUGHTS: Rocky Long, who retired as the head coach at San Diego State after leading the Aztecs to a 10-3 season in 2019 and an 81-38 record in nine seasons as the HBC, has resurfaced, this time as the defensive coordinator at New Mexico where he will work for Bobby Gonzales. Long was the HBC at New Mexico from 1999-2008, compiling a 65-69 record … The Cleveland Browns have hired 32-year-old Andrew Berry as general manager and executive vice president of football operations … Kobe Bryant’s daughter Gianna dreamed of one day playing college basketball for UConn. When UConn played Team USA in a Monday night exhibition game, the Huskies placed a #2 UConn jersey and flowers on their bench to honor the 13-year-old Gianna, who died in the helicopter crash with Kobe.

DAN MULLEN’S HOT ROLL CONTINUES At halftime of Saturday night’s Florida-Baylor basketball game, Dan Mullen stood at center court and pitched football to a roaring crowd. Reminding the packed house at the O-Dome that the Gators have won 21 games the last two years, finished in the top ten in the final poll both years and that UF is the only school in the country with a top ten football team and a top ten school academically, Mullen said, “I promise you this: That’s just the beginning.” The crowd, of course, went berserk as well they should. The Gators are going to be loaded next year and meanwhile, Mullen is continuing to load up the roster with stud recruits, the latest of which is Penn State wide receiver transfer Justin Shorter, a former 5-star who was ranked the top wide receiver in the country coming out of high school in New Jersey. Shorter has three years of eligibility remaining. In his redshirt true freshman and redshirt freshman years at Penn State, Shorter had 15 catches for 157 yards. He is 6-4, 235, with the size and speed to be an absolute mismatch nightmare for opponents. Adding Shorter to the class was expected. Jason Higdon, the final word on Florida football recruiting from his 1standtenflorida.com website, indicates that Shorter to Florida has been in the works since he announced he was leaving Penn State. Adding Shorter to a wide receiver recruiting class that includes Jay Fraziers (6-4, 200, Dunnellon, FL), Xzavier Henderson (6-4, 180, Miami, FL Christopher Columbus) and Leonard Manuel (6-4, 212, Fort Lauderdale, FL Stranahan) along with Texas transfer Jordan Pouncey (enrolled) will mean the Gators have restocked a position that loses four to the NFL (Van Jefferson, Freddie Swain, Josh Hammond and Tyrie Cleveland). It is also possible that Marc Britt (6-2, 190, Miami, FL Miami Christian) could play wide receiver when he comes to Florida although most expect him to play safety. We knew Mullen could coach even before he came to Florida. What he’s done in two years at UF has only reinforced the fact that he ranks on the short list of the best football coaches in the college game. In his first two years at UF, Mullen filled in the blanks to the point the Gators will enter the 2020 season with a true SEC roster from top to bottom for the first time since 2009. What Mullen has done lately is to go beyond just putting together an SEC-caliber roster. He’s putting a championship-level roster together and it makes it easy to believe it when he says it’s “just the beginning.” BAYLOR WON AT THE 3-POINT LINE, BACKBOARDS Two sets of numbers stand out from Florida’s 72-61 loss to Baylor Saturday night. Baylor outscored Florida 27-12 from the three-point line and outrebounded the Gators 37-26. Those numbers tell exactly why the Gators lost this game. Florida collapsed its defense to defend the paint, leaving the Bears open at the three-point line and they made the Gators pay. At the defensive end, the Bears were quick enough to double down in the paint and yet get back on the perimeter to defend the three where the Gators were 4-17. When it came to rebounding Baylor’s Mark Vital and Freddie Gillespie only scored 13 combined points but they dominated the boards (17 between the two of them). Of Baylor’s 37 rebounds, 13 came on the offensive end. SEC BASKETBALL Tuesday’s games Mississippi State (12-7, 3-3 SEC) at FLORIDA (12-7, 4-2 SEC), ESPN2 Texas A&M (9-9, 3-3 SEC) at Tennessee (12-7, 4-2 SEC), SEC Network Georgia (11-8, 1-5 SEC) at Missouri (9-10, 1-5 SEC), SEC Network #16 Auburn (17-2, 4-2 SEC) at Ole Miss (10-9, 1-5 SEC), ESPNU Wednesday’s games Vanderbilt (8-11, 0-6 SEC) at #15 Kentucky (15-4, 5-1 SEC), SEC Network Alabama (12-7, 4-2 SEC) at LSU (15-4, 6-0 SEC), ESPN2 South Carolina (11-8, 3-3 SEC) at Arkansas (15-4, 3-3 SEC), SEC Network A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT KOBE BRYANT Like everyone else, I’m still numbed by the death of Kobe Bryant. We see our sports superstars as almost invincible when they are competing without giving a second thought to the fact they face the same vulnerabilities as the rest of us. We know they’re going to die someday, just we don’t expect them go so suddenly and at such a young age (41). We certainly don’t expect them to die in helicopter crashes taking their 13-year-old daughters to basketball practice. That Kobe’s daughter Gianna died with him in that crash makes it all the more surreal. I saw Kobe Bryant from a different perspective than most. I saw him play at the Adidas camp in between his junior and senior seasons in high school (1995) so I got to watch him grow from a skinny kid with a lot of ability into a workaholic determined to transform himself into one of the greatest players of all time. I saw him go from the brash, full of himself kid who won the slam dunk contest at the 1997 NBA All-Star Weekend to a humble guy who became the consummate teammate. He won five NBA championships, three with Shaquille O’Neal as his teammate and two (2009-10) without. I’m most impressed with the last two because Kobe had to carry the Lakers to both those titles. In his post-Lakers career, Kobe became a fine family man who doted over his four daughters. He became heavily involved in philanthropic endeavors such as the Call of Duty Endowment that helps veterans transition from the military into real life. When I heard the news today, I thought back to the death of Roberto Clemente, who died in a plane crash in 1972 while taking emergency supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. I felt numb that day, just as I feel numb now. Another sports superstar gone way too early. SOME MONDAY MEANDERINGS (1) Coach O is now the fourth highest paid coach in all of college football after LSU gave him a six-year deal at $7 million a year. The deal includes a $5 million life insurance policy that ensures Coach O’s family will be taken care of in the event something tragic happened. It should be noted that all of LSU’s last three coaches have won a national championship – Nick Saban (2003), Les Miles (2007) and Coach O (2019). (2) Vanderbilt, which desperately needs a quarterback after losing three to transfer, is trying to land former Clemson backup Chase Brice. Even though he’s only been at Clemson two years, Brice has already graduated so he will have two years of eligibility remaining. Brice says there are 5-7 schools with an outstanding opportunity to land him although he declined to offer a complete list. (3) Jackson Muschamp, son of South Carolina HBC Will Muschamp, has committed to play football at Colorado State and former Boston College head coach Steve Addazio. This is an interesting choice since Addazio was the assistant head coach at Florida in 2009-10. Muschamp became the HBC at Florida in 2011. Muschamp recently hired former Colorado State HBC Mike Bobo as his offensive coordinator. Bobo was replaced by Addazio. (4) Lane Kiffin always stirs the pot wherever he is. Since being hired at Ole Miss, he’s riled a few folks by hiring former Mississippi State assistants Terrell Buckley and Deke Adams. Buckley will coach the corners and Adams the D-line. Earlier last week, Kiffin lost D-line coach Freddie Roach to Nick Saban and Alabama. (5) Since we’re on the subject of poaching coaches, Texas A&M was both poacher and poachee over the weekend. The Aggies poached TJ Rushing to coach the secondary from Florida State and then lost their personnel director, Austin Thomas, to Baylor. Rushing spent two years on Mike Norvell’s staff at Memphis and went with Norvell to FSU before hired by the Aggies. GOOD QUOTES FOR MONDAY Matthew Guttierez of The Athletic with Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who was an assistant on Team USA from 2007-12, on Kobe Bryant and how he set the tone with his effort: “He was amazing. He was the most competitive guy I have ever worked with. Michael Jordan is the only one in the same category as far as competitiveness. Kobe competed every play. He changed our whole Olympic movement with his effort, his work ethic. He was a one-of-a-kind player. They don’t make them like that.” From Scott Rabalais ofthe Baton Rouge Advocate, former LSU athletic director Joe Alleva on the decision he made to keep Les Miles after the 2015 season when everyone thought he would be hiring Jimbo Fisher, then of Florida State, a move that would eventually lead to hiring Ed Orgeron: “I have a lot of friends in the ACC. I talked to them, and after that I didn’t want any part of Jimbo. I would never have hired Jimbo. He was not on my radar. Now, fans and some people in the department wanted him, but I never wanted him. I could have made a change [at the end of the 2015 season]. I recommended not to because I would have been forced to hire Jimbo. I would rather have had Les (Miles). But if I didn’t hire him, the outcry would have been ridiculous. So we had that meeting during the [Texas A&M] game, and I made the recommendation to keep [Miles].” More Rabalais with Alleva on why he (Alleva) regrets hiring LSU basketball coach Will Wade: “I got some bad recommendations on that guy. My perception on why I’ not the athletic director there is because some people used the situation with Wade.” RANDOM THOUGHTS: The AFC beat the NFC 38-33 in the Pro Bowl Game in Orlando at Camping World Stadium before a crowd of more than 54,000. Did any of you watch the game? I know I didn’t. I had a choice of taking my 91-year-old mother shopping or watching the Pro Bowl. Shopping with my mom seemed like the more exciting of the two options … Players at the Pro Bowl are by and large opposed to the NFL adding a 17th regular season game. I can’t say that I blame them. Two or three exhibition games, a 16-game regular season and possibly four more games (wild card, divisional, conference and Super Bowl) if your team is really good. How much wear and tear on the body is what the players ask? How much must we endure as fans before we get to December when the games really start to count?

