This week's GatorCountry podcast focuses on where the Florida Gators were ranked in the new Athlon Sports top 25 preseason poll that was released on Monday morning.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre break down what is wrong with the preseason poll, plus we discuss who was ranked way too high in the poll and where we think they should be ranked.

Andrew and Nick also break down the Florida Gators baseball team taking over the SEC lead, plus we discuss the softball team's NCAA tournament road to the WCWS.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man right here, Andrew Spivey, with my man, Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, first place in the SEC for baseball. What’s up?

Nick:                         It was a good and challenging weekend. Two pretty incredible pitching performances. One from Logan Shore, and then one from Kyle Wright. Then when you have two teams with great pitching staffs going against each other, and Sunday you’ve got all these rested bullpens, of course you expect a 10-6 game. Not really what we expected Sunday, but Florida gets two out of three. South Carolina took Sunday over Texas A&M, so that gave Florida a half game lead in the SEC.

Andrew:                 It was about the weekend I thought it would be, to be honest with you. I think going in I thought you would probably win two out of three. Did I expect Sunday’s game? No, but I expected a lot of the Saturday games, the 1-0, 2-0. Even the 4-2 game on Friday night wasn’t a bad game. I know some people on the message board were not very happy with the series, because Vandy’s not good, and I’m doing air quotations right now that you guys can’t see. Vandy’s a damn good baseball team, a very good baseball team. #7 in the country this year is really good.

Nick:                         Florida and Vanderbilt are kind of similar in that great pitching staffs, both have kind of struggled to hit. On Sunday I’m sitting in the press box, and Deacon Liput hits a three run home run in the first, and I turned to somebody, and I said, “That’s probably it. We’re probably going to finish this game 3-0, and we kind of just have to get through the next eight innings.” Shows how much I know. It’s baseball, and you run into somebody. Kyle Wright’s a great pitcher. Kevin O’Sullivan, we were all focused on Sheffield Shore on Friday night, and Kevin O’Sullivan remembered Kyle Wright from last year when he was a freshman, and they faced him up in Nashville. You can run into a pitcher who has good stuff, and Kyle Wright is 92, 94. Nasty knuckle curve, good little cutter that he had as well. He’s locating, moving that ball. All three pitchers moving them one side of the plate to the next. There’s just a lot of statements of, Florida doesn’t have enough hitting to win this, because based on one game, but in baseball great pitching beats great hitting damn near every time. Sometimes you’re going to run into a good pitcher who has his A game, and stuff happens.

Andrew:                 Kansas City agrees.

Nick:                         It happens, and that’s baseball. You kind of just tip your cap and say, he was on his stuff today. We come back out tomorrow.

Andrew:                 Everyone wants to say defense.

Nick:                         Let me add this too. I think there’s still a little bit, Friday night Pete Alonso, who’s leading the team in homeruns, RBIs, batting average, slugging percentage, gets hit, has to leave, and then you find out before the game on Saturday that he’s done for the regular season. Maybe he can come back by the time that regional starts. That takes an emotional toll. Pete’s a guy that’s well liked on the team, aside from being the best hitter this season. So I think there’s some of the kind of doubt that cr