This GatorCountry podcast focuses on previewing the Florida Gators baseball and softball teams' games this coming weekend.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre also look at prospects visiting the Florida Gators this weekend for the class of 2017 as there are scheduled to be several players on campus.

Andrew and Nick also break down the Florida Gators basketball teams big game this coming Saturday against South Carolina on the road in Columbia, South Carolina.

TRANSCRIPT:

Nick: ​Welcome back, Gator Country podcast listeners. Nick de la Torre, as always joined by Andrew Spivey. Andrew, pretty strong start for you on the softball diamond, and what’s going on other than that?

Andrew: ​Yeah. You can’t ask for nothing better than a no-no in baseball or softball, and that’s exactly what Aleshia Ocasio did on Wednesday night in the double header shellacking of Jacksonville, 16-0 out of the two games. Just a little Rick Flair style hit up the middle was the only hit of the double header, and that was against Kelly Barnhill in Game 2. Pretty good start. No hitter and 16-0 overall. Not too bad overall. In the total six games Florida’s only given up one run. Not too bad.

Nick:​ Softball is well underway. Baseball begins tonight, and there’s still recruiting going on. So before we get into those two full seasons Florida will host some visitors this week. Who is going to be getting a chance to maybe meet with Mac and maybe meet with the new coach, Coach Torrian Gray? Who’s coming in?

Andrew: ​Does recruiting season ever stop? It might be the longest season of them all. Usually baseball is 162, but recruiting’s 365.

Nick: ​Recruiting may be like 364 ½.

Andrew: ​What’s the off day? Christmas?

Nick:​Maybe.

Andrew:​ Yeah. Four visitors so far this weekend. You got Eric Douglas from Mallard Creek.

Nick, that’s DJ Humphries old high school up in North Carolina. Then you got another Carolina, South Carolina this time, defensive end in Logan Rudolph coming in. Then two local guys, Zach Carter, defensive end from Tampa, and Latavious Brini, I guess is how you pronounce his last name, Brini. Maybe not. All four of those are coming in this weekend. I expect many more guys to come in either this weekend or next weekend as Junior Days kind of wind down. Then spring practice was announced on Wednesday, March 9. You know how that is, Nick. It’ll be plenty of visitors coming in during that, but those four big ones coming in.

​Florida’s kind of went a good while without a commit. So maybe they can at least get some things rolling to get a commit. I don’t think they get one this weekend, but Zach Carter is a big one in the defense end out of Tampa.

Nick: ​Let me ask you a question here. Maybe you can help some people. When you talk about someone like Zach Carter, defensive end from Tampa, now let’s say that Torrian Gray, being from the Lakeland area, will handle Tampa for recruiting, but he’s the defensive backs coach. What’s the dynamic in recruiting a player who is in your area, but not your position? How much of the recruitment goes onto Chris Rumph? How much of it is Gray, because that’s his area? What’s that dynamic like?

Andrew: ​I think Chris Rumph will say recruiting that Tampa area, and then Torrian Gray will kind of take over where Kirk Callahan was recruiting, and that’s the Pasco, outskirts of Tampa, kind of area where Jayvaughn Myers was last year. I think it’s Pinellas County is how they describe that area. I think that’s kind of where Gray will do, as well as the Lakeland area. It’s Chris Rumph. Chris Rumph’s the one that’s going to have to sell Zach Carter on that.

If I was saying early on who was leading for Carter I would say it’s Florida. He’s a big guy that Florida really needs to lock down in this class, because they need to get some bigger defensive ends definitely out of this class. I think that’s a guy like Zach Carter, and great to get a guy out