For about five minutes Saturday night, the O-Dome was rocking as the Florida Gators were making shots and looking every bit like a team capable of knocking off the number one team in the nation. Then Baylor adjusted, reality set in and the very experienced Bears went into their defensive lock down mode. For the next 35 minutes, the O-Dome crowd, a national television audience and, of course, the Gators got a clinic in playing the game at its highest level. The Bears were ever so efficient no matter which end of the floor they were playing and looked every bit the part of the nation’s number one team. The final score read Baylor 72, Florida 61. The Gators might have made it closer if they hadn’t gone empty on four straight possessions, three of which ended with misses on the front end of one-and-ones, but it wasn’t a complete embarrassment like the loss to Missouri was a couple of weeks ago. There is no explaining what happened in the Missouri loss. At least in losing to Baylor, the Gators lost to a team that is national championship capable and is the best defensive team that has played in the O-Dome since 2012 Kentucky. No, this wasn’t an embarrassing loss. Humbling? Yeah, you could say that because it seemed for much of the game like Baylor was playing with grown men and the Gators were countering with boys. Baylor is tough, physical, experienced and older. The Gators are still learning how to be tough, still lacking the kind of physicality you see in teams like Baylor, Butler and Florida State and we are reminded once again that this UF team is still trying to get a handle on this maturity thing. Whereas every ball game is just another day at the office for Baylor, every ball game is an adventure for Florida because Mike White never really knows which Gators will show up. That’s the difference between Baylor and Florida. Scott Drew knows what he’s going to get from his team every single ball game because they are disciplined and play to their strengths every time out. White isn’t really sure what he will get from the Gators because like every team that’s young and inexperienced it’s not always the same growing pains that show up every single night. If White knew which pains would be prevalent on which nights, he could plan accordingly. This is a team that desperately needs to grab hold of maturity and never let go. Here are a few observations about Saturday night and Florida in general 19 games into a 31-game season. Florida had serious problems with Baylor’s quickness on the defensive end. Baylor can guard the perimeter, slough off to swarm the basketball when it is dumped in the paint and can get back into a guarding position when the ball gets kicked back out. The way to beat a team like that is to make that extra pass, but too often the Gators were too deep in the shot clock. In the second half, the Gators had and missed a lot of open perimeter shots because they hesitated, halfway expecting a Baylor defender to come flying at them the way they did in the last 10 minutes of the first half. The Gators have to get Dontay Bassett healthy. The 10-12 minutes he can give the front court off the bench is critical. Baylor had some difficulties when both Kerry Blackshear Jr. and Omar Payne were in the game together but when one of them had to sit for rest or foul trouble, UF had to go with a smaller lineup and Baylor took advantage of its size advantage. One of the reasons the Gators were ranked so highly at the beginning of the season was due to the high expectations on the play of Scottie Lewis and Tre Mann. Lewis is an elite defender, but he’s erratic offensively and he is hesitant to use that explosiveness and leaping ability taking the ball to the rack. I think Mann would be much further along had he not suffered that concussion. Prior to the concussion he was decisive and fearless when he drove the basketball. Now he lacks the confidence to drive the ball and he thinks too much about his jumper. I saw him in high school and know what he’s capable of doing with the ball in his hand. Unless Lewis and Mann can get a measure of confidence and start contributing at a consistently high level, the Gators are going to have too many nights when they struggle. Florida isn’t a terribly deep team so having Mann and Lewis able to deliver off the bench is critical to long term success. In the first half Saturday night, Mann delivered six points and two contested rebounds when he literally snatched the ball away from taller, more physical Baylor defenders. He neither scored again nor grabbed another rebound. Chalk that up to confidence. In the second half when the Gators were trying to mount a comeback from 16 down, Lewis drove the baseline and instead of going vertical and either dunking or getting fouled, he passed to Noah Locke in the corner. Baylor closed fast on Locke who passed to Keyontae Johnson on the wing. Johnson’s shot missed. The right move was to go skyward and force the issue. This isn’t the first time that’s happened. These guys are freshmen and they’re playing like freshmen. The Gators desperately need them to grow up now. Noah Locke got only five shots (1-5). Shooters have to shoot and shooters who can heat up the way Locke can have to be given a chance to get it going. He’s shown that he can light it up quickly and knock down 3-4 shots in a row but he can’t if nobody gets him the basketball when he’s in shooting position. What does it take to get a whistle when Kerry Blackshear Jr. is getting mugged? Baylor’s strategy, it seemed, was to pound on him until the zebra crew started tooting the whistles. When they didn’t toot, Baylor got even more aggressive. Blackshear got five shots off (made three). Maybe it’s just my imagination but I think he’s starting to get frustrated that he can’t get a call. I haven’t seen anyone who gets beat up the way Blackshear does. I love the way Ques Glover plays with so much energy but he’s a defensive liability. Unfortunately, until the coaches see enough of Mann at the point to give him the ball, Glover has to play the point when Andrew Nembhard sits. Glover plays very hard, but he gets overpowered by bigger guards as we have seen in the last two games with LSU and Baylor. When Glover is in the game, White is going to have to figure out a way to give him some defensive help. Omar Payne is a work in progress. Be patient. He’s going to be really, really good. He’s going to have great games like the one last weekend against Auburn and then have games like the one against Baylor when his inexperience showed in the way the Bears pushed and shoved him around. He needs some more muscle and he has to learn how to fight back. It will happen and when it does he’s going to do some amazing things, but for now, just consider him a work in progress. Keyontae Johnson is absolutely fearless and trusts his game enough to know that if he keeps doing the things he knows he does well, he’ll have success. Even if he gets his shot stuffed back in his face, he will keep driving to the rim and eventually will get it going. He’s not an elite defender like Lewis, but he’s Florida’s most consistent defender. Doesn’t do the spectacular things defensively, but he rarely gets caught out of position and he makes it very tough for opponents to score on him. Andrew Nembhard goes through some very unproductive stretches on both ends of the court, but when he shakes off those mini-funks and gets zoned in, he can be quite spectacular. In the last two games he’s scored 31 points to go with 18 assists. For Florida to be good down the stretch Nembhard has to elevate his game and eliminate those four and five minute stretches when nothing gets accomplished. The Gators are 12-7 with a six-game stretch of Mississippi State, (at) Vanderbilt, Georgia, (at) Ole Miss, (at) Texas A&M and Vanderbilt. The Gators should win all five of these games if they’ll make some shots and avoid another Missouri nightmare. These are six games in which the Gators need to get completely healthy and get Lewis and Mann untracked. If the Gators are 18-7 by the time they face that four-game gauntlet of Arkansas, (at) Kentucky, LSU and (at) Tennessee, they will be closing in on their fourth straight NCAA bid. This is still a talented enough team to make a deep run in March but for that to happen the Gators have some growing up to do and have to get the freshmen untracked once and for all.

