Gators head to Bahamas with much to fix, but not much time
Monday, November 24, 2014 | Men's Basketball, Volleyball, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- When the schedule lines up with a game on a Friday or Saturday and the next one not for three or four days out, it's been customary during Coach Billy Donovan's basketball tenure at Florida to give his players a day off. Usually, the day after the game.
But Friday's 61-56 overtime squeaker against Louisiana-Monroe -- both the performance of the players and the dire lack of bodies -- made the circumstances anything but customary. So Donovan tweaked his routine just a bit.
Three practices Saturday.
Two more Sunday.
“We're not a very good team right now,” he said.
That team is about to play in a very, very good basketball tournament in a very unusual venue.
With top forward Dorian Finney-Smith (hand) and top guard Eli Carter (ankle) questionable with injuries, 18th-ranked Florida (2-1) will face Georgetown (3-0) in opening-round play Wednesday night of the Battle 4 Atlantis at Paradise Island, Bahamas. Should the Gators manage to get past the Hoyas, they'd likely on Thursday face No. 3 Wisconsin, which figures to be a big favorite over Alabama-Birmingham, with either North Carolina, UCLA, Oklahoma or Butler waiting on the other side of the bracket for the third-round game Friday.
Three games in three days with all kinds of uncertainty regarding manpower.
“It concerns me in terms of style of play,” Donovan said Monday, several hours before the team hopped its chartered flight, with a scheduled arrival around 8 p.m. “This [UF] team needs to press. I don't think we can sustain that kind of intensity, never mind three games in a row, for 40 minutes. Not enough depth.”
Or defined roles, either.
Donovan and his staff holed up in the basketball complex between those five sessions over the weekend -- some were full-blown practices, some individual instruction sessions -- to try and scratch out ideas to improve on a bevy of elements, among them the Gators' collective shooting percentages (43.9 percent on field goals, 34.7 from 3-point range), especially when it comes to sophomore point guard Kasey Hill (pictured above).
Hill is a combined 3-for-24 for the season. That's 12.5 percent. Opponents are packing the defense on the block to take away the post, honoring shooting guard Michael Frazier on the perimeter, but playing completely off Hill, just daring him to make a shot.
So aside from watching Hill take oodles of shots in individual instruction, Donovan and his assistants are trying to find ways to help his battered confidence and put him in better position to be more effective offensively; both in attacking the defense to find teammates, but also with his pull-up jump shots and drives down the lane.
“Most of his shots have been in the lane and he's got to finish better,” Donovan said. “He's got to do a better job waiting on screening actions; he's going off too quick. And I think he's made some rough decisions, especially in transition where he's trying to go one-on-four and use his speed when he probably needs to run our team a little bit.”
If that sounds like a lot to correct in a short period of time, well, hence the cram sessions over the weekend.
Plus, the games in Paradise are going to be played whether UF is ready or not.
