Friday, December 6, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
FLORIDA at No. 24 BUTLER
When: Saturday, noon (EST) Where: Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis Records: Florida (6-2); Butler (8-0) TV: Fox (Joe Davis and Bill Raftery) Radio: Gator IMG Sports Network (Mick Hubert and Lee Humphrey)
THE BASICS
When historic Hinkle Fieldhouse opened in 1928, it had a seating capacity of 15,000 and was the largest basketball arena in the country, a designation it held until 1950. Three times since 1989, Hinkle has undergone renovations to shrink capacity and Saturday will welcome a sell-out crowd of 9,100. It remains the sixth-oldest basketball venue still in use.
Florida, after a far-from-impressive home win over low-major Marshall, fell back out of the Associated Press rankings just one week after jumping back in by virtue of the team's run to the championship of the Charleston (S.C.) Classic. The Gators trailed the Thundering Herd by eight at halftime, rallied to build a 13-point lead in the second half, but then allowed nine straight points over 75 seconds in the final two minutes to let Marshall cut what was an 11-point advantage to just two with 45 seconds left. UF, though, made the shots and stops in the last minute to close out, but in no way to the satisfaction of the coaching staff. Unbeaten Butler is in a much different place. The Bulldogs are ranked for the first time this season after winning the Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City, Mo., last week by beating Missouri in the semifinals and previously unbeaten Stanford in the final. On Tuesday night, they defended that ranking by going to Ole Miss and defeating the Rebels handily, 67-58, behind a career game from standout guard Kamar Baldwin (see below). ... UF leads the all-time series against Butler 3-2, including two meetings last season. The Bulldogs and Gators were matched in the fifth-place game Nov. 23, 2018, at the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas, with the Bulldogs winning an ugly 61-54 affair when UF, up five at the break, went ice cold in the second half by hitting just eight of 28 shots (28.6 percent) and scoring only 22 points. Four weeks later, Florida destroyed Butler, 77-43, by scoring the game's first 21 points, shooting 54 percent overall and 10-for-21 from the 3-point line. Fourth-year junior forward Keith Stone had 12 points and six rebounds, freshman guard Noah Locke chipped in 12 points and five rebounds, while freshman forward Keyontae Johnson came off the bench to stuff the box score with 10 points, eight boards, two blocks and two steals. ... UF is 3-1 against Big East teams during Coach Mike White's five seasons.
The Gators know all about Kamar Baldwin, the senior shooting guard out of Winder, Ga., who gave UF fits in the Bahamas a year ago, entered the 2019-20 season as a preseason All-Big East first-team selection and on the watch lists for both the Wooden Award and Naismith Trophy, both of which honor the nation's top player. Before the season began, Baldwin checked in at No. 16 on Butler's all-time scoring list with 1,453 points and was sixth in career steals with 162. Last year in Atlantis, Baldwin tallied 19 points, six rebounds and five assists over 37 minutes in the Bulldogs' win, and along the way hit a couple late-shot clock daggers that helped Butler erase a seven-point halftime deficit and pull away. He wasn't nearly as sharp at the O'Dome (3-for-12, scoring just nine points), but finished the season at 17.0 points per game (18.9 in Big East play). Baldwin has a sturdy build, is left-handed, extremely crafty and knows how to get into the lane, finish and draw fouls, as he did in scoring Butler's final six points over 90 seconds in the win over Stanford. That was nothing compared to the show Baldwin put on at Ole Miss earlier this week: 31 points on 11-for-16 overall and 5-for-6 from 3, plus six rebounds over 37 minutes. For his career, he's at 46 percent overall, 34.1 from 3 and 81.4 from the free-throw line (including 19-for-20 this season). He's as offensively gifted and seasoned a player as the Gators will face this season.
TEAM BREAKDOWNS
Fourth-year junior forward Dontay Bassett throws down an offensive rebound in last week's home win over Marshall, part of his six-point, seven-rebound performance off the bench.