By: Buddy Martin He was my favorite new player three years ago. It had been long drinks of water between exciting, game-changing wide receivers. Finally! I expected great things out of him. Not that we expected to see the reincarnation of Percy Harvin or Cris Collinsworth or Carlos Alvarez, but there was hope that Kadarius Toney would fill a talent void and give Dan Mullen’s offense somebody who could once again generate game-breaking excitement with his hands on the ball. When he left Eight-Mile, Ala. and arrived in Gainesville, Kadarius Toney looked very much like that player, with his speed and impressive shake-and-bake move. Some referred to the former Blount High School quarterback as “The Human Joy Stick,” a term sometimes reserved to describe Baltimore Ravens jitterbugging wunderkind Lamar Jackson. To watch Toney’s creative dance style, bodies flying around him as he changed directions like a blue darter, was a thing of beauty. There were moments when he flirted with the spectacular. Ankle-breaking gyrations that looked like they were about to bust him loose, even if sometimes it took 40 yards east and west to get 10 due north. Any minute now, Toney was going to the house. Except he rarely did. There’s a lot we don’t know about Toney who apparently is a semi-accomplished Hip-Hop song writer and producer. My younger friends tell me he’s got a pretty good song he is showcasing on a new album “SplitWorld,” called “Lifestyle.” His artist name is Yung Joka. Me, I know more about Sock Hops than Hip Hop, but my millennial friend bought the song, likes it and has played it a bunch. As to why Toney waited late to declare that he would not enter the NFL Draft? Perhaps he was waiting for an evaluation, although he has told friends he thought he had enough video highlights to be chosen. Most experts agreed Toney he needed one more year to sharpen his game. Some people, like former SEC MVP Shane Matthews was “surprised he was even considering coming out.” Let’s just go ahead and say it: Toney didn’t get the job done last season and his numbers were paltry. He caught just 10 passes (9th best on the team), just one for one touchdown, 66 yards, in the opening game with Miami. And although his speed and elusiveness were delicious – Chris Fowler got all jacked up and sounded enthralled – there wasn’t much of anything the rest of the regular season. A shoulder injury vs. Tennessee Martin pretty much put him on ice. Somewhere along the way, the stardom of Kadarius Toney was derailed, or never really materialized. So what happened to the kid from Eight Mile was going to light up the Gator Nation? We can throw out three or four excuses. Injuries. Slow progress on the learning curve. Mechanics lacking, routes weren’t pretty and he was not a world class catcher of the football. The unspoken word was that Tony often lacked concentration and focus. That he lacked the polished skill set of a receiver. “He’s supposed to be a Yards After Catch guy,” said one critic. “Sometimes he forgot to catch the ball first.” All of that, plus the receivers room was pretty crowded. You seldom see a team with four competent senior wide receivers like Van Jefferson, Freddie Swain, Josh Hammond and Tyrie Cleveland. The one quality they all had that Toney couldn’t be taught? Consistency. Their mentoring will be valued by Kadarius one day. But even if he had been healthy, Toney would have had to earn those catches from four guys who helped their backup quarterback Kyle Trask go from an overachieving backup to a first-rate starter. Close observers of Gator practice say what's missing is that Toney still hasn't quite made the transition to receiver, despite earnest coaching efforts of Billy Gonzalez. This could be the year the window of opportunity opens for him to put his skill set on display, along with Tre Grimes, Kyle Pitts and Jacob Copeland – plus a trio of red-shirt freshmen in Dionte Marks, Ja’markis Weston and Trent Whittemore. The upside looks extremely promising and the raw talent is compelling. Remember, he played everything at Mattie T. Blount High in Eight-Mile, Ala. – mostly quarterback. So the only wide receiver experience he has is on-the-job training. This could be the season Kadarius gets an open window to run routes and catch the ball. When Toney announced he was coming back for his senior year, it gave me pause to reflect on his curious case so I decided to ask people who know a lot more about football than I do, who played and/or coached at the highest level. Lee McGriff is one of the keenest observers of Gator football I know, not just because he’s a color analyst for the Gator IMG Radio Network, or that he was an All-SEC wide receiver, or that he coached receivers for Doug Dickey, or that his son Travis was an All-SEC receiver at Florida. He also happens to be a scholar on Gator receivers who has been studying the position first-hand since Charlie Casey became Florida’s first All-American pass catcher in the mid-1960s. McGriff has not only played the position at a very high level, but has coached it, studied it and broadcast the performances of some Florida’s best receivers. Tony reminds him of his former teammate Wes Chandler, a Pro Bowl player. Calling himself – justifiably – a “connoisseur” of the history of Gator wide receivers, Lee actually has logged so many long hours observing practice that over the years he jokes that has become a scholar and earned a mythical PhD in the subject. “I'm old enough to have seen the very best upward, which was Charlie Casey,” said McGriff. “And from being a young guy, I identified with being a wide receiver, wanted to be one. So I paid close attention.” “I played with Wes Chandler when I was a senior and he was a freshman. I watched him closely. I have also paid attention to Toney. He's more Wes Chandler like than he's anybody else. Wes obviously was a great player, but he wasn't going to win the Olympics. Don't misunderstand me. People get confused. Wes could run really well. And he was a high school running back. But he had this fluidity that you see, a change of direction that you see. And Toney, he's Wes Chandler-like. “So when Wes got to Florida, they quickly made him -- imagine this! -- my backup. And so they put him at receiver right away and he started being taught with great repetition of how to be a wide receiver. And I can tell you, it was not magical from the beginning. You could tell he could run after he caught the ball, but he didn't always catch the ball and he didn't always run a great route. So it was a little bit problematic for West for a while, but they left it there and did it over and over and he got it. “I see Tony in that light. And he's a guy that's so versatile, a quarterback and a running quarterback and in high school. So you get him in the return game, you let him run jets sweeps. There's so much that you want to do with him because he's so versatile. But what he hasn't mastered is the art of being a great receiver. Physically, it's all there. Sometimes his concentration on the ball breaks down and he didn't catch it, not because he can't. Same thing happened to Wes Chandler.” Former MVP of the SEC and NFL veteran Shane Matthews agrees mostly. “He's been injured here and there,” said Matthews. “And he's really not a receiver right now. And nothing against Toney, but, hopefully he can stay healthy next year and they can utilize his abilities. “I think it's great that he's coming back. He can have another year, another spring under Billy Gonzalez and try to improve from a route-running standpoint and put some plays on tape for NFL guys to say, ‘Hey, I can't play receiver at the next level. Here I am running a corner route here … Here I am running a dig or a comeback or a post, whatever it may be.’ But I think he needed to come back and I'm glad he's and going to.” The question is how Mullen will use Toney in the vertical passing game, whether he can break off a quick slant, or what other plays he can design to get Toney more touches. This appears to be his time. “He's been here a while, so it's time for him to grab the brass ring,” said McGriff. “He's not been consistently intense and competitive to the level they've asked him. But most of his life, he's never had to do that. So and sometimes that keeps guys with lots of talent away from being great players. So that's a question. This still hasn't been totally answered. But I gotta believe at this point he believes he's running out of bullets. He better come on within if he wants to keep playing.” Young Joka has his work cut out.

