Wednesday, November 13, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
FLORIDA vs TOWSON
When: Thursday, 7 p.m. (EST) Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center, Gainesville, Fla. Records: Florida (1-1), Towson (2-1) TV: ESPN2 (Rich Hollenberg and Andy Kennedy) Radio: Gator IMG Sports Network (Mick Hubert and Mark Wise)
THE BASICS
Florida looks to bounce back from Sunday's debacle of a loss to rival Florida State, an ugly 63-51 defeat that marked the sixth straight loss to the Seminoles and dumped UF in the Associated Press rankings from No. 6 down to No. 15. ... Towson, out of the Colonial Athletic Conference, lost at home Monday night to Kent State, 84-80, in overtime. ... The Gators and Tigers have met just once, with UF winning 77-55 on Jan. 4, 1988 in Gainesville, when the school was known as "Towson State." In that one, Vernon Maxwell led six players into double figures with 13 points, his 85th consecutive game with at least 10 points. The win also marked the 200th for Coach Norm Sloan at Florida. . ... UF is 10-3 all-time against the CAA, with five consecutive wins dating to the 1999-2000 season. The last Colonial loss for the Gators was an 88-78 set back at the hands of Delaware in the San Juan Shootout in Puerto Rico, the first season under Coach Billy Donovan.
Senior guard Brian Fobbs is now in his second Towson season after transferring from Genesee Community College in Batavia, N.Y., where he was a first-team National Junior College Athletic Association All-American. As a junior at Towson, he finished fifth in the CAA in scoring last season at 17.5 points a game and ninth in free-throw percentage at 80.4 on his way to second-team All-CAA honors. His 561 points for '18-19 marked 10th-best single-season performance in school history. In a game against Maryland-Baltimore County, he scored 32 points by making six 3-pointers and going 10-for-10 from the free-throw line. The Rochester, N.Y. product has a sturdy frame and is not afraid to challenge a defense by taking the ball to the basket. He scored 20 points in the loss to Kent, but hit just seven of his 23 attempts and went 0-for-8 from the 3-point line ... which may also mean he's due.
TEAM BREAKDOWNS
UF freshman guard Tre Mann (1) in action Sunday against Florida State.
ABOUT THE GATORS: The sooner they get on to another game, the better -- assuming they play a lot better than the performance against the Seminoles. In that one, UF shot just 28 percent from the floor, 18 percent from the 3-point line, turned the ball over 16 times, and were dreadful the offensive recognition as far as guards feeding the ball to center/forward Kerry Blackshear Jr., the grad-transfer from Virginia Tech, in the post. Blackshear had 10 points and 13 rebounds, and though he was 0-for-5 from the floor he had numerous opportunities through savvy positioning down low -- but never got the ball. That needs to change not just against Towson, but against everybody.
Andrew Nembhard (2)
... Shooting guard Noah Locke had a tough day all around. Besides his passing, Locke also finished 1-for-11 from the floor and 0-for-7 from the 3-point line. ... Point guard Andrew Nembhard went for six points, five rebounds, four assists and turned the ball over four times. ... Forward Keyontae Johnson had a team-best 19 points and made all six of his second-half shots, but also had four turnovers and no assists. ... The heralded freshman duo of Tre Mann and backup forward Scottie Lewiscombined to go 1-for-10 from the floor, 1-for-6 from deep, with three rebounds and no assists. ... UF has gotten solid minutes from 6-10 freshman reserve forward Omar Payne (5.5 ppg, 4.5 rpg), who has more offensive rebounds (5) than defensive (4). His playing time figures to increase from its current 13.6 minutes. ... Florida's two fourth-year junior bigs, 6-9 forward Dontay Bassettand 6-11 center Gorjok Gak, will be available. Bassett sat out against the Seminoles with a sore knee and Gak missed the first two games (and several weeks of practice) after dislocating his should Oct. 4. ... ABOUT THE TIGERS: It was only 46 days ago that Towson's FCS football brothers rolled into town to face the Gators and got beat 38-0. The basketball Tigers are in their ninth season under Coach Pat Skeery, who is 124-137 in that time, but along the way has rescued the program from college basketball's abyss. How so? Get this: Towson went 1-31 in Skeery's inaugural 2011-12 season when he took over the post -- from fired Pat Kennedy, the former FSU coach -- after bouncing around as a Division-I assistant at four programs, his last stop at Pittsburgh the year before. The Tigers won at least 18 games during six of the next seven seasons, including a a 25-11 mark in '13-14 when they reached the College Invitational Tournament quarterfinal. ... Towson went 10-22 last season, but has its top three scorers back in Fobbs (profiled above), but also reserve forward Nakye Sanders (8.3 ppg, 5.5 rpg), who goes 6-8 and 240 pounds. In fact, the Tigers have two reserves averaging double-figure scoring in Jason Gibson (13.7 ppg) and Juwan Gray (12.7 ppg). ... Charles Thompson is just a freshman, but with good size, and leads the team with better than nine rebounds per game, plus five steals and four blocked shot in three games. ... Towson has made 45.1 percent of its field-goal tries and 35.5 of its 3s, while holding opponents to 36.0 and 26.2, respectively. If that latter number sounds low, it's nearly 8 points higher than what the Gators have shot from deep in their first two games.
NUMBERS WORTH NOTING
UF center/forward Kerry Blackshear (right) banged with lots of FSU bodies Sunday.
* 0 — Field goals made by Blackshear against FSU, which made him just the 11th player since 2000 (and the first Southeastern Conference player) to have a double-double without converting a field goal. The last was Boston College's Steffon Mitchell (Dec. 4, 2018), with the most notable along the way being Oklahoma's Blake Griffin against Utah (Dec. 13, 2008).
* 3 — Blocked shots by Lewis against the Seminoles, the most by a UF freshman since Kevarrius Hayes had three against Florida State on Dec. 29, 2015.
* 18.9 — UF's 3-point shooting percentage through two games. Yeah, it's early, but ...
* 31.4 — Opponent's 3-point shooting percentage, based on 16-for-51. That's a minus-27-point scoring disadvantage from the arc.
* 76.2 — Florida's free-throw percentage, based on 32 of 42.
LAST WORD
This one can't come soon enough, given what happened Sunday.
