Gators Emphasizing Toughness Entering Bounce-Back Season
Monday, October 5, 2015 | Women's Basketball
By Taryn Bray
GatorZone.com Writing Intern
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Last season may have ended nearly six months ago, but to the Florida women's basketball team it is in the distant, distant past.
Looking ahead. That's the theme for this year's team after finishing last season with a 13-17 overall record and 5-11 in SEC play.
The season opens Nov. 13 at Temple.
“If you were to ask me a few months ago, I'd say last season was super disappointing, but we've learned so much from it,” fifth-year senior guard Carlie Needles said. “We've trained a lot harder this offseason because we're all so terrified to have last year happen again.”
Out of those 17 losses, nine of them were by 10 points or less and five were by fewer than six.
“There were a lot of close losses last year,” said Amanda Butler, who is going into her ninth season as Florida's head coach. “The returning players know how close they were to having a much better season. You're going to see a much different team that is unwilling to lose close ball games.”
Speaking of returning players, 10 of the 13 names on this year's roster are not new to the program and the three names that are new, certainly aren't new to college basketball.
Two of them, juniors Tyshara Fleming and Simone Westbrook, will be reunited with their former teammate and senior guard Carla Batchelor. The trio played together during the '13-14 season at Northwest Florida State, a junior college in Niceville, Fla., before Carla transferred to the Gators after her sophomore year.
“We come in and already have two years of collegiate physicality under our belt,” Batchelor said. “We can have an impact."
The UF women's team poses for a photo during Friday's media day.
The team boasts only one true freshman this season, Eleanna Christinaki, but everyone in the program made it clear that she is not your typical newcomer. The 5-foot-11 freshman guard has been playing with the Greece Senior National Team since 2012 and was the captain of the U-20 Greek National Team prior to that.
“She has experience even beyond what some of us have,” senior guard Cassie Peoples said.
“She's going to be an impact player for us as a freshman,” added new assistant coach Bill Ferrara, who is coming off a successful campaign as assistant coach for a George Washington team that earned a No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament last year.
The team loses only one starter coming into the season. Forward Kayla Lewis was UF's primary rebounder, an area the team struggled in last season. Butler, though, feels confident the task will be absorbed by a few different players.
Fleming adds some much needed height to the team this year standing at 6-4.
“She gives us height and length which is something we've missed,” Butler said. “Rebounding was really a weakness for us last season.”
Butler also mentioned that the guards need to take better care of the basketball, and rightfully so. The Gators ranked No. 320 in turnovers out 343 Division-I teams last season, averaging 19.2 per game.
Rebounding and protecting the ball were not the only things the team has worked on since the season ended. Peoples mentioned they worked on a number of offensive things including spacing, cutting and timing.
The majority of the team spent their summer in Gainesville which meant a much-needed productive offseason for the Gators.
“We stayed here all summer and got really close and worked really hard,” said sophomore forward Haley Lorenzen.
The offseason preparation wasn't confined to basketball. Butler wanted to find a way to push the girls on all cylinders and she found just the solution: boxing. She took the team to a local gym owned by Olympic boxer Lee Gladden Jr. The one thing she wanted to emphasize: toughness.
The kind of toughness that helps you persevere through long road stretches. The toughness that makes you push yourself past your limits.
“When we're down, and it's time for us to take it to another notch, we now know we have it in us,” junior forward Ronni Williams said.
That kind of toughness.
It's evident the team and coaching staff have high expectations for this year, with Butler going as far to even mention that this group of girls has the chance to be one of the best teams that has ever played at UF.
“I see a different fight, a different hunger in this team,” Williams said. “It's time for us to win and that's what we are going to do.”
Now, that's a lot of confidence.