CAN THE GATORS TAKE A #1 SCALP SATURDAY NIGHT? In the entire basketball history of the University of Florida, the Gators have never hosted a #1 team at the O-Dome not named Kentucky. Florida’s record against the top-ranked team in the Associated Press poll is dismal – just 2-16 – which means the Gators (12-6) will have to put together their best game of the season Saturday night (8 p.m., ESPN) when #1 Baylor (16-1) comes to town as part of the SEC-Big 12 Challenge. Baylor, which has won 15 straight games after dropping a 67-64 decision to Washington in the second game of the season, makes its living on the defensive end of the floor. In their 67-55 win on the road at #3 Kansas, Baylor forced the Jayhawks into 14 turnovers and held them to a miserable 26.7% from the three-point line. For the season, the Bears are giving up only 58.5 points per game, 5th-best in the country. Only Villanova, an 87-78 loser to the Bears, has broken the 70-point barrier. Opponents are shooting just 38% overall from the field and 31.5% from the 3-point line. Baylor forces 15.2 turnovers per game. This is a formidable but beatable opponent but to win this game, the Gators have to (a) protect the basketball, (b) make some shots from the perimeter and (c) get a strong rebounding game from the front line of Kerry Blackshear Jr., Omar Payne and Keyontae Johnson. Baylor isn’t a particularly great offensive team – averaging only 72.7 points per game while shooting 42.8% from the field overall and 34.6% from the three-point line – so UF cannot afford to give the Bears cheap baskets off turnovers. If Florida keeps the Bears from getting second chance points on offensive rebounds and limits easy buckets in the paint, the Gators should have a chance to spring the upset. Gator notes: Since the Long Beach State game, Noah Locke has hit 22-42 from the three-point line (52.38%). For the season he’s hitting 42.5% from the three-point line (45-106) … Freshman Scottie Lewis leads the team in both steals (23) and blocked shots (26) … Four Gators are averaging in double figures – Blackshear (14.8), Johnson (12.7), Andrew Nembhard (11.0) and Locke (10.5) … Nembhard leads the team in assists at 6.1 per game, which ranks second in the SEC … Blackshear leads the team in rebounding at 8.7 which ranks third in the SEC … The Gators are holding opponents to 29.5% from the three-point line. SEC BASKETBALL Saturday’s games #1 Baylor (16-1) at FLORIDA (12-6), ESPN Missouri (9-9) at West Virginia (15-3), ESPN Iowa State (9-9) at #16 Auburn (16-2), ESPNU LSU (14-4) at Texas (12-6), ESPN Mississippi State (12-6) at Oklahoma (12-6), ESPN2 Tennessee (12-6) at #3 Kansas (15-3), ESPN Oklahoma State (9-9) at Texas A&M (9-8), ESPNU TCU (13-5) at Arkansas (14-4), ESPN2 #15 Kentucky (14-4) at #18 Texas Tech (12-6), ESPN Kansas State (8-10) at Alabama (11-7), ESPN2 Ole Miss (9-9, 0-5 SEC) at Georgia (11-7, 1-4 SEC), SEC Network Vanderbilt (8-10, 0-5 SEC) at South Carolina (10-8, 2-3 SEC), SEC Network GATOR BASEBALL OPENS AT #10 IN USA TODAY POLL Florida will open the season #10 in the USA Today preseason poll. Previously, the Gators have been ranked #4 by both D1Baseball and Baseball America and #13 by Perfect Game. The Gators open their season February 14 against Marshall at McKeithan Stadium. USA Today Top 25 Preseason 1. Vanderbilt; 2. Louisville; 3. Texas Tech; 4. Georgia; 5. Arkansas; 6. Mississippi State; 7. Miami; 8. UCLA; 9. Auburn; 10. FLORIDA; 11. Michigan; 12. LSU; 13. Arizona State; 14. Florida State; 15. Stanford; 16. North Carolina; 17. Oklahoma State; 18. North Carolina State; 19. East Carolina; 20. Duke; 21. Texas A&M; 22. Georgia Tech; 23. Ole Miss; 24. Wake Forest; 25. Oregon State. A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO BASTE: FRIDAY EDITION (1) The NFL reports there were 10 more concussions in 2019 than there were in 2018. Even with the small increase in concussions that is still fewer than the average from 2015-17 when the league averaged 266.3 concussions per year. I appreciate that the NFL is working so diligently to reduce concussions and I appreciate also that rules have been changed to eliminate these helmet-to-helmet and helmet first collisions, but I think it’s time to go steps further. If the technology is there to make energy absorbing equipment that is lightweight, quite thin and capable of stopping bullets at point blank range, why can’t football demand that this same technology be applied to its equipment? Instead of helmets with this hard plastic shell, coat them with soft foam and some sort of Kevlar-like material underneath that absorbs shock. Make shoulder pads that are more shock absorbing and thigh and knee pads that distribute the impact. I definitely think it’s time for the NFL and the NCAA to tell the people who make the equipment, either you come up with better equipment that helps reduce injuries or we’ll find new people to make our equipment. (2) Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele will be paid $2.5 million per year as part of the new three-year contract he signed Wednesday. That makes Steele the highest paid assistant coach in the country followed by Brent Venables (Clemson DC, $2.2 million), Mike Elko (Texas A&M DC, $2.1 million) and Todd Grantham (Florida DC, $1.81 million). The highest paid offensive coordinator in the country is Alabama’s Steve Sarkisian, who pulls down a paltry $1.55 million. (3) I always liked Ruffin McNeill, who was Mike Leach’s DC at Texas Tech and the HBC at East Carolina before he went to Oklahoma as the outside linebackers and assistant head coach. Ruffin was always one of the most straight up guys you could talk to and wouldn’t dodge even the tough questions. Well, I have an even better reason to like him now. He’s stepping aside from coaching for awhile to go home to North Carolina to care for his 85-year-old father. This is someone who has his priorities in all the right places. He’s to be commended. (4) Boise State, which is a member of the Mountain West Conference, is suing the MWC over its new TV contract with Fox Sports and CBS that raises the yearly payout to each school in the league to somewhere around $3.9 million. Boise State has been working under a contract with the league that already pays it $1.8 million per season more than every other team in the league. That sweetheart arrangement was the bribe the MWC paid to keep Boise State from jumping leagues back in 2012. Under the new deal, Boise will be paid $5.7 million per year, which is still more than the other schools. Boise, however, thinks it deserves more, believing Fox wouldn’t have entered into the contract with the league if not for Boise State’s strong national profile. (5) The first fallout from Miami signing Houston graduate transfer quarterback D’Eriq King is Jarren Williams placing his name in the NCAA transfer portal. Whenever there is a graduate transfer quarterback and veterans who have been starters – Williams and N’Kosi Perry at Miami – there are consequences. This isn’t like a situation at Arkansas where Feleipe Franks will start over kids who haven’t been established starters. Here’s the issue for Miami. By bringing in King, there is a very good chance the Hurricanes trade one year of outstanding quarterback play in exchange for being in worse shape than they were pre-King at the position in 2021. (6) Some SEC news and notes: Texas A&M has hired Tyler Santucci from Wake Forest to coach linebackers. He worked under Aggie DC Mike Elko at Wake Forest (2014-15) and Notre Dame (2017) … Ole Miss has hired Marquis Watson from D1AA Bryant University to coach the defensive line … Missouri corner Christian Holmes has entered his name in the NCAA transfer portal. Holmes, who will be a grad transfer, started 12 games for Missouri the past two years and played in all 12 games in 2019 … A 16-year-old who was driving 90 miles an hour when he crashed into a car driven by former Auburn radio play-by-play Rod Bramblett, has been charged with two counts of reckless manslaughter. Bramblett and wife Paula were killed in the crash … Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the Cincinnati Bengals have no intention of trading away the #1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, which they will use to select LSU Heisman Trophy quarterback Joe Burrow. GOOD QUOTES FOR FRIDAY From Andy Staples of The Athletic on LSU’s recruiting and how combined with Joe Burrow and Joe Brady gave the Tigers the talent they needed to win a national championship: “Though recruiting along the lines of scrimmage had slipped in the late stages of the Les Miles era, LSU still brought in talent suited for the top half of the SEC West. LSU ranked No.3 in the nation in the 247Sports talent composite the year Orgeron took over. Anything inside the top 12 or so is probably good enough to compete for a national title with great coaching and a great quarterback, but a team needs to be near that level to have a chance. That’s where Iowa (No. 42 in the talent index in 2019), Virginia Tech (No. 29) or Oklahoma State (No. 39) would run into problems. They might get that lightning-in-a-bottle quarterback and might have the perfect combination of offensive skill and coordinator brainpower, but the more traditional title contender would still be better at most positions on the field.” Matt Fortuna of The Athletic talking with Duke coach David Cutcliffe about retiring New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning, who he coached at Ole Miss: “Eli’s a great physical specimen, but he may be the most mentally tough person I’ve ever known. He’s physically tough – don’t think for a second he’s not. But he is extremely mentally tough. And with that said, maybe that can explain quite a long ride in New York.” Pat Forde of Sports Illustrate on the hypocrisy of Kansas after this latest black-eye, the end of game brawl instigated by Silvio De Sousa Tuesday night: “Kansas claimed to be victimized by Adidas, then signed a massive new contract with the shoe and apparel company. Kansas was hit with an NCAA Notice of Allegations that included major charges, and responded defiantly. Kansas stated a season-opening fan extravaganza in Allen Fieldhouse that included Snoop Dogg firing off a counterfeit money cannon and exotic dancers on stripper poles, what for all the world looked like an orchestrated middle finger aimed at the NCAA (Self and athletic director Jeff Long did get around to apologizing).” RANDOM THOUGHTS: In his first NBA game ever, Zion Williamson scored 22 points for the New Orleans Pelicans. He hit three three-pointers, which is more than he ever had in a game at Duke … Doug Goodwin, who has been Auburn’s director of high school relations and head of the walk-on program since 2014, has left for a job on Lane Kiffin’s staff at Ole Miss. He is expected to be an analyst at Ole Miss … The NBA announced its starters for the All-Star Game Thursday. Somehow I missed out on that thrilling bit of tid.

