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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Floridas biggest weakness last season looks like it could be a strength now.Justin Leon scored a career-high 17 points, KeVaughn Allen added 13 and the Gators handled Mercer 76-54 on Sunday night.Playing in Jacksonville for the second time in three days, Florida (2-0) celebrated another lopsided victory. Leon, Allen and the Gators improved free-throw shooting had a lot to do with the latest one.Leon was 6-of-10 shooting, including 3 of 5 from 3-point range, and had five rebounds. Allen was 3-of-12 shooting and made all five of his free throws. He added five assists, three boards, two blocks and two steals.Maybe the biggest positive for Florida was its free-throw shooting. The Gators, who ranked 323rd (out of 346 teams) in the NCAA from the stripe last season, hit 20 of 26 in the season opener and then 24 of 30 against Mercer.Hopefully a season-long trend, Florida coach Mike White said. Wed take that in a heartbeat. It feels good to see that thing go in. ... I know its got to feel good for our guys, especially the guys that have struggled in the past and are seeing the rewards of their labor.Rian Holland led the Bears (1-1) with 21 points. Jordan Strawberry, the son of former Major Leaguer Darryl Strawberry, finished with four points.Mercer trimmed a 24-point deficit to 49-34 midway through the second half, but Florida answered with a 15-5 spurt that pushed the lead to 25. The Gators coasted from there, offsetting 36 percent shooting with 20 offensive rebounds and 22 points off 17 turnovers.You can tell they still have another place they can go, Mercer coach Bob Hoffman said. They definitely havent arrived yet. ... I think that teams going to be really special, and theyve only begun. Ive seen a lot of good teams. Im an old dude as you can see by my gray hair, and that team has the pieces to be special.I will definitely enjoy watching them now that I wont be playing them.Devin Robinson chipped in 12 points and nine rebounds for Florida, which had all 12 players score.It feels good when everybody gets to pick off the tree, Leon said.BIG PICTUREMercer: A preseason pick to finish third in the Southern Conference (behind Chattanooga and Wofford), the Bears have enough talent to do well in league play. Venturing out against power conferences could be a tougher challenge, evidenced by the performance against Florida.Florida: Although playing against an overmatched opponent, the Gators showed again they have the talent and depth to return to -- and maybe make a run in -- the NCAA Tournament after a two-year hiatus.STAR WATCHTwo Basketball Hall of Famers were on hand for the game. Artis Gilmore, who lives in Jacksonville, and Rick Barry, whose youngest son, Canyon, plays for Florida, spent time chatting in the stands at halftime.ROAD WARRIORSThe Gators have won two neutral-site games and will have plenty more chances to build a solid resume. This was the second of 11 consecutive games outside Gainesville for the Gators, who are waiting on completion of a $64.5 million renovation to the OConnell Center. Their nonconference schedule includes neutral-site matchups against Seton Hall, Duke and maybe Gonzaga. They also play at Florida State. That slate could benefit the Gators when it comes time for the NCAA Tournament.UP NEXTMercer gets a week off before playing at Georgia Southern next Sunday, the first of three games in six days.Florida plays St. Bonaventure in Lakeland on Thursday night.---More AP college basketball: http://collegebasketball.ap.org Cheap Air Jordan 1 Authentic . 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SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The four-star quarterback was a three-sport star in high school, and though that versatility may have kept him out of the zip code of five-stars a few years ago, DeShone Kizer says now playing baseball and basketball was the best thing to ever happen to him.It allowed me, one, to create the athletic ability that it takes to be able to adjust on the fly when youre playing at this high level, Kizer said last week. And two, Im learning more about the quarterback position every day than I ever have.Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly echoed those thoughts, saying that a few month away from the gridiron can declutter a players mind and help him think outside the box, a trait more valued for a quarterback than perhaps any other position in team sports.It keeps you sharp in competitiveness, in team sports, competing all year-round, Kelly said. Thinking in terms of other sports, there are definitely correlations that you can bring to the game, itself, from other sports. And I just think sometimes we become a little too specialized at the position, and I enjoy seeing guys that play some other sports.So how exactly did baseball and basketball sharpen Kizers football mind? And was he actually any good on the diamond or the hardwood? The more appropriate question may be: Just how good could he have been?We couldnt hide himToledo (Ohio) Central Catholic baseball coach Jeff Mielcarek was able to resist the temptation to use Kizer on the mound, but there was no point trying to hide him in the batting order. After so much interest from college football coaches forced Kizer to shut down his pitching arm -- which Mielcarek said maxed out in the 80s -- his sophomore year, Meilcarek put him in the outfield and hit him cleanup.Kizer threw a bullpen session for an assistant during his junior year, Mielcarek said, prompting a heart-to-heart between coaches over the budding stars use.One of our [assistant] coaches