Tuesday, December 17, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Through nine games, the Florida Gators have attempted 182 shots from beyond the 3-point line and made just 53. That's 29.1 percent, which ranks 302nd among the nation's 353 Division-I teams.
After going just 6-for-26 from deep in their last outing, a 76-62 loss 10 days ago at then-No. 24 Butler, the question of whether the Gators were taking too many 3s has become a topic of discussion among fans, media and, of course, that bastion of all-encompassing expertise known as social media.
Ask the Gators, coaches or players, and the answer is simple. It's not about taking fewer 3s, it's about making more of the ones they're taking. Sounds simple, but as Coach Mike White waxed philosophically last week, sometimes basketball is about whether or not the ball goes in.
More than sometimes, actually.
"Everybody's got talent," said White, whose 2019-20 squad, most would agree, is the most athletically gifted and overall skilled bunch he's had in five seasons at Florida. "But production is what you need. It's what we need."
Across-the-board production. That means better numbers from long distance, yes, but also crisper execution, better screening and passing, free-throw shooting, as well as effort in transition, communication on defense, closing out on shooters and fewer unforced errors. The start of the Southeastern Conference season is 18 days away and the Gators (6-3) have three games to make headway on any (preferably all) those fronts, starting Tuesday night against Providence (6-5) in the Naismith Basketball Hall-of-Fame Invitational at Barclays Center.
[Read senior writer Chris Harry's "Pregame Stuff" setup here]
In the interim, whatever external catcalls and criticisms lobbed in UF's direction are being put in the proper perspective.
"Everybody knows that doesn't matter at all," graduate-transfer forward Kerry Blackshear Jr. said.
Understand, though, the Gators know they haven't played to expectations; their own, that is. But they also can look around the country and see some other goings-on this season — Kentucky losing to Evansville; Duke losing to Stephen F. Austin; North Carolina losing to Wofford; a bevy of high-major programs losing games and struggling to score against lesser foes — and it reinforces the fact that basketball seasons are in a work in progress.
Sometimes even a rework in progress, which happens to be the case with UF.
Sophomore shooting guard Noah Locke shot 37.5 percent from the 3-point line as a freshman, but like most of his teammates got off to a slow start from long distance in 2019-20, though he's got at least makes from deep over the last six games.
White admitted to the local press corps last week that he'd basically junked the offense the team had been running since mid-summer in favor of more structure.
"We cut our losses and revamped, and we're getting better with what we're doing right now, which is what we should've started doing July 1," White said. "We gave our guys a lot of freedom offensively. We were running a lot of freelance, old-school passing game where there aren't many rules or set calls. It's about screening for each other, using screens, reading screens, so on and so forth. When the lights were on, with a bunch of young guys and on TV, we didn't respond well to that amount of freedom."
In fact, White likened the product to watching six year olds play soccer.
"We all know how that looks," he said.
Retooling on the fly has since had its moments; both good and bad. Florida shot the basketball far better during its three-game run to a tournament championship at the Charleston (S.C.) Classic, then flat-lined again on a tough shooting night in surviving Marshall by making some plays in the final minute.
After that, Florida's four-game winning streak ended at Butler when the Gators shot that retched 23 percent from distance. They had open shots against an elite defense, though, and actually hit 15 of 22 from inside the arc. Some of what they were doing was working, certainly better than the other stuff before.
"We're getting through our sets more, we're just not hitting shots right now," sophomore forward Keyontae Johnson said. "We have to step up to the plate and knock 'em down with confidence."
Butler did that day. The Bulldogs hit 52 percent from the floor against the Gators, nine of 20 from 3 and looked crisp and on point in assisting on 19 of 25 field goals to improve to 9-0 on the season. Oh, then three nights later, they shot 39 percent and scored just 52 points in a loss at Baylor.
No one is immune. Teams across the country are trying to figure stuff out on the fly. In Florida's case, it's doing so with a roster that rates as the third-least experienced, in terms of games played/started in a UF uniform, in the 13 seasons since the Gators won their second straight NCAA championship. As for the two teams with even less experience than this one? The 2007-08 squad went to the NIT and the 2014-15 Gators posted the only losing record in the program's last 20 seasons.
Some groups take longer to figure things out.
CHARTING THE GATORS — Experience Matters The 2019-20 Florida team is the third most experienced, as far as games played in a UF uniform, in the 13 seasons since the Gators won back-to-back national titles. The below chart ranks those 13 teams, based on fewest numbers of returning UF starts, with numbers of games also included in the first column. None of the three teams at the top of the chart reached the NCAA Tournament, while the fifth featured four seniors and 506 games of experience (remember, Casey Prather and Will Yeguete had few starts between them going into that season). The five teams with the most returning starts all reached the NCAA Tournament.
* Denotes SEC regular-season champions
Returning Starts / Games
Season
Record (SEC)
Postseason
11 / 181
2007-08
24-12 (8-8)
NIT (semifinals)
52 / 330
2014-15
16-17 (8-10)
None
86 / 212
2019-20
(TBD)
(TBD)
105 / 304
2015-16
21-15 (9-9)
NIT (quarterfinals)
126 / 506
2013-14
*36-3 (18-0)
NCAA (Final Four)
145 / 421
2009-10
21-13 (9-7)
NCAA (1st round)
151 / 382
2011-12
26-11 (10-6)
NCAA (Elite 8)
154 / 379
2008-09
25-11 (9-7)
NIT (quarterfinals)
174 / 355
2017-18
21-13 (11-7)
NCAA (2nd round)
186 / 534
2012-13
*29-8 (14-4)
NCAA (Elite 8)
196 / 463
2018-19
20-16 (9-9)
NCAA (2nd round)
206 / 403
2016-17
27-9 (14-4)
NCAA (Elite 8)
223 / 444
2010-11
*29-8 (13-3)
NCAA (Elite 8)
"That's what we're dealing with on a daily basis; how to prepare 18 and 19 year olds to go hard at practice. How to talk this 19-year-old off the cliff because it's not going as expected because he's not getting 25 a game like last year," White said. "You go through it every year, but I've never been through it to this extent, to this amount of exterior expectation, with this amount of young guys who are needed [to contribute]. … This is difficult. It can be a good problem to have, too. I like our talent level and I like our guys a lot."
But, as he said, talent is good, production better.
Until that production shows up — and the Gators believe it will — they need to keep level-headed and demonstrate an ability to grow (and mature) from daily experiences in hopes of finding that sweet spot.
"We're all-world, then the sky's falling. Got it figured out, [then] we don't. This guy's the best player in the whole world, maybe he's not," White said. "I could go on and on. At the end of the day, let's get better today. That's all we can do. We all know we're not a great basketball team now. We're just not. We're decent, we're competitive, and we have a chance to get better."
And the time to do so.
"It hasn't been as ideal as we wanted to, obviously, so far," Blackshear said. "But I think more and more, each and every day, we're learning about each other, learning about ourselves and learning that if we get better, we'll get to where we want to."
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