VAN JEFFERSON STANDS OUT AT SENIOR BOWL PRACTICES It has been a great week in Mobile for Florida wide receiver Van Jefferson, who has had some very impressive Senior Bowl practices with every NFL team represented. Prior to the Senior Bowl practices, Jefferson was projected as a mid-round draft pick. His ability to run clean routes that gain separation from defenders has caught the eye of the scouts and could help to significantly improve Jefferson’s draft status. Jefferson caught 49 passes for 657 yards and six touchdowns in 2019 and for his two-year Florida career had 84 catches for 1,160 yards and 12 touchdowns. Counting his two years at Ole Miss, Jefferson had 175 career catches for 2,159 yards and 16 touchdowns. Here is what some of the observers have to say: (1) Draft expert Dan Brugler of The Athletic writes, “Florida’s Van Jefferson (6-2, 197) was known as a route technician entering the week, and he didn’t disappoint. He is very skilled at accelerating into the breakpoint, forcing the cornerback to react, which allows Jefferson to snap off his route in the opposite direction. Although he is very thin-muscled and doesn’t have the play strength to consistently win crowded catch points, Jefferson doesn’t have to worry about that when he consistently separates.” (2) Yahoo Sports draft expert Eric Edholm writes, “The son of former NFL receiver and current New York Jets wideout coach Shawn Jefferson looked polished and fast, even if Jefferson likely won’t be among the best 40-yard dash runners at the position when we get to the NFL scouting combine. What matters more is how fast a player plays, and Jefferson checks that box. He ran clean routes and made several smooth grabs on Tuesday and reads like a prospect who will be a better pro than his college production would suggest.” (3) Writes Todd McShay of ESPN, “Jefferson doesn’t have elite speed or quickness, and his 6-foot-1 frame doesn’t stand out. But his route running is extremely impressive. He found his way open a lot on Wednesday.” (4) Sports Illustrated draft reporter Ed Kracz writes that Jefferson “Was one of the fastest players on Tuesday’s first day of practice according to some who were there.” Also drawing favorable reviews at Senior Bowl practices was Florida edge rusher Jonathan Greenard. Brugler has been so impressed with Greenard that he’s moved him into the second round of his mock draft, going with the 49th pick to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Brugler also has UF corner back CJ Henderson going to the Seattle Seahawks with the 27th pick in the first round. SEC BASKETBALL Wednesday’s scores #16 Auburn (16-2, 4-2 SEC) 80, South Carolina (10-8, 2-3 SEC) 67 Mississippi State (12-6, 3-3 SEC) 77, Arkansas (14-4, 3-3 SEC) 70 Alabama (11-7, 4-2 SEC) 77, Vanderbilt (8-10, 0-5 SEC) 62 Saturday’s games (SEC-Big 12 Challenge) #1 Baylor (16-1) at FLORIDA (12-6), ESPN Missouri (9-9) at #14 West Virginia (15-3), ESPN Iowa State (9-9) at #16 Auburn (16-2), ESPNU LSU (14-4) at Texas (12-6), ESPN Mississippi State (12-6) at Oklahoma (12-6), ESPN2 Tennessee (12-6) at #3 Kansas (15-3), ESPN Oklahoma State (9-9) at Texas A&M (9-8), ESPNU TCU (13-5) at Arkansas (14-4), ESPN2 #15 Kentucky (14-4) at #18 Texas Tech (12-6), ESPN Kansas State (8-10) at Alabama (11-7), ESPNU Also: Ole Miss (9-9, 0-5 SEC) at Georgia (11-7, 1-4 SEC), SEC Network Vanderbilt (8-10, 0-5 SEC) at South Carolina (10-8, 2-3 SEC), SEC Network THINKING OUT LOUD ON THURSDAY (1) Having watched the replay of the massive end of the game brawl between Kansas and Kansas State, I’m absolutely appalled. The Big 12 Conference announced Wednesday that brawl instigator Silvio De Sousa of Kansas will receive a 12-game suspension that will make him eligible for the Jayhawks final regular season game with Texas Tech. It also means he will play in the postseason because unless the NCAA smacks down Kansas (they have received a Notice of Allegations) and prohibits the Jayhawks from playing in the postseason, Kansas will be in the hunt for the national championship. During the brawl, De Sousa picked up a stool and was ready to strike someone when a Kansas assistant grabbed it away from him. I hate to think how that brawl would have escalated and the lasting implications if De Sousa had actually struck someone with that stool.” (2) Legendary DeMatha basketball coach Morgan Wootten died Wednesday. He won five mythical national championships and had a 1,274-192 record in 46 seasons. He put DeMatha on the map in 1965 when the Stags beat Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor and Power Memorial of New York to end Power’s 71-game winning streak. Probably the greatest tribute to Wootten came from UCLA coach John Wooden, who said, “People say Morgan Wootten is the best high school basketball coach in the country. I disagree. I know of no finer coach at any level – high school, college, or pro. I’ve said it elsewhere and I’ll say it here: I stand in awe of him.” There was a more than 30-year stretch when every single senior who played for Wootten got a scholarship to play college basketball. (3) When Lane Kiffin was named as the new HBC at Ole Miss, he immediately started hiring people with direct connections to Nick Saban and Alabama. Wednesday was Saban’s day to strike back when he hired Freddie Roach as his defensive line coach. Roach was slated to be the D-line/assistant head coach for Kiffin. (4) Rather than go play for another team, Eli Manning is retiring as a New York Giant. In his 16 years with the Giants, Eli threw for 57,023 yards and 366 touchdowns while leading the Giants to two Super Bowl championships. It’s a safe bet that there will never be two brothers who throw for more combined yards (128,963) and touchdowns (905) than Eli and Peyton. Throw Archie into the mix and the Manning family was good for 152,874 passing yards, 1,030 TDPs and four Super Bowl titles. File those as records that aren’t going to be broken anytime soon. Once Eli is elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, that will make three Mannings in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (6) The analytics firm of Joyce Julius and Associates from Ann Arbor, Michigan estimates that LSU’s seven week run from December 1, 2019 through January 21, 2020 was worth $200 million in free advertising for the school. In addition to the free plugs on TV, radio, social media, newspapers and the internet, LSU also picked up $1 million in royalty money from merchandise sales during that same period. And people wonder why Alabama, for example, is willing to pay Nick Saban $9 million a year. When you win championships the money spent on coaches’ salaries turns out to be a rather small investment. (7) Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said Wednesday during an appearance of Fox Business Channel that he has no intention of vacating the World Series titles of the Houston Astros (2017) and Boston Red Sox (2018). That’s a prudent thing to do since all indications are the sign-stealing wasn’t just confined to the Astros and Red Sox. Manfred does, however, need to come up with harsh punishment to both teams that condone cheating and to players who participate. GOOD QUOTES ON THURSDAY Dick Vitale of ESPN on the post game brawl between Kansas and Kansas State, instigated by Silvio De Sousa of Kansas: “In the 40 years I have been on TV I have never seen anything like it unless you go to the NBA and the Pistons brawl that took place at the Palace. There is no doubt in my mind that De Sousa never ever should put a uniform on again in college basketball. None. He is holding a chair. I mean, that is criminal.” From Stewart Mandel of The Athletic on the Mountain West Conference’s new television deal for football: “The Mountain West recently excitedly announced the details of its new TV deals with FOX and CBS. It is worth nearly $4 million per school per year, up from $1.1 million in the last deal. That’s nice but it’s still a fraction of the $31.3 million distribution (which includes TV and postseason revenue) that Pac-12 schools received last year. And that’s for the poorest of the Power 5 leagues.” From Matt Zenitz of Al.com, Alabama coach Nick Saban on how he sees the NFL future of former Crimson Tide/Oklahoma quarterback Jalen Hurts: “Well, there’s a lot of guys playing in the NFL now that are having a lot of success that are similar style players to Jalen, guys that can make plays with their feet. I think you know who they are. So I think that success of those players has kind of broken the stereotype of you got to be a dropback passer or this is the only way you can win in the NFL. You see Majones, the guy at Baltimore. All these guys are athletic guys who can make plays with their feet, create a lot of problems for the old stereotype NFL defense.” RANDOM THOUGHTS: Auburn gave defensive coordinator Kevin Steele a new three-year deal. He made $1.9 million last year so he likely goes way past the $2 million mark for the next three years … Kentucky got good news that the NCAA has granted a sixth year of eligibility to D-lineman Phil Hoskins. Hoskins missed the first two games of 2019 due to academic suspension, then hurt his knee in game three … Mike Leach has hired Zach Arnett away from Syracuse to be his defensive coordinator. Arnett, who was the DC at San Diego State the last two years, had recently taken the Syracuse job, but he’s heading to the SEC before ever coaching a game at Syracuse. San Diego State finished top ten in nearly every defensive statistical category in 2019 including third in scoring defense (12.9 points per game) and sixth in total defense (287.8 yards per game) … Tennessee got a grad transfer in former Southern Cal wide receiver Velus Jones, who caught 36 passes for 347 yards while averaging 24 yards per kickoff return … Miami Dolphins owner Steven Ross wants to draft LSU Heisman Trophy QB Joe Burrow. Good luck on that pipedream. The Cincinnati Bengals aren’t about to let a kid who grew up two hours down the road from Cincinnati slip through their fingers ... UCLA redshirt freshman forward Shareef O’Neal, son of Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, announced that he is transferring. In 13 games, O’Neal was averaging 2.2 points and 2.9 rebounds … Not only has Carlos Beltran been fired before ever managing a game for the New York Mets as a result of his role with the Houston Astros in the Major League Baseball cheating scandal, but he can all but kiss the Hall of Fame good-bye, too. Do you think for even a nanosecond that baseball will allow Beltran in when Pete Rose is banned for life and Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro can’t get in even though they have HOF credentials?

