Podcast: Talking Diamond sports for the Florida Gators, NCAA tournament and more

GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we break down the diamond sports as softball starts the NCAA tournament and baseball looks to finish the regular season strong.
Andrew Spivey, Ethan Hughes, and Bailiegh Carlton break down how the softball did in the SEC tournament and what to look for in this week’s regional as the Gators host.
Andrew, Ethan, and Baileigh also break down what baseball has to do this weekend to win the SEC East, plus we talk about the Swamp going to 100 percent capacity this fall.
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrew:​What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, back with Ethan and Baileigh. We’re going with the trio today. Have everybody back, and got a pretty good podcast coming up. Diamond sports are getting towards the end. Softball is going to host the Regional of the NCAA Tournament. Will also host the Super Regionals, if the Gators are able to move on. Then baseball is in their last weekend series, as they take on Arkansas. There’s still a slim chance of winning the East. We’ll get into that in a minute.
Baileigh, let’s first talk about it. Softball gets all the way to the SEC Tournament championship to fall to host Alabama. I don’t want to say Florida played terrible in the championship game, but they didn’t play very good. Some very uncharacteristic defensive mistakes in the game, but overall, the Gators played well in the tournament.
Baileigh:​I think they played well, but it’s like I’ve said over and over, you just never know what you’re going to get from this team. In postseason you can’t rely on needing those late game clutch hits, and that’s what they had to use in both, in the quarterfinal and the semifinal. Then that never came against Alabama, because when you’re facing Montana Fouts it’s just not going to happen, nine times out of ten. So, it wasn’t a bad tournament. I’m not a huge fan of riding Elizabeth Hightower as much as Florida is doing right now. She’s been great this year, but she started all three games in the SEC Tournament, which I thought was a little odd.
Now we’re moving into Regionals. Florida’s the #4 overall seed, hosting Baylor, South Alabama, your school there, and USF. It’s a very winnable regional. I think Florida should get out of it pretty easily.
Andrew:​I think what you said is a good point. You go with Montana Fouts, who set the SEC Tournament record for strikeouts. Every team seems like they have that one stopper. Hightower is that for Florida. You go around the country, Oklahoma and the other big name schools, they always got it. Kelly Barnhill was that for a while for Florida. Ocasio kind of was that a little bit too. That’s what Fouts is. I kind of compare it to baseball, where that’s your ace. You have to figure out a way to grind at bats the whole game. Grind at bats to get the pitch count up, but to grind at bats and to get across a run or two. When Bama was up 3-0, had Florida been able to scrape across a run or two there, it’d been a whole different ball game, but they didn’t, and they went on to lose four to nothing.
​You kind of look at it. You look at the earlier games in the tournament, where it was some late action in the game. The Missouri game, they allow what, five runs in the ninth inning and have to score two in the bottom of the seventh to come back win the game just to advance to the championship. When you get into, maybe not the Regional, but you get into Super Regionals with either probably Georgia or Duke as that next opponent, and then you get into Oklahoma City and the College World Series, you’re not going to be able to do that. If you allow five runs in the seventh inning, you’re probably done.
Baileigh:​Right.
Andrew:​If you don’t score a run early on, you’re probably done. I hope that it’s a team that understands what’s about to be in front of them. A lot of these girls have the experience there. Hightower doesn’t necessarily have the experience in the circle as some...