Gators Travel North to Play at Pitt on Friday
Thursday, November 19, 2009 | Women's Basketball
The Gators make their first road trip of the season, traveling to the state of Pennsylvania to play nationally-ranked Pittsburgh on Friday, Nov. 20 with tip-off from the Petersen Events Center scheduled for 7 p.m.
The Panthers are the second ranked team Florida is facing already, with Pitt listed 25th in the ESPN-USA Today Coaches Poll, while receiving votes in the Associated Press poll.
Florida (1-1) is coming off a tough 66-62 defeat at the hands of instate rival Florida State, ranked No. 13/10 in the country. The Gators led by as many as seven points early in the game, but the veteran Seminole squad rallied as Alexia Deluzio drained the game-winner with 37.4 seconds remaining. UF senior Sharielle Smith (Bradenton, Fla.) contributed her fourth career double-double, tying career-highs of 18 points and 13 rebounds in the loss.
Pitt, which has reached the NCAA Sweet 16 each of the last two years, opened its season with a resounding 61-35 victory over North Florida on Tuesday. Ten Panthers saw action in the contest, with Chelsea Cole (6-3, junior), Taneisha Harrison (6-0, junior) and Shayla Scott (6-1, junior) each hitting double-figure scoring marks, while the Panthers held a 44-27 rebounding advantage.
“It's still so early in the season that it's tough to gauge another team's tendencies, so we've really been focusing on us,” UF head coach Amanda Butler said. “We have to find ways to improve and the Florida State game obviously showed us a lot of those areas where we need to get better.”
With the bulk (78.3%) of last year's top three-point shooters returning and the addition of sharp-shooter Jordan Jones (Suwanee, Ga.), the Gators seemingly are poised to make a run at last year's record-setting campaign from beyond the arc, where the 2008-09 squad hit 221 treys at a 35.0 percent accuracy mark.
Florida opened its 2009-10 campaign with a 7-for-18 performance from long range against Stetson, tied for the second-most treys in a season-opener, and followed with nine 3-pointers against Florida State, but attempted 31 in that game for just a 29-percent mark.
“You know that some nights you're going to shoot the ball well and others you're not. We didn't shoot the ball well the other night and maybe some of that was because of Florida State's defense, but I also think it was because we just missed a lot of shots that we would normally hit,” Butler said.
Florida, which posted a 7-6 road record last season, sports a modest 5-3 all-time record when playing a game in the state of Pennsylvania. The Gators have won three consecutive outings inside the border of the nation's second state, all coming against Temple, with the last a 68-54 victory on Jan. 5, 2008.
“For road games, your effort has to be double and we have to be mature enough to understand that. I was very proud of our toughness and how we battled against Florida State,” Butler said. “The biggest thing we can draw on from that loss was that we are supposed to be this great shooting team but we weren't, however, we were still in position to win the ballgame against the 12th-best team in the country. It was because we were tough, we played physical and hard and our effort was exceptional.
“Toughness will sustain us if we have another off-shooting night,” Butler continued. “Toughness is the foundation for our team, of our program.”
Friday will be the third meeting between the two schools, with each winning at home. The Gators won last year's 90-83 shootout in Gainesville, while the Panther's claimed the 72-68 decision back on Dec. 20, 1984.
Pitt's roster features seven players who stand at least 6-feet tall, with four of them among the probable starters for Friday's game. UF's lone 6-footer in the starting lineup is 6-foot-4 sophomore Azania Stewart (Wood Green, England).
“Pitt is similar to Florida State in that they are huge,” Butler said. “They have size and strength that we just don't have, but we have some things that they don't have and we tried to use those things against Florida State. We had to make it a game more about our strengths. When you see a post like Sharielle Smith have the double-double in the fashion that she did, then I thought our post players responded to the challenge. I expect them to have that same type of effort against Pitt. We also will need to have more production from our bench.”
Game Day Information
What: Florida (1-1) at #25 Pittsburgh (1-0)
When: Friday, November 20, 2009 * 7 p.m.
Where: Pittsburgh, Pa. * Petersen Events Center (12,508)
Radio: LIVE on WBXY-FM (The Star 99.5) in Gainesville with Steve Babik & Steve Russell
Internet Audio: LIVE thru GatorZone.com (FREE of charge)
Online Video: Panthers All-Access at www.pittsburghpanthers.com (FREE)
Television: none
Post-Game Satellite Feed: none
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