WAS IT GOOD? The question of the day is the shot by Keyontae Johnson at the end of Florida’s 84-82 loss to LSU in Baton Rouge Tuesday night. On an inbounds play with 00.5 seconds left, Keyontae Johnson got a nice pick from Noah Locke and rolled to the basket where he got a nice bounce pass from Andrew Nembhard. Johnson went straight up and banked the ball in without any hesitation but his layup at the horn was ruled no good. Upon checking the replay, the zebra crew of Joe Lindsay, Mike Nance and Pat Adams once again said the ball didn’t leave Johnson’s hand before the red lights came on around the backboard. But was the evidence that the ball didn’t leave Johnson’s hand in time absolutely clear or was the replay just not conclusive enough to make a legitimate determination. In the case of no conclusive evidence, the call on the floor stands. Until there is adequate time for a frame-by-frame slow mo that allows blowing up each frame to determine if there is a gap between Johnson’s hand and the ball, we’ll have to accept the outcome. And if it's proven that Johnson did get the shot off, we'll get one of those swell, "Well, we goofed again but we'll try not do do it anymore" statements from the SEC. The fact that Florida (12-6, 4-2 SEC) had a chance to send the game into overtime is a testament to the Gators’ heart and determination as they cut LSU’s 10-point lead (79-69) with 1:20 down to two. And lest we forget, the final inbound play was Florida’s second chance to tie the game. With 16 seconds left, Scottie Lewis hit a wet spot at the baseline and his foot slid out of bounds. Had he maintained his balance, the Gators could have milked the clock to the bitter end for a shot to either tie or win. In that last 1:20, the Gators hit three clutch three-pointers – one from Noah Locke, two from Johnson – and they got a tip-in from Kerry Blackshear Jr. with 1.4 seconds to go that cut the margin to 84-82. When LSU tried to inbounds the ball, Lewis poked the ball out of the hands of Skylar Mays and replays determined the ball went off Mays hands before it went out of bounds. With that call, a half second was put on the clock that gave the Gators that last shot to send the game into overtime. It probably shouldn’t have come down to a chance to tie at the buzzer. The Tigers scored 19 points off Florida turnovers while Florida managed only nine points off LSU’s 12 turnovers. And then there was the differential at the foul line. LSU went to the line for 31 free throws, converted 24. Florida, on the other hand, went 11 times and made nine. The foul shot differential is a head scratcher because this was a physical game and it’s rare you have a game in which both teams play at a high physical level and there is a 20-free throw disparity. It’s the second straight game where this has happened. If you recall, the Gators shot only nine free throws in their win over Auburn last Saturday while Auburn went to the line 21 times. Florida outscored LSU 73-60 from the field and lost the game, a game that might have gone into overtime if the zebras had seen clear evidence that the ball was out of Johnson’s hand in time. SEC BASKETBALL Tuesday night’s games LSU (14-4, 6-0 SEC) 84, FLORIDA (12-6, 4-2 SEC) 82 #15 Kentucky (14-4, 5-1 SEC) 79, Georgia (11-7, 1-4 SEC) 69 Tennessee (12-6, 4-2 SEC) 73, Ole Miss (9-9, 0-5 SEC) 48 Texas A&M (9-8, 3-3, SEC) 66, Missouri (9-9, 1-5 SEC) 64 Wednesday’s games South Carolina (10-7, 2-2 SEC) at #16 Auburn (15-2, 3-2 SEC) Arkansas (14-3, 3-2 SEC) at Mississippi State (11-6, 2-3 SEC) Alabama (10-7, 3-2 SEC) at Vanderbilt (8-9, 0-4 SEC) A WANDERING MIND ON WEDNESDAY (1) The preseason football magazines won’t come out until just before Memorial Day in May, but you can bet whatever is sacred to you that most of them will have Georgia ranked as the top team in the SEC East with Florida at #2. They will jump on the Georgia bandwagon because Kirby Smart hired a new offensive coordinator, landed Wake Forest grad transfer QB Jamie Newman and returns a lot of excellent players from an outstanding 2019 defense. Four starters will be gone from the O-line but more importantly, Sam Pittman is now the head coach at Arkansas. His replacement is Matt Luke, who I think is widely regarded as quite average. Meanwhile, Dan Mullen has been targeting 2020 as the year the Gators take that big leap since the day he took the job. That he won 21 games in his first two years on the job required a lot of smoke and mirrors and only proved that Mullen ranks among the nation’s elite coaches. With the SEC’s best quarterback returning in Kyle Trask, four starters on the O-line, excellent skill players including what should be the nation’s top tight end in Kyle Pitts, and a defense that should improve on last season’s #9 national ranking, this should easily be the best Florida team since 2009. One more reason why the Gators should win the SEC East – Georgia has to play at Alabama in September and plays Auburn in mid-October while Florida plays five of its first six games at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium including LSU. (2) Today marks two weeks until National Signing Day. I understand why coaches are more sold than ever before on the early signing period in December, but as a recruiting spectator I miss the way all hell used to break loose in the final two weeks before National Signing Day the first Wednesday in February. There was much more drama the old way and it was incredibly fun. There will still be some drama in two weeks, but most of the tough decisions have already been made. Call me old fashioned if you will, but I really did like the old way better. (3) De’Runya Wilson, who was a standout wide receiver for Dan Mullen at Mississippi State, was killed in Birmingham Tuesday evening. Birmingham police are investigating the death as a homicide. During his time playing for Mullen, Wilson caught 132 passes for 1,936 yards and 22 touchdowns. (4) First it was being reported that Bo Pelini was almost certain to return to LSU where he was defensive coordinator for the 2007 national champion Tigers. Now it’s being reported that Pelini will not replace Dave Aranda (now Baylor HBC) as the DC at LSU. Pelini apparently was looking for some assurances that brother Carl Pelini would succeed him at Youngstown State and that weighed into his decision. It must be noted, however, that Pelini denied back in 2014 that he was going to take the Youngstown State job only to take it a day or two later, so stay tuned. (5) There is still no word on where Stanford grad transfer QB KJ Costello and Boston College grad transfer QB Anthony Brown are going to transfer. LSU would seem like an exceptional fit for Costello except the Tigers still haven’t named who is replacing Joe Brady as the passing game coordinator. If he elects to stay on the West Coast, Colorado might be his landing spot. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Brown transfers to Colorado State to play for Steve Addazio. Florida State supposedly has a strong interest in both quarterbacks. (6) The commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred, has the authority under Article II of baseball’s constitution to vacate the outcome of a World Series. Will he have the guts to vacate the 2017 World Championship of the Houston Astros and the 2018 World Championship of the Boston Red Sox? My guess is he won’t, not if he wants to remain commissioner for years into the future. I can’t imagine that the gozillionaires that own the 30 MLB teams would stand for that. To say they’re against cheating is one thing, but to actually take a trophy away, particularly when it means so much to the cities of Houston and Boston and their fan bases, would probably cause a revolt among the owners who all want to keep their sweetheart deals for stadiums, parking, concessions, taxes and the like. GOOD QUOTES FOR WEDNESDAY From ABC-Columbia, former South Carolina All-American defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw talks about growing up homeless for a good portion of his young life in northeast Washington, DC where his family often lived in basements without electricity or running water: “We had a gas stove, we would light the stove with a little match or something. Get a tall pot, boil the water, mix it with some cold water, put it in a bucket, take it upstairs, take a shower like that. But at a young age, we thought that was normal. That’s how we was living. We didn’t know how everybody else was living.” Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated on the NCAA needing to act on the remaining schools implicated in the college basketball corruption scandal: “Thus far at least five schools have received Notices of Allegations in relationship to the scandal: North Carolina State, Kansas, Oklahoma State, USC and TCU. Creighton will not confirm or deny whether it was the sixth school charged. Investigations are ongoing at Auburn, Louisville, Arizona and LSU, with charges potentially filed in the first half of 2020. Thus, the NCAA Tournament will include several teams either formally charged with major violations or under investigation for major violations. It will be an awkward Big Dance, especially if any of them advance to the Final Four (Kansas and Louisville look like legitimate Final Four contenders at this point and in this wide open season other implicated schools could make a run to Atlanta.” RANDOM THOUGHTS: There will be so many Australian-born punters in college football next year (40 at last count) that Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz says there is a “punting crisis” in the United States … Trouble and wide receiver Antonio Brown have a way of colliding. A moving truck driver was beaten up outside of Brown’s Hollywood (FL) resident. Brown’s trainer has been arrested and charged with felony burglary and battery. Brown remains a suspect in the incident although he has yet to be formally charged ... Derek Jeter came within a single vote of being unanimously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I wonder if the one voter who didn’t have Jeter on his ballot feels like a complete and total idiot today? Also elected to the Hall along with Jeter was former Montreal Expos/Colorado Rockies outfielder Larry Walker. Failing to get enough votes were Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling.

