Mike White (left) is set to tip off his second season on the Florida sideline.
Real Time (sort of): Gators Set for Eckerd Exhibition
Wednesday, October 26, 2016 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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The game against Division II Tritons will serve as dress rehearsal for regular season, which is still more than two weeks away.
By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Tuesday's practice, telling it like it is, wasn't great. A couple players had less than inspiring days. Is that OK? No, not really, especially for Florida coach Mike White.
But can it be expected at this point in the preseason? Absolutely.
The 2016-17 season opener is still more than two weeks away, so the Gators are getting a little stir crazy. They've been bashing bodies with each other not just since the preseason began, but during the weeks and months of offseason work and pick-up games. That's why Wednesday figures to be such a welcome, well, respite (if you will) from the routine.
An actual game.
Against different faces.
"It's not a real game, but against another team," White said. "I think our guys are chomping at the bit right now just to play somebody else."
For the Gators, those somebodies will be the Eckerd College Tritons, defending regular-season and tournament champions of the Division II Sunshine State Conference. With the O'Connell Center still a few months from completing its $64.5 million renovation, UF and EC will square off at the Veterans Memorial Arena, the site of the first two UF games of the regular season, as the Gators get set to barnstorm the state during the non-conference portion of the schedule.
[Read Chris Harry's in-depth "Pregame Stuff" breakdown of the game here]
Florida returns a group of seven players who started at least half the games last season. The club's lone exit came from forward Dorian Finney-Smith, who led the team in both scoring and rebounding and who this week made the roster of the NBA Dallas Mavericks as an undrafted rookie free agent. One of the aforementioned sevens, senior point guard Kasey Hill, will be held out of the game after missing the last two days of practice with a sore hamstring.
Even minus Hill, the squad's most experienced player, the Gators should get a decent baseline from which to operate for the rest of the preseason as they head for the Nov. 11 opener against Florida Gulf Coast.
"[It's] going to be a great test for us," junior center John Egbunu said. "We get a chance to see where we're at as a team and see where our chemistry is and see how things look."
That goes for the travel routine and venue, as well.
Fourth-year junior center John Egbunu (left) averaged 11.5 points on 59.1-percent shooting last season to go with 6.5 rebounds per game (second on the team). In 2016-17, the Gators want to do a better job of feeding Egbunu in the post, where the 6-foot-11, 255-pounder worked hard on his offensive game during the offseason.
With so much busing on the slate the first six weeks of the season, White wanted to give this exhibition as realistic a feel as possible. That's why the Gators bolted town early Tuesday night -- right after practice -- did the hotel thing, will have a shootaround Wednesday afternoon and play the game and hit the court for real (sort of) about four hours later.
Just like in the regular season.
"It's good to have an opportunity to play in a facility that we're going to open up the season in and also to maybe have an opportunity to play in front some fans who normally we don't have an opportunity to get to the O'Dome," White said. "That's not the overall biggest factor in [Wednesday] night, of course, but just a little tidbit there that brings additional excitement."
The real juice will come in getting to see how much more in tune the Gators are in Year 2 of running White's system; how much better they'll be at feeding Egbunu in the post; how forward Devin Robinson, by all accounts the program's best pro prospect, has advanced his game following foot surgery in April; how much better two sophomores, guard KeVaughn Allen and center Kevarrius Hayes, can be; and what impact newcomers Canyon Barry, the graduate transfer swingman from College of Charleston, and Keith Stone, a talented redshirt freshman forward who will see plenty of minutes, will have.
"More than anything, evaluation of where we are, and not how many shots you make or whether you ran this play right or not," White said. "How we respond to who starts, who doesn't? Who plays how many minutes? Who scores, who doesn't? … And, of course, schematically, are we doing our job?"
