Florida Gators
Tennessee
Little Big Man Chiozza on Point for Gators
Wednesday, January 6, 2016 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The Germantown Giants were in the middle of what had become an annual run deep into the USSSA baseball championships at Wide World of Sports in Orlando. A 14-year-old named Christopher Xavier Chiozza was having another magnificent tournament, be it turning double plays at shortstop or using his command of an array of pitches to mow down opposing batters.
Between games, Chiozza and a couple teammates zipped across the massive complex to catch some of their Memphis, Tenn., buddies playing in an AAU basketball tournament. They were sweating bullets, courtesy of the brutal central Florida August, when they rolled into the Milk House and were overcome by what seemed like an arctic blast.
From 108 degrees on the field to 70 on the court.
Chiozza had an epiphany.
"Next time I come back here, I'll be playing basketball," he said.
And he did.
That's how Christopher Joseph Chiozza, the father, remembers it happening. Makes sense. Nowadays, it's tough to be a superstar teen in two sports if the end game is to play in college.
"That was the turning point," the elder Chiozza said this week. "It happened right about when it needed to happen."
Young Chris had his fill from bolting the diamond and racing across town for basketball practice. When it came time to pick, he went for the one that best suited him.
"I went with basketball," he said. "I had a lot of energy."
Still does.
Funny how things work. If Chiozza, indeed, made up his mind to go with basketball that summer in Florida, maybe it was fitting that he wound up playing at Florida. Now, deep into his sophomore season, Chiozza is doing the basketball thing awfully well for the Gators (9-4, 1-0), who Wednesday night will be back in their starting point guard's home state to face the Tennessee Volunteers (7-6) in their Southeastern Conference road opener at Thompson-Boling Arena.
Chiozza grew up in Memphis, nearly six hours from the UT campus, so this trip won't be much of a homecoming. Heck, his parents have to get up early Thursday to go to work, so they won't even make the trip. But they'll be watching, like most Florida fans, and what they'll see is a UF team that plays its best when mirroring the traits of their poised, confident, savvy and jet-propelled point guard.
"He's been really sound," Florida coach Mike White said. "There's some stuff he'll continue to get better with, but he's shooting a good percentage and he's making really good decisions."
The 6-foot, 175-pound Chiozza is averaging 6.7 points, 2.8 rebounds, 3.4 assists and leads the team in 3-point shooting at 40.5 percent. Those numbers don't tell the whole story, though. Since swapping spots in the starting lineup with Kasey Hill five games ago, Chiozza has bumped his points per game to 8.8, stayed about the same from the 3-point arc (.380), but he has 21 assists and just two turnovers.
What coach won't take a 10-to-1 ratio in those departments?
In Saturday night's Southeastern Conference opener against Georgia, an 77-63 win, Chiozza's stat line showed 11 points, six rebounds, six assists and one turnover.
"Valuing the ball and being a leader, those are the two most important things to me," Chiozza said of the point guard role. "Do that and you can run your team."
He's had a lot of practice doing so.
Chris and Curtistine Chiozza knew they had an athlete even before their 2-year-old son dunked on his toddler basket and pulled the goal down on his head. He got up and dunked again. Both Chiozza parents played basketball in high school. Both were point guards, in fact. The elder Chris grew up playing with and against some of the great names in Memphis lore -- Penny Hardaway, Vincent Askew, Elliott Perry -- and even once played alongside Todd Day when the Arkansas superstar went for 76 points in a summer league game. The older Chiozza went on to play at Division II Christian Brothers.
Basketball was in the kid's blood.
But so was baseball.
From Chiozza's baseball, in fact, came basketball. The players on his youth baseball team were all close friends and wanted to play basketball together. So Chiozza's father agreed to coach them in a league.
"They figured out real quick that once we got the ball, all they had to do was take off for the other end of the court and Chris would find them somewhere," his father said. "It was that easy. They had to outrun the other team to keep up with Chris."