GATORS HAVE HAD RECENT SUCCESS AGAINST LSU With the exception of that rather large egg the Gators laid in Columbia, Missouri, Florida (12-5, 4-1 SEC) has been on its best roll of the season. Winners of five of their last six, the Gators bounced back from the 91-75 loss to Missouri with consecutive home wins over Ole Miss and then 4th-ranked Auburn with the Auburn win probably the best effort of the season at both ends of the court. “We played well,” Florida coach Mike White said Monday afternoon before the Gators flew out to Baton Rouge for their game tonight with league-leading LSU (13-4, 5-0 SEC). “I mean, we defended a top-five team at a high level and got into as decent an offensive rhythm as you can get into against that type of defense.” It was the second half that brought out the best in the Gators. During a first half in which White had to constantly shuffle his lineup to compensate for foul trouble that kept Andrew Nembhard and Keyontae Johnson on the bench for a very long stretch. If not for fouls (Auburn was 10-10 from the line) and turnovers (Tigers got 12 points off 12 UF miscues), Auburn would have had its most miserable half of basketball in perhaps the last two years. The Gators stayed out of foul trouble in the second half, turned the ball over only three more times, and they shot 55.2% from the field overall and 62.5% from the three-point line. Auburn shot only 25.5% overall from the field for the game, just 17.4% from the three-point line. The Gators should play with a high level of confidence against LSU. Not only do the Gators have the momentum of the win over Auburn, but they beat LSU in overtime in Baton Rouge last year and then followed that up with a win over the Tigers of the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament in Nashville. Last year LSU won the SEC championship. This season, the Tigers are on the same track as the only team in the SEC with an unbeaten league mark (5-0). “Their starting five offensively is just terrific and defensively they’re disruptive as well,” White said. They change defenses, they play really hard. They’re really good.” The Florida team that went 2-0 last week is really good too. White thinks it could be an outstanding game if the Gators do their part and play with the same intensity and efficiency of the wins over Ole Miss and Auburn. “If we play really well – we’re going to have to play really well – it should be a really good game.” SEC BASKETBALL Tuesday’s games FLORIDA (12-5, 4-1 SEC) at LSU (13-4, 5-0 SEC), SEC Network Georgia (11-5, 1-3 SEC) at #15 Kentucky (13-4, 4-1 SEC), ESPN Texas A&M (8-8, 2-3 SEC) at Missouri (9-8, 1-4 SEC). ESPNU Ole Miss (9-8, 0-4 SEC) at Tennessee (11-6, 3-2 SEC), SEC Network Wednesday’s games South Carolina (10-7, 2-2 SEC) at #16 Auburn (15-2, 3-2 SEC), ESPNU Arkansas (14-3, 3-2 SEC) at Mississippi State (11-6, 2-3 SEC), SEC Network Alabama (10-7, 3-2 SEC) at Vanderbilt (8-9, 0-4 SEC), SEC Network FLORIDA DEFENSE GOT BETTER IN 2019 The numbers don’t lie. Florida’s defense, despite giving up six touchdowns and 511 yards of offense in the LSU game, was improved in nearly every category in 2019. Here is where the Gators ranked nationally in 2019 and their numbers from 2018: Total defense: 304.8 yards per game (9th nationally; 343.3 yards per game in 2018 Scoring defense: 15.5 points per game (7th nationally; 20.0 per game in 2018) Rushing defense: 102.8 yards per game (8th nationally; 162.54 per game in 2018) Pass defense: 202.1 yards per game (32nd nationally; 180.8 per game in 2018) Interceptions: 16 returned for 160 yards (tied for 9th nationally; 14 returned for 266 yards in 2018) Turnovers forced: 23 on 16 interceptions and seven fumble recoveries (tied for 20th nationally; 14 interceptions and 12 fumble recoveries in 2018) Sacks: 49 for 318 yards in losses (4th nationally; 37 for 217 yards in losses in 2018) First downs allowed: 213 (8th nationally; 231 in 2018) Third down defense: 36.4% on 67-184 (40th nationally; 37.44% on 73-195 in 2018) Red zone defense: 14 TDs and 9 FGs allowed (#3 nationally; 18 TDs and 11 FGs allowed in 2018) Some final numbers of note (they don’t keep national rankings of these stats): Yards per play allowed: 4.9 per play in 2019; 5.12 in 2018 Yards per rush attempt: 3.19 per attempt in 2019; 4.29 in 2018 Yards per pass attempt: 6.7 per attempt in 2019; 6.2 in 2018 MORE STUFF ON A TUESDAY (1) Feleipe Franks made it official Monday that he will transfer to Arkansas. Barring something dramatic and unforeseen, he’ll be the starter so he will have a chance to show the NFL scouts that he’s (a) healthy again and (b) that he’s progressed as a decision maker. When healthy, Franks has all the physical attributes the NFL looks for – he’s big, strong, fast and has a gun for an arm. What has always been the questionable aspect of his game is the maturity to make the good decisions at critical junctures of games. At Arkansas he will be working with former Florida Atlantic and FSU offensive coordinator Kendal Briles. (2) I guess it was inevitable, but the college basketball program steeped in the most tradition – Kentucky – finally succumbed to the corporate sponsorship naming rights for Rupp Arena. The iconic basketball arena will now be known as Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center. It’s understandable that Kentucky changed the name of its football stadium from Commonwealth Stadium to Kroger Field. Kentucky football has little to no tradition when it comes to football. But basketball? Oh well, money talks. (3) Former Georgia defensive back Otis Reese, a 4-star when he signed out of high school, is transferring to Ole Miss. It’s highly unlikely Reese will get a waiver to play immediately from the NCAA but even if he did, he would have to petition to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and odds are long and hard that Sankey would give him the okay. (4) Former Alabama offensive lineman Scott Lashley has transferred to Mississippi State, where he will be immediately eligible as a graduate. Lashley played in eight games in 2019 including 58 snaps as the backup right tackle to Jedrick Wills, who has declared for the NFL. (5) Jimbo Fisher has hired two new assistant coaches at Texas A&M. He hired Tyler Santucci away from Wake Forest to coach linebackers and then raided Mike Norvell’s newly put together staff at Florida State for secondary coach T.J. Rushing. (6) For a coach whose seat is so hot it’s practically on fire, Derek Mason has troubles that simply won’t go away. In the past couple of months, Mason has lost four quarterbacks including three who started games in the Commodores 3-9 season. First Riley Neal ran out of eligibility. Then Mo Hassan announced he’s transferring out followed by Deuce Wallace. Now backup Allan Walters has entered his name in the NCAA transfer portal. The Commodores signed a juco transfer and two high school QBs, none of whom are enrolled. The only QB currently on campus is walk-on sophomore Jack Bowen. (7) Kentucky lost a game on the road to South Carolina then went to Fayette Nam to beat an Arkansas team with 14 wins before a full house at Sam Walton Arena. For that Kentucky dropped five spots to #15 in the Associated Press basketball poll. Duke, meanwhile, lost to a Clemson team on the road – the same Clemson team that South Carolina beat at Clemson – and then lost at home to Louisville. For that, Duke only dropped five spots to #8 in the AP poll. Having watched Duke play several times already, I’m really not sold on them as a top ten team or Final Four contender. I’m also convinced Kentucky would clean the Dookies clocks, but there is this perception problem we have about SEC basketball. The SEC probably has as many good teams as the ACC but perception is and will always be that the ACC is a better league. (8) The rumbling out of Baton Rouge is that Bo Pelini is going to be the new defensive coordinator to replace Coach O. Pelini was the DC for Les Miles in 2007 when LSU won the national championship. Dallas Cowboys passing game coordinator Kris Richard has emerged as a candidate to take Joe Brady’s spot on the coaching staff. He played at Southern Cal when Coach O was an assistant there under Pete Carroll. New Orleans Saints wide receivers coach Ronald Curry is another candidate for Brady’s old job and might be the top candidate given that he and Brady worked together with the Saints and the passing game Brady incorporated into the LSU offense was straight from the Saints playbook. GOOD QUOTES FOR A TUESDAY Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic with Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott on another year without a team from that league in the College Football Playoff: “In the conversations I have had with coaches and athletic directors, we’re careful not to overact. Utah had a chance to play into the Playoff. Utah and Oregon were in the top 10 most of the season. If Utah wins that game, they’re in. It’s not like the Pac-12 was prevented from being in. Utah just didn’t win the championship game. Oregon, who won our championship game, had they not tripped up against Arizona State two weeks before, they’d be in. There’s no impediment to the Pac-12 being in the Playoff. A couple of plays here or there and we are in the Playoff.” Jenny Ferentas of Sports Illustrated on the explosiveness of the Kansas City Chiefs’ offense since Patrick Mahomes became the starting quarterback: “The power of Mahomes is so influential that once he became the Chiefs’ starter, punter Dustin Colquitt, who is also the holder for extra points, started storing the gloves he wears for PATs in his jersey at all times. He’d never done that in his 15-year career, but a Reid offense run by Mahomes can score in a split-second, and Colquitt couldn’t risk being caught without his equipment. Last week, Mahomes rallied Kansas City out of a 24-0 deficit in a single quarter. This week, when the Chiefs fell into a 10-0 hole against the Titans, they didn’t even need a fiery sideline speech by their young QB.” RANDOM THOUGHTS: Jalen Hurts says he has no regrets regarding his transfer from Alabama to Oklahoma. Adding his Oklahoma stats to those accumulated at Alabama, Hurts threw for 9,476 yards and 80 touchdowns and ran for 3,274 yards and 43 TDs … Following the Tennessee Titans 35-24 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, defensive coordinator Dean Pees retired. He spent 47 years in coaching including 16 in the NFL and was the DC for Super Bowl champs with the Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots … At age 24, Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes is the fifth youngest Super Bowl QB. Of the other four, only Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers won his game.