came in and said, Coach, DeShone -- we need to use him, Mielcarek recalled. And I said, Seriously? And I named three schools coming in that he was going to be auditioning for to throw for football, and I said, We havent used him all this time. What are we going to do now? This is silly. So no, were not going to do that.Kizer played an integral part on Central Catholics conference championship team in 2013, hitting an RBI double in the title game. Perhaps more impressively, he returned in 2014 for his senior year, just months away from starting his college football career.That year-round commitment earned Kizer the respect of opposing prep baseball coaches, said Mielcarek, who thinks Kizer could have been drafted into the major league baseball draft had he stuck with the diamond. And though football and basketball kept Kizer from turning baseball into a 12-month activity, his attitude during his limited stay with Mielcareks squad seemingly made up for lost time.Were playing summer baseball and DeShones not playing summer baseball because hes going to football camps and hes going to this and hes going to that, and nobody ever questioned what DeShone was doing, Mielcarek said, because DeShone not only will show you that when he shows up hes going to work harder than anybody else, but DeShone will also make certain that he gets those people on his side because he just says the right thing, he does the right thing. Its amazing.When Kizer was buried at No. 3 on the Notre Dame depth chart in the 2015 spring, he contemplated a move to baseball. He put out a feeler to Irish baseball coach Mik Aoki through teammate and Irish outfielder Torii Hunter Jr. before coming to terms with his day job.I went to the batting cages a couple of times, but never really fully got it in motion, I never ended up leaving, Kizer said. It was time to lock in and play my part as a backup at the time.A 6-4 rarityLike every quarterbback who dabbled in basketball, Kizer was a point guard.dddddddddddd The 6-foot-4 Kizer maxed out height-wise early, but the anomaly of a tall freshman distributor led to analogies that bordered on hyperbole.He knows where a guy is open when the guy doesnt know hes open, said former Central Catholic basketball coach Jim Welling, now the schools admissions director. DeShone was like a miniature Magic Johnson. Now, he wasnt 6-8 like Magic was, but he had peripheral vision and the ability to find open guys, and it was really uncanny because I had never seen anything like that before.Kizers father, Derek, played basketball at Bowling Green, and Welling said he thinks DeShone couldve surpassed his father at the college level.If there was one knock on Kizer, it was a suspect jump shot that he didnt get enough time to work on.When you go from 15 football games a year and then you go to a 25-30-game basketball schedule and then you go into a 25-30 (game) baseball schedule and then you have summers where everybody wants you to do summer activities, you really dont have time for player development like DeShone really needed, Welling said. If he had gotten that, I have no reason to believe that he couldnt have been recruited by the Big Ten, ACC or Big East.Kizers Notre Dame teammates echo that sentiment, with receiver C.J. Sanders coming away impressed by the paradox of Kizers hoops game whenever they play pick-up.Hes an athletic guy for his size, thats whats most surprising, Sanders said. Hes a big guy, like (230 pounds). Being able to move like that playing basketball is crazy.As a prep sophomore, Kizer was a captain. As a senior, he was league player of the year and third-team All-Ohio thanks to a stat-sheet-stuffing line of 11 points, 5.6 rebounds and 6.8 assists per game, according to the Toledo Blade.Lines like those were all the more amazing considering he often got a late start thanks to football playoff runs that bled into winter sports.Hes a guy that had a state tournament championship game on Friday night, and Sunday evening hes practicing basketball within two days with no reps, Welling said. Thats how anxious he was to get on the floor.The later, the better?Kizer may have been good enough to sign with Notre Dame, but he was only ESPN RecruitingNations 16th-ranked dual-threat quarterback in the 2014 class. Did his well-rounded background make it more difficult to master sports signature position?To go through all three sports in high school, I never really locked into one, so theres a lot of stuff that I wasnt able to learn in high school where people have preached it since theyve been 8 years old, Kizer said. So a lot of that new stuff got put on me my redshirt freshman year when I was mature enough to learn from it, and now its kind of put me at a higher learning curve now that Im in my 20s where things are a little easier to understand.Kizer is 9-4 as a college starter and, if all breaks right, could play on Sundays next fall. More than two years after Kizers signing day, 11 of the 15 QBs ranked ahead of him have switched either schools or positions.Is all this a credit to Kizers prep approach? Or does his college success just speak to his individual makeup?That mind works like a computer, Welling said of Kizer. He can retain stuff in basketball that you had to go over and over and over things and hopefully you think theyll get it in some point in time. In his case, he didnt have to do that. If you did it once, he had it.His process-ability skills are off the charts, and I think when you throw those three different sports together and youre processing like he has the ability to do, I would agree with him 100 percent that hes probably benefited from all three sports. ' ' '