ABOUT THE GATORS: They've won four straight, dating to the run through the Charleston Classic, but did not look good last time out against Marshall. UF shot 30 percent during a first half when they failed to register an assist, and even in building a 13-point second half lead made a slew of defensive gaffes that allowed the Herd to storm back to within two before the Gators scored the game's final four points. ... Florida sits at No. 29 in the KenPom.com rankings; 50th in offense, 24th in defense and
Scottie Lewis on defense vs Marshall
330th in tempo. ... Forward Keyontae Johnson is now the team's leading scorer, with four consecutive double-figure games. Against Marshall, Johnson got in foul-trouble during a scoreless first half and got all 13 points after the break. ... ForwardKerry Blackshear Jr. had some big second-half baskets last game, but like Johnson spent the first half in foul trouble, eventually got his third disqualification of the season, then picked up a costly technical with 1:36 left to help the Marshall comeback. Make that two disqualifications for fouls and one ejection over the last five games for Blackshear. That's not who he is and the coaches have spoken with their grad-transfer leader about it. ... Point guard Andrew Nembhard has been uncharacteristically careless with the ball at times this season, and was against the Herd. So much so that White sat him for six first-half minutes and let freshman Ques Glover run the team. Nembhard and the Gators didn't get their first assist until more than 26 minutes into the game. That says everything that needs to be said about how the UF offense performed, relative to ball movement and shooting. Yes, it was addressed in meetings and practice this week. ... Shooting guard Noah Locke missed his first five shots last game, but bounced back to go 3-for-4 with a couple 3s after the break. ... Glover scored two points on 1-for-10 shooting in the team's first four games, but given the ball and more reps in Charleston has totaled 40 points over the last four. Along the way, he's made 16 of 25 shots (64 percent) and two of his eight from the arc. Sounds great, right? Well, Glover by definition, is a point guard, so his two assists and nine turnovers during that four-game scoring stretch needs to improve. ... Freshman guard Scottie Lewis has team highs of 14 blocked shots and 12 steals, the only UF player with double-digits in both categories. In fact, Lewis ranks second in the nation among guards in blocked shots. Some of his defensive highlights have been loud, to say the least. ... Freshman guard Tre Mann continues to search for his across-the-board offensive rhythm. He had five points in 12 minutes against Marshall, but the team's most talented offensive player still is shooting
Sean McDermott
just 31 percent from the floor, only 3-for-14 from deep, and four of nine at the free-throw line. ... Fourth-year junior forward Dontay Bassett provided a lift off the bench last game with six points and seven rebounds. ... Fourth-year junior center Gorjak Gak, out since suffering a nasty leg bruise at Connecticut, returned to practice this week and is cleared to play. ... ABOUT THE BULLDOGS: It's Year 3 under Coach LaVall Jordan, who starred at Butler from 1997-2001 and is now 45-31 during his two-plus seasons, including a trip (and one win) to the 2018 NCAA Tournament. The '19-20 version, though, looks like his best team yet, keyed by an offense that, while deliberate, is frighteningly efficient. The Bulldogs rank 17th nationally in adjusted offense, according to KenPom.com, but play at a pace that is the 11th-slowest in the country. Defensively, they're 31st and are out-rebounding teams by a plus-5.6 advantage. ... Four of their starters shoot better than 50 percent from the floor. ... Butler's first five games of the season — wins over Indiana-Purdue, New Orleans, Minnesota, Wofford and Morehead State — were at all home. The Bulldogs played the two neutral-site games at KC, then their first true road game of the season at Ole Miss and now are back at Hinkle, where they now have the nation's longest active home winning streak against non-league foes. ... Forward Sean McDermott is shooting 56.5 percent and has made 14 of 29 from distance (.483). His frontcourt mate, Bryce Golden, is at 50.9 and can't be ignored from the arc (.333). ... Backup forward Jordan Tucker (9.0 ppg, 2.5 rpg), a 6-7, 220-pounder,was a midseason transfer last season from Duke, where he signed as a top-40 national prospect but got lost in the talent shuffle and barely played in his first semester on campus. He and McDermott are tied for the second on the team with nine 3s each. ... Point guard Aaron Thompson has 45 assists and just 12 turnovers. ... Reserve center Derrik Smits, the 7-foot-1, 245-pound grad-transfer from Valparaiso, is said to be close to returning to action after being sidelined with a preseason knee injury. The son of former Indiana Pacers star Rick Smits averaged 12.2 points, 5.7 rebounds and shot nearly 56 percent during his three-year career at Valpo.
NUMBERS WORTH NOTING
UF guard Lee Humphrey (12) is defended by A.J. Graves (4) during the top-seeded Gators' 65-57 win over the fifth-seeded Bulldogs in the semifinals of the 2007 NCAA Midwest Region at St. Louis.
* 0 — Bulldogs who scored in double figures when the two teams played last Dec. 29 at the O'Dome.
* 3 — Big East opponents Florida is playing over a current four-game stretch. The Gators defeated Xavier on Nov. 24 at Charleston and after the trip to Butler next take on Providence in the Hall of Fame Invitational at Barclay's Center on Dec. 17 in Brooklyn, N.Y. ... [Worth noting: Connecticut, which the Gators played on the road just a week before Xavier, is leaving the American Conference and joining the Big East for the '20-21 season.]
* 4 — Neutral site meetings in the UF-Butler series. Before the Atlantis game, of course, the Gators and Bulldogs met three times in the 2000, 2007 and 2011 NCAA tournaments, with UF winning in first-round play and the Sweet 16 those first two years, respectively, but blowing an 11-point lead in the final nine minutes in the latter, which unfortunately came in Elite Eight.
* 43 — Consecutive AP polls that did not include Butler, a streak that ended this week. The last time the Bulldogs were ranked was March 13, 2017, when they were 21st.
* 2012 — The year when Butler last lost a non-conference home game. Pittsburgh came to Hinkle and won 68-62 in the semifinals of the College Basketball Invitational on March 21 of that year. The Bulldogs have gone 55 non-conference games without a loss over the eight seasons since, the inherited the nation's longest such active streak after Duke lost at home last week against Stephen F. Austin.
LAST WORD
UF has played better away from the O'Dome, and will have to over the next three weeks (and three games) during a run of opponents that will provide a better sense of just how good this team is heading into the Southeastern Conference season.