TONEY WILL HAVE A CHANCE FOR A SPECIAL SEASON IN 2020 When Dan Mullen gets back to Gainesville after spending the weekend in South Africa for Tim Tebow’s wedding, he will arrive to the seriously good news awaiting that Kadarius Toney will be back for his senior season at the University of Florida. Toney, Trevon Grimes, Kyle Pitts and Jacob Copeland give the Gators four experienced playmakers on the outside to go with quarterback Kyle Trask and a running game that should be substantially better with a more experienced offensive line. With Toney, we’ve seen the potential since the Orange and Blue Game after he was an early enrollee in spring semester in 2017. He’s averaged 13.15 yards every time he has touched the football whether on running plays or receptions so it’s obvious he knows what to do with the ball in his hands. He just has to see the ball more often. We saw what he’s capable of doing when he scored Florida’s first touchdown of the 2019 season by taking a bubble screen 66 yards against Miami, but he hurt his shoulder in game two, missed six straight games and showed only flashes of his ability once he got healthy again. He dazzled with two carries for 39 yards against Vandy and his five receptions against Missouri and FSU were good for 113 yards. Imagine that kind of production week in and week out. If Toney can stay healthy in 2020 he should have the kind of breakout senior season that will make him attractive to the NFL. I would like to see him become more of a downfield threat in the passing game and get the ball on running plays in something other than a jet sweep. I would also like to see him get a chance to throw the ball. We tend to forget he was a high school quarterback. His 20-yard touchdown pass against Mississippi State in 2019, if you recall, proved to be the game-winner. MAYBE THE GATORS HAVE TURNED THE CORNER A week ago it seemed as if the Gators had taken some giant steps backward, but after Saturday’s 69-47 win over Auburn coupled with last Tuesday’s 71-55 win over Ole Miss, there is reason to believe that the Gators have either found the maturity that has been missing or they’re awfully close. Based on the quality of defense, the way they handled stretches of adversity in the first half of both games and then adjusted to dominate the second halves, I tend to think they are very close to becoming that dangerous team nobody is going to want to play in the final month of the season and moving forward in March. When the Gators defend at a high level, they’re going to have a chance to win every single game. Now that Mike White has found a winning combination of Kerry Blackshear Jr. at the high post with Omar Payne down low and Keyontae Johnson able to split time between small forward and playing a stretch four, White has a nice group that can defend, rebound and score. Last year, the Gators not only lacked size but had all sorts of problems getting any kind of scoring from the front line. If these three guys can continue to develop, it’s going to carry the Gators deep into March. Saturday’s scores FLORIDA (12-5, 4-1 SEC) 69, #4 Auburn (15-2, 3-2 SEC) 47 #10 Kentucky (13-4, 4-1 SEC) 73, Arkansas (14-3, 3-2 SEC) 68 South Carolina (10-7, 2-2 SEC) 81, Texas A&M (8-8, 2-3 SEC 67 Alabama (10-7, 3-2 SEC) 88, Missouri (9-8, 1-4 SEC) 74 Tennessee (11-6, 3-2 SEC) 66, Vanderbilt (8-9, 0-4 SEC) 45 LSU (13-4, 5-0 SEC) 80, Ole Miss (9-8, 0-4 SEC) 76 Mississippi State (11-6, 2-3 SEC) 91, Georgia (11-6, 1-3 SEC) 59 Tuesday’s games FLORIDA (12-5, 4-1 SEC) at LSU (13-4, 5-0 SEC), SEC Network Georgia (11-6, 1-3 SEC) at #10 Kentucky (13-4, 4-1 SEC), ESPN Texas A&M (8-8, 2-3 SEC) at Missouri (9-8, 1-4 SEC), ESPNU Ole Miss (9-8, 0-4 SEC) at Tennessee (11-6, 3-2 SEC), SEC Network Wednesday’s games South Carolina (10-7, 2-2 SEC) at #4 Auburn (15-2, 3-2 SEC), ESPNU Arkansas (14-3, 3-2 SEC) at Mississippi State (11-6, 2-3 SEC), SEC Network Alabama (10-7, 3-2 SEC) at Vanderbilt (8-9, 0-4 SEC), SEC Network MONDAY MEANDERINGS (1) Feleipe Franks paid a visit to Arkansas over the weekend. Given the quarterback situation (the three scholarship QBs are Jack Lindsey, John Stephen Jones and KJ Jefferson who are a collective 40-87 passing for 324 yards and five touchdowns in their careers) and offensive coordinator Kendal Briles, who had great success at Houston with D’Eriq King and at FAU working for Lane Kiffin, Arkansas seems more and more like the place Franks will spend his grad transfer season. (2) With the anticipated addition of Houston grad transfer D’Eriq King, Miami will have six scholarship quarterbacks competing this spring including two – N’Kosi Perry and Jarren Williams who have started. All things considered, Perry and Williams might as well start thinking about where they can transfer because neither one can hold a candle to King. It would be quite surprising if Tate Martell’s name isn’t entered in the NCAA transfer portal by Monday. King is a serious upgrade at the position but his transfer also makes what he did at Houston this year an absolute head-scratcher. King elected to redshirt after four games even though he was healthy. Originally, the idea was by redshirting this year, he would be back a year later and Houston would be better off for it. Did King betray the trust Dana Holgorsen placed in him at Houston? Or is there some sort of rift that we don’t know about? King is a grad transfer so he has the right to transfer wherever he wants without having to sit, but this seems like an unintended circumstance of the redshirt and transfer rules. (3) Attendance at the New Year’s Six and national championship games decreased by an average of 6,069 fans this year. The biggest losers were the Sugar (Georgia-Baylor drew only 55,21) and Cotton (54,828). The Cotton Bowl was the smallest attendance in 31 years. The national championship game, meanwhile, drew a sellout crowd even with the cheapest tickets on the resale market at more than $1,000. Bill Hancock, the director of the College Football Playoff, acts rather nonchalant about the decline at non-playoff New Year’s Six bowls and the outrageous prices for tickets to the semifinals and championship games. Maybe that’s because ESPN TV rights guarantee the bowl games will cover their costs. What I would like to see is for the College Football Playoff to ensure that tickets can be had by people who don’t have unlimited amounts of disposable income and for the bowl games to find a way to get decent matchups that will make people want to attend in person. (4) Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari was ejected from Saturday’s game with Arkansas in Fayette Nam after he protested an illegal screen call on E.J. Montgomery. Replays showed Montgomery was standing still and that the call was bogus, which doesn’t surprise me considering the zebra crew was Anthony Jordan, Patrick Evans and Brian Shey. Following the two free throws for the ejection of Calipari, Kentucky went on a 17-2 run and ended up winning the game, 73-66. Here is what bothers me about the officiating I’m seeing this year. They’re letting defenders hand check, push and shove all over the place and they’re calling touch fouls. There is something seriously wrong with this and yet the more I watch, the more I see the same old, same old. (5) One more thought about officiating in college basketball and then I’ll shut up – well, at least for one night. Any time I see Bart Lenox (he was the crew chief at the Florida-Auburn game), I know it will be a poorly officiated game. He has as much business calling basketball games as I have of performing brain surgery. I’ve watched his officiating career and I’ve yet to see anything that would make me believe he has any potential whatsoever to become even halfway decent. (6) Vanderbilt’s string of 1,080 consecutive games with a made three-pointer came to an end Saturday night when the Commodores lost to Tennessee, 66-45, in Nashville. The Commodores were 0-25, the worst three-point shooting game in SEC history and the second worst in all of Division I in the last 20 years (Northwestern State went 0-26 in a 2012 game). Since we’re on the subject of three-pointers, I have to wonder how much of the poor three-point shooting that we’re seeing throughout college basketball this year has something to do with the line being moved back a foot? Or is it just that there are fewer good shooters playing the college game? I know one thing, the line being moved back hasn’t affected Florida’s Noah Locke in the least. Since the Long Beach State win, Locke has hit 17 of his last 34 three-pointers. GOOD QUOTES FOR MONDAY All-American Travis Etienne’s statement on why he’s returning to Clemson for his senior season rather than moving on to the NFL: “When I arrived at Clemson in 2017, I was a kid from Jennings, La., with a dream of becoming the best football player and the best man I could be. Speaking of dreams, I have long dreamed of competing at the highest level and getting the chance to compete in the NFL. But I’m not done dreaming here at Clemson, either, which is why I’m announcing that I’ll be returning for my senior season. I look forward to earning my degree from this great university and continuing to fight with my brothers on the team to make you proud during the 2020 season.” From Elliott Almond of the San Jose Mercury-News, Richard Sherman of the San Francisco 49ers on the fractured relationship he has with his college coach, Jim Harbaugh – who encouraged him to transfer from Stanford – and whether it can be mended: “There is nothing to mend. The bridge was burned down, torn down and built another bridge at another place. But the bridge in this particular relationship will never be rebuilt. I don’t think he is interested in it, and I’m not interested in it.” Flashback quote of the day from Alfredrick Hughes of Loyola-Chicago who went 1-21 shooting against Bradley in 1984, missing his first 20 shots before a tomahawk dunk on his final attempt: “You see me stick that last one?” RANDOM THOUGHTS: The Kansas City Chiefs are back in the Super Bowl for the first time since 1969. The Chiefs, behind Hall of Fame quarterback Lenny Dawson and Hall of Fame linebacker Willie Lanier, beat the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings (by 12-1/2 points), 23-7, in a game that finally made people grudgingly admit that the American Football League (the two leagues didn’t merge until 1970) was every bit the equal of the NFL … Following their 35-24 win over the Tennessee Titans to claim the AFC title, the Chiefs have been established as a 1-point favorite over the San Francisco 49ers, who dominated the Green Bay Packers, 37-20 … It is being reported that Tom Brady will be talking to teams other than the New England Patriots regarding where he plays football in 2020. If you are prone to gamble on such things, put your money on (a) Brady signing with the Patriots and (b) the Patriots drafting a QB such as Georgia’s Jake Fromm.