Despite the current three-game skid, the UF bond among teammates remains strong and the players are determined to turn things around.
UF-Vandy: Different Degrees of Struggle
Saturday, February 1, 2020 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt, young, decimated by injuries and with losses mounting, played at 15th-ranked Kentucky Wednesday night. The Commodores had a 10-point second-half lead, but the home team came alive and ultimately came from behind for a 71-62 victory that handed Vandy and first-year coach Jerry Stackhouse a sixth straight defeat.
"We're trending in the right direction," an upbeat Stackhouse told reporters in Lexington afterward. "We are going to be all right. Our young guys are getting valuable reps. Our team is growing. We are competing. We'll be all right."
Stat: It was the Commodores' 25th straight Southeastern Conference loss, which broke the 80-year-old record for most consecutive defeats in league play, a dubious mark they held jointly (for four days) with Sewannee University, which dropped 24 straight from 1928-30 then dropped out of the conference.
No matter, according to Vandy freshman forward Dylan Disu. "That's kind of just background noise."
The Commodores (8-12, 0-7) found a sunny side in the defeat, as they looked immediately ahead at the next chance to bring a two-season winless run to a close. Well, that pending opportunity will come Saturday night against Florida at Memorial Gymnasium. The Gators (12-7, 4-3) have dropped three straight and unlike their upcoming foe were hard-pressed to find much to be encouraged about in giving up a 16-point lead at home and falling 78-71 to Mississippi State.
[Read senior writer Chris Harry's "Pregame Stuff" setup here]
Coach Mike White and his players were awfully subdued in their post-game media opportunity, and rightfully so. Twenty games into a season that began with such promise and fanfare, UF is battling ill-timed scoring droughts, bