Saturday, December 5, 2020 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
FLORIDA vs STETSON
When: Sunday, 2 p.m. (EST) Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center, Gainesville, Fla. Records: Florida (2-0); Stetson (0-2) TV: SEC Network (Mike Morgan and Pat Bradley) Radio: Gator IMG Sports Network (Mick Hubert and Lee Humphrey)
THE BASICS
Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center won't look much different than this (COVID-19 attendance is limited to 2,200) when the Gators host the Hatters for Sunday's 2020-21 home opener.
Florida returns home for its 2020-21 season debut at Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center after opening Coach Mike White's sixth year on the UF sidelines with a pair of victories in the ESPN "Bubbleland" environment at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn. The Gators were rusty and out of sync in their first game Wednesday, a 76-69 win over Army, falling behind by 12 early in the first half and trailing by two points with less than three minutes to go before scoring the game's final nine points. But Thursday night, they jumped on Boston College and stayed on in a 90-70 blowout that included a 31-point lead with just over seven minutes to go. ... Stetson, out of the Atlantic Sun, has a pair of ugly performances under its belt (one way uglier than the other), most recently Friday night's 82-60 loss at Miami. ... UF leads the all-time series 52-14, including victories in 17 straight, dating to the 1984 season, with the last Hatters victory coming by a 77-73 count over Thanksgiving weekend in 1983. ... UF and Stetson last played Nov, 28, 2011, when the Gators defeated the Hatters 96-70 at Amway Center in Orlando. Freshman guard Bradley Beal had the second double-double of his career with 22 points and 10 rebounds. Senior point guard Erving Walker posted 21 points and six assists, while sophomore forward Will Yeguete tallied the first double-double of his career with 10 points, 11 rebounds, plus four steals. All those numbers took a back seat, however, as the win marked the 400th in the career of Coach Billy Donovan, who at 46 became the youngest active Division-I coach to reach that milestone. ... The Gators are 99-19 all-time versus teams currently in the A-Sun, including a 9-0 mark under White. The last UF defeat against an A-Sun program was shocker at the hands of Jacksonville, which came to the O'Dome on Dec. 22, 2010, and left with a 71-68 overtime victory against the nation's 20th-ranked team and eventual Southeastern Conference regular-season champion.
Sophomore guard Rob Perry made quite the name for himself at Orlando Oak Ridge High, where he averaged 15.8 points during a senior season that ended with a 32-pooint outburst in the 2018 Class 7A state championship game against Wellington. As a freshman last season, Perry started all but two of Stetson's 33 games and led the team in scoring at 15.1 points and the A-Sun in 3-point shooting percentage at 42.6. Perry posted eight games of at least 20 points in '19-20 (including a career-high 34 at Western Illinois) on the way to being named A-Sun Freshman of the Year and second-team all-conference. Perry got his sophomore season off to a better start than the Hatters overall with 26 in the loss to Emmanuel, but had a nightmare night Friday in going 0-for-8 overall and 0-for-4 from 3 against Miami, with five turnovers. Makes sense that he'll be looking to bounce back, especially against a marque foe like the Gators. Perry's game, when on, doesn't favor one phase. He'll shoot it from the outside, drive it and draw fouls, and also mix it up inside (5.1 rebounds per game a year ago).
TEAM BREAKDOWNS
UF junior forward Colin Castleton (right) gets fired up, alongside sophomore guard Scottie Lewis (23), during Wednesday's beating of Boston College.
ABOUT THE GATORS: After starting the Army game by missing five of six shots, combined with poor communication and effort in transition defense, White pulled out of the
Keyontae Johnson
pressing system the coaching staff installed during the offseason, but with the intent of going back to work and getting it right. UF shot 56.5 percent in the win over Boston College and outscored the Eagles 50-26 in points in the paint. ... Forward Keyontae Johnson dealt with foul trouble in the Army game and it affected his aggressiveness attacking the basket and chasing rebounds. That wasn't the case against the Eagles on his way to the 13th double-double of his career (24 points, 12 rebounds). After going 10-for-13 from the floor, Johnson is shooting 69.6 through two games. ... Sophomore Tre Mann has looked the part of a point guard, without sacrificing his ability to as a scorer. Mann has 10 assists to five turnovers, is shooting 54.5 percent, has made three of four 3s, nine of 11 free throws, and leads the team in steals with five. ... Guard Scottie Lewis (6 of 11 from the floor) and backup point guard Tyree Appleby (10.5 ppg) are UF's two other players averaging double-figure scoring. Appleby, the transfer from Cleveland State, scored 15 second-half points off the bench in helping the Gators rally to the win over Army. ... Shooting guard Noah Locke is just 7-for-20 thus far, but he's been known to be something of a slow starter. ... The two-headed low-post combo of Colin Castleton and 6-10 backup Omar Payne (6.0 ppg, 2.5 rpg) has combined to average 12.0 points on 10-for-14 shooting, 7.5 points and 2.5 blocks. ... Reserve forward Osayi Osifo, the junior-college transfer, will make his UF and Division I debut Sunday after missing the trip to "Bubbleville" due to contract-tracing COVID protocol. Osifo figures to give the Gators another option in the low post, as well as perimeter defense. He's raw on the skills front, but has drawn rave reviews from coaches and teammates for his effort level.
ABOUT THE HATTERS: This is the second season under Coach Donnie Jones, a longtime friend of the Florida program. Jones accompanied Donovan (along with John Pelphrey and Anthony Grant) from Marshall to UF in 1996 and was on staff when the Gators won back-to-back national championships in 2006 and '07. He was named head coach at Marshall, his alma mater, in 2007 and after three seasons guiding the Thundering Herd jumped to UCF, where he spent the next six seasons in compiling a 79-88 record. After one season as an assistant at Wichita State (2017-18) and another at Dayton ('18-19), Jones was named head coach at Stetson in 2019 and went 16-17, including 9-7 in the A-Sun, which was good enough for third place. ... The 2020-21 opened with a thud for the Hatters, who lost 64-61 to Division II Emmanuel College (Ga.) in a game they missed 14 of 15 shots to start the second half and gave up four consecutive field goals in the final two minutes in falling at home. The follow-up loss against the Hurricanes was more of the same (worse, perhaps, given the struggles of Perry), with the Hatters never really in the game. They trailed 40-27 at halftime, shot just 39 percent for the game and got to free-throw line only eight times. ... Forward Mahamadou Diawara carded his sixth career double-double (10 points, 14 rebounds) in the opener and also had four blocked shots. Diawara followed that effort up with 14 points and five boards vs. the Hurricanes. ... Backup guard Chase Johnston, a redshirt freshman, may not be a backup for long, especially with Wheza Panzo at 31 minutes without as much as a field-goal try. Johnston came off the bench to hit five of 10 3-point shots and also dished four assists in 26 minutes in the loss at Miami.
NUMBERS WORTH NOTING
Former Stetson basketball coaching icon Glenn Wilkes, who died last month, coached the Hatters for 36 seasons and won 550 games, including a pair against the Gators.
* .473 — Florida's free-throw percentage 31 minutes into the season, based on 9-for-19 from the line with nine minutes remaining in the Army game.
* .848 — Florida's free-throw percentage in the 49 minutes since, based on 28-for-33 efficiency from the line. UF hit 15 of its last 17 against Army and 13 of 16 against BC.
* 7 — Games it took Mann to score his 36th point last season, his point total through two games in '20-21.
* 15 — Wins by a margin of at least 20 points (after hitting the mark vs. BC) for the Gators against power conference opponents during White's six seasons, which includes multiple instances against Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big East and Pac-12 conference teams, as well as seven SEC foes.
* 552 — Career victories for National Collegiate Basketball Hall-of-Famer Glenn Wilkes, the Stetson sidelines legend who died Nov. 21 at the age of 91. Wilkes was a giant in the coaching profession and known as the "Godfather of Florida basketball." He coached the Hatters for 36 years, from 1957 until his retirement in 1993, and posted 27 winning seasons, while overseeing the program's transition from NAIA to NCAA Division I. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019. The program is honoring Wilkes' memory during the '20-21 campaign.