Away he went.
Chiozza was undersized, but made up for his quickness and toughness. The latter was must-have trait to excel on the playgrounds and in the gyms of Memphis. He daydreamed of being local University of Memphis icon Derrick Rose (OK, so a smaller version) and in time, joined Team Thad, the area's top AAU squad (run by former Georgia Tech and NBA player Thaddeus Young, also out of Memphis), with a roster stacked with six future Division-I players, including Illinois' Leron Black and Davell Roby of St. Louis. Chiozza's high school team, White Station, was a fixture in the state's top 10.
On the court with so many great players, Chiozza not only got good at playing the game, he got really good at thinking it. His father recalls many a time his son was thinking (and seeing) one, two, even three passes ahead of a play.
"I can remember games back when he was in the ninth or 10th grade playing on the varsity -- a little thing out there against a bunch of big guys -- and they'd think they had him trapped on the floor with nowhere to go," elder Chris said. "And then the last place you'd expect a guy to be open or that he could possibly see, he'd zip the ball to a guy cutting to the basket."
Sounds familiar.
It was while playing with Team Thad that he caught the eye of then UF-coach Billy Donovan. As it turned out, Chiozza already had an eye on the Gators. They were on TV a lot in Memphis and Chiozza liked what he saw from one facet of Donovan's teams.
"They had smaller guards," he said. "They were all quick and could all score."
Erving Walker. Kenny Boynton. Mike Rosario. Scottie Wilbekin. The fit seemed like a good one and Chiozza came to Gainesville. He played in all 33 games as a freshman (starting 11) and averaged 3.9 points and shot just 32.3 percent from 3 and a team-worst 47.7 from the free-throw line. The Gators went 16-17. Their coach went to the NBA.
"I never had it in my mind to leave, but a lot of people back home were calling me about it," he said.
But also back home, Chiozza's dad, an assistant on Team Thad, was doing his homework. The AAU community was well aware of what White had done in winning 101 games in four seasons at Louisiana Tech and how his team played.
"Coach White had recruited some players in our program," Chiozza's father said. "And I knew several people who told me his style would fit Chris well. It's always scary when you lose the coach who recruited you, but I told him to just wait and see, and to keep the lines of communication open with his teammates."
Everyone stayed.
When White went to evaluatethe players he inherited he saw in Chiozza a young player who was fast, quick and would be good in the press. What White did not see on film -- but saw later in the gym -- was that Chiozza was a better shooter than his statistics suggested.
As a sophomore, his across-the-board shooting numbers have all improved: up 6 percent from the floor, 8 percent from 3 and 40 percent from the free-throw line.
He's still fast and on the attack, especially in the open floor.
"We'll continue to urge him to be aggressive," White said.
When the UF staff opted to swap Chiozza into the starting lineup with Hill, the coaches didn't figure one of their better lineups would end up being with both on the floor. And with the recent scoring surge from freshman KeVaughn Allen (50 points the last two games), the Gators now have a three-guard option that was on the floor much of the second half in the win over Georgia.
"When we're in there, we're fast in transition and we can create a lot of turnovers," Hill said. "It's working so far."
As White often says, the Florida offense is a work in progress; a search for an identity. The Gators have been all over the map in the hunt to find themselves, with their last outing against the Bulldogs the first sign of marrying outside shooting with interior post play; and that was with an off-game from senior forward Dorian Finney-Smith and just 10 minutes from sophomore forward Devin Robinson, who left late in the first half with a chest contusion and did not return.
"It makes a huge difference," Chiozza said of UF's 41-percent shooting from distance versus its season percentage of 28.4. "We know we can make them. We make them in practice and we get those same looks every game; wide open looks. The majority of them have gone in and out in games. Finally, we got some to fall and it got us more inside looks and opened things up for our guards more."
Chiozza's play at the point has opened a lot about the Florida offense. The kid may be small, but don't forget.
He was once a Germantown Giant.
