The Gators huddle during stoppage in their victory Sunday night over Xavier in the Charleston Classic final.
Gators Growing, Figuring Things Out on the Fly
Monday, November 25, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The weight of the expectations world apparently was a little bit too much for the Florida Gators heading into the 2019-20 college basketball season. The Gators may have entered the year ranked sixth in the country, but looked like a disjointed mess at times on offense, with disappointing losses at home against Florida State before a sell-out crowd than on the road at Connecticut just eight days ago when they scored only 20 points in the first half.
Yes, there were functional issues, but also chemistry problems combined with pressure problems. The preseason polls said UF was a top-10 team, but the Gators barely resembled a top-100 team. Now in hindsight, Coach Mike White wishes he'd talked more candidly with his players about and hype swirling around the program, but thought at the time it was best to ignore it rather than draw attention to it.
Two days after the loss at UConn, White confronted it all last Tuesday, the night the team arrived in South Carolina for the Charleston Classic, and admitted late Sunday, after beating No. 18 Xavier in the tournament championship game, that he should have done so sooner. White probably will take a cue from that teaching moment and revisit the issue after the Gators (5-2) moved back into the Associated Press rankings Monday at No. 24, with their next game Friday night against Marshall (2-3) at Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center.
Live and learn, right?
"I probably didn't address the hype enough. I didn't at all. The message all fall and all summer was [about] not listening to any words, period. 'It's all coming at you guys 100 miles an hour, in heavy doses.' But really for the first time, [last] week, Tuesday. I addressed it," White said after the 70-65 win that gave the Gators (5-2) a third straight victory and the program its first holiday-season tournament title in 10 years. "I think that meeting probably helped us a little bit, to get it out of the way. 'Yeah Coach, this is what we were thinking. These were some of the pitfalls that we fell into,' so on and so forth. … Now, it's the same thing. You win three here, you win a championship at an event like this, we just have to continue to grow and get better. There are so many things we didn't do very well here, but we are improving and that is what we have to hang our hat on. In the end, we hope to be really good in February."
White and his staff have done some things to simplify the offense, but also added some tweaks (and demands) that have helped better free up guys either to attack the basket or get Kerry Blackshear Jr. isolated or double-teamed in the post. Not that they weren't focused on doing those things before, but when a team is shooting just 38 percent from the floor and 24 from the 3-point line -- and the Gators have gotten open looks all season -- no offense is going to appear in sync.
UF coach Mike Whitehuddles with his team during a timeout Sunday.
In Charleston, the shots fell at better than a 48-percent clip, plus nearly 41 percent from distance, as the Gators increased their pre-tournament scoring average by 10 points in the three games.
"Eventually, we just had to come together and say, 'It's not about the hype and all that stuff.' It was about us coming together as a team and playing how we know we can play," said sophomore shooting guard Noah Locke, who went 8-for-16 from long-distance in the Classic. "We had to stop thinking so much and just go play the game and make shots like we do every day."
In beating Saint Joseph's, Miami and a veteran Musketeers team armed with five starters who were either juniors or seniors, Florida put three solid games together, but also left plenty of correctable things on tape. UF nearly blew a 17-point second half lead — "We played tight," White said — against Xavier, missing its last six field-goal attempts and turning the ball over five times in the final six-plus minutes. White credited Xavier's defense for his team's lack of poise, but he also credited forward Kerry Blackshear Jr., the fifth-year grad-transfer, for being a settling, calming influence on his UF teammates. Besides Blackshear, the eight other Gators who got on the floor were either sophomores or freshmen. Yes, they made some ill-timed mistakes.
But they also made some plays.
Besides being a double-double machine (five in seven games), grad-transfer Kerry Blackshear Jr. has used his five years of experience to become a voice of reason and provide a calming hand to his new, younger teammates.
It's become quite clear why freshman guard Scottie Lewis likely will be a lottery pick next June. Forget the struggles with his shot (he 1-for-7 Sunday). Lewis is an elite athlete and factor on every defensive possession. Woe to the opponent who picks up his dribble when Lewis is guarding him.
Reserve freshmen point guard Ques Glover had four turnovers in 16 minutes, but his speed, explosiveness and athleticism in attacking the defense was on display as he hit four of five shots. There was one second-half sequence when Johnson missed a shot, but the 5-foot-11 Glover fought for the rebound in heavy and larger traffic, took the ball to the top of the key and bombed in a 3 to put the Gators up by 13.
Sophomore forward Keyontae Johnson going downhill is becoming a defender's bad dream. Johnson was tremendous on his way to being named Most Valuable Player of the tournament. Point guard Andrew Nembhard's 3-point shot continues to get better. Locke's shooting hand is coming around. Freshman combo guard Tre Mann, maybe the most gifted pure scorer on the team, is back from concussion protocol and will be woven into the rotation.
"We've stayed together and just kind of played our roles," Johnson. "Now we're getting the outcomes we wanted."
It's only seven games in, with still five games (and five weeks) to go before the Gators start the Southeastern Conference season. There's so much time for this team to grow and develop. Along the way, the focus will be on results, rather than rankings.
"We didn't think we'd be great offensively early. We may not [become] great offensively, but I know we're going to be better than we are right now. It's all still new," White said. "We got off to a rough start shooting the ball, especially our two high-level shooters in Noah and Tre, with Tre being another piece we have to figure out. But the offense has been better, and and they fell for us at a higher rate this week."
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