Ready to Rebound: Gators Want to Get Back to Winning Ways with Yale Coming to Town
Saturday, December 31, 2011 | Men's Basketball
By Chris Harry
GatorZone.com Contributing Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- When talking about his team's five-game winning streak the last three weeks, Florida coach Billy Donovan praised the way the Gators were starting to figure things out, particularly embracing the need to get a low-post presence established early in the game and staying with it.
UF, it seemed, was playing the right way.
On the road at Rutgers Thursday night – not so much.
The Gators hopped out to an early nine-point lead, but then got careless with the ball and cavalier with shot selection and learned a painful lesson about chemistry in an 85-83 double-overtime loss against the Big East Conference bottom-feeder.
“The difference in the game was their guys played the right way,” Donovan said after his team fell to 0-3 on the road this season. “After the first five or eight minutes, we didn't play the right way.”
From the moment UF got on the flight home from Piscataway, N.J., you can believe Donovan and his coaching staff began repeating the talking points and concepts that seemed to be sinking into the Gators' collective brains pre-Rutgers, only to leak out into the cold Jersey air.
It was a big step backward for this team, with only a week to go before the Southeastern Conference opener at Tennessee -- yes, on the road -- and the back-to-what-works emphasis starts today when the 10th-ranked-and-soon-to-fall-a-lot Gators (10-3) host Yale in a 2 p.m., New Year's Eve party (not really) at the O'Connell Center.
Of paramount importance against the Bulldogs -- and again Tuesday when the University of Alabama at Birmingham, an NCAA participant last season, comes to town -- will be rediscovering the unselfish perimeter chemistry that enables Florida to play at its best.
UF's three-headed guard lineup happens to include the Gators' top three scorers. Kenny Boynton, Erving Walker and Bradley Beal scored 50 of their team's 83 points at Rutgers. They also had 14 of its 18 turnovers (the second-most this season), including some pivotal, back-breaking giveaways down the stretch.
“We made too many mistakes,” Boynton said.
Patric Young, the 6-foot-9, 247-pound center, took just eight shots. Erik Murphy, the 6-foot-11 forward, scored the team's first eight points but had just six the rest of the game. Not because he wasn't open, either. Ditto Young.
Look for those two to be reintroduced to the ball early again against Yale -- and often thereafter.
“We weren't utilizing me throughout the game,” Young said. “When we did that early in the game, good things were happening.”
Donovan agreed, but there's an even bigger picture than that.
“We didn't maximize each other,'' Donovan said. “There were too many guys standing around and watching, but I think this is something we have to go through, as much as you may not like it, to reach our full potential.''
Defensively, the Gators allowed 48-percent shooting from the floor, allowing the Scarlet Knights -- who had not beaten a team with a winning record this season -- to be bubbling with confidence in the game's clutch moments, hitting some huge shots while the error-prone Gators blew a seven-point lead with just over two minutes to play in regulation.
Given that UF's previous two losses were at Ohio State (currently No. 2 in the country) and Syracuse (No. 1), this was by far the most bitter experience for the Gators in this young season.
So where do they go from here?
“What we need to do is see how self-reflective we're willing to be," Donovan said. "What do we need to do differently as coaches and as players? How you handle situations like this is a big part of any young player's development. It's a matter of what comes out of this. That's why I say it's bigger than this [Rutgers] game.''
Yeah, and it starts with the Yale game.
GATORS GAMEBOX
Yale at No. 10 Florida
Tip-off: Saturday, 2 p.m. (O'Connell Center, Gainesville, Fla.)
Records: Florida 10-3, Yale 8-3
TV: ESPNU (w/Doug Bell and Carolyn Peck)
Radio: Gator Radio Network (w/Mick Hubert and Mark Wise) -- Click here for affiliates) / Sirius 220/XM 199
Game notes: Florida notes; Yale notes
Need to know: The Gators and Bulldogs are meeting for the first time, but the game will mark the eighth time UF has faced an Ivy League opponent. Florida is 5-2 in those games, the most recent being a 75-61 defeat of Penn in the second round of the NCAA West Region at Seattle on March 11, 1999. ... The last time UF hosted an Ivy opponent was Dec. 23, 1969, when the Gators defeated Harvard 95-75. ... Florida has won 13 straight at the O'Dome, but this game will be about righting some of the many wrongs -- such as allowing 48 percent shooting, the second-highest of any opponent this season -- from Thursday night's double-overtime 85-83 loss at unranked and unheralded Rutgers. ... On the positive side, UF has taken some strides of late to correct what was abysmal free-throw shooting (59.5 percent) through the first eight games, having connected on 83 of its last 107 from the strip the last five games (77.6 percent), including 18-for-19 against the Scarlet Knights. ... Offensively, the Gators are led by their three-man backcourt of junior G Kenny Boynton (18.9 ppg, 3.0 apg), freshman G Bradley Beal (15.5 ppg, 6.3 rpg) and senior PG Erving Walker (13.8 ppg, 5.2 apg), but that trio combined to shoot just 16 of 37 from the floor and had 14 of the team's 18 turnovers. ... Against Rutgers, the Gators went 9-for-27 from the 3-point line, just the third time this season they failed make at least 10 shots from distance in a game. ... Yale is led by 6-10 senior C Greg Mangano (17.3 ppg, 9.1 rpg), named by some publications as the preseason Ivy League Player of the Year, and 5-11 junior G Austin Morgan (14.6 ppg). ... Most notable on the Bulldogs' schedule is a nine-point loss at Seton Hall, a three-point win over Rhode Island and one-point loss at Wake Forest on Thursday night.
