Tuesday, January 7, 2020 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
Share:
By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Make no mistake, Mike White was happy Saturday night (in some ways, probably ecstatic) after his Florida team overcame a 21-point first-half deficit — and an eight-point shortfall with less than two minutes remaining — to beat Alabama in the Southeastern Conference opener at Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center and completed the greatest comeback in school history.
But before even taking a question during his post-game session with the media, the UF coach said the euphoria needed to be fleeting for the Gators (9-4, 1-0) because of what loomed ahead Tuesday night.
South Carolina coach Frank Martin
"Our freshmen have no idea what they'll be walking into," White said.
That, of course, was a reference to the pending trip to face South Carolina (8-5, 0-0); more specifically, a Gamecocks team that no doubt has spent a week in the crosshairs of Coach Frank Martin after their 63-56 loss to Stetson, the nation's 321st-ranked team at the time, per KenPom.com analytics, in the followup game to a stunning road upset of defending national champion Virginia six days earlier.
South Carolina (8-5, 0-0) rarely has numbers that impress, especially on the offensive end. But anybody that's ever faced a Martin-coached team is very aware of the physical challenge and muck-it-up nature of what a game against the Gamecocks entails.
"I think that should humble us pretty fast," graduate-transfer forward Kerry Blackshear Jr. said of the task ahead.
[Read senior writer Chris Harry's "Pregame Stuff" setup here]
UF has a handful of players — namely, four freshmen — that are about to get a powerful lesson in what it takes to withstand a wounded and presumably furious opponent in what will be the first Southeastern Conference road game of their careers. USC will paw and claw, body and bang, push and shove for 40 minutes. That's the message that's been put to the Gators in the short two-day preparation time, but even White admitted Monday that watching even hours of Gamecocks tape or spending a commensurate amount of time trying to replicate the physicality is no substitute for the real thing.
Not even close.
"Tip it up in Columbia. That's it. We can't simulate it," White said. "Maybe if we had like 28 walk-ons out there who were really tough, fast and aggressive, and you had a chance to rep it every day for a few months, maybe you could. But it's not going to happen. When it's tipped, a few minutes into the game, our guys will understand that it's just a different deal. It's different than what they've experienced, not only from how South Carolina plays and defends and rebounds, but also how they execute. And just … an SEC road, in itself, will be a challenge for these guys."
Ditto for South Carolina.
Even before the Virginia-Stetson scenario, Martin had been on his team about consistency, about finding a true identity and playing to it.
"It's all I talked to the guys about before the [Stetson] game," Martin told reporters here after his last game. "So let's figure out who we are. We can't be Jekyll and Hyde. You can't be both. You have to have one personality. Who are we?"
Here's betting the Gamecocks play much closer to their pugnacious persona than they did against the Hatters.
UF grad-transfer forward Kerry Blackshear Jr.(24), shown here on the defensive end against Alabama guard John Petty Jr., has been a force for the Gators on both ends. In the past three games, Blackshear has averaged 22.3 points, 12.7 rebounds and hit an astounding 33 of 36 free throws (91.7 percent). Against Alabama, he became the first UF player (and just the 10th in the SEC) to tally at least 24 points and 16 rebounds in a league game over the last 25 seasons.
"Anybody can beat anybody," said Blackshear, who faced USC on the road in a charity exhibition game two seasons while playing for Virginia Tech, so has a familiarity with the Gamecocks' ways. "They are very hard-playing team. A different style team. You don't play many teams that deny and pressure as much as those guys do, so understand that we are going to play a very good team, and we have to be ready to play for the entire 40 minutes."
Florida has played two true road games thus far, losing 62-59 at Connecticut on Nov. 17 and 76-62 at 24th-ranked Butler. No member of the Gators' talented freshman quartet — wing Scottie Lewis, forward Omar Payne, and guards Tre Mann and Ques Glover — distinguished themselves in either of those games. At times, in fact, they looked a little passive, if not wide-eyed by the circumstances. Understandable. The atmosphere at UConn's rockin' Gampel Pavilion was off the chain, yet was probably bested by the historic surroundings at Butler's historic and sold-out Hinkle Fieldhouse.
Now comes Colonial Arena, which hardly has the aura or pedigree of the Gators' previous two road outings, but will have a team of angry Gamecocks who have been dealing with Martin's wrath — without a game as a release — for the last eight days.
Florida, both players and coaches, will find out if their stirring comeback against Alabama can build a bridge to bigger things. That was a heaping helping of adversity the Gators overcame against the Crimson Tide. They're about to be dealt some more.
This time, they'll only have each other to lean on.
"I think the fact that we've been battle-tested so early on was the deciding factor with how we came back in that [Bama] game," said Lewis, named Monday as SEC Freshman of the Week after carding the first double-double (17 points, 10 rebounds) of his career and making some huge plays late in regulation and overtime against Bama. "That was just another battle to add to our repertoire. It's going to carry out and help us for the rest of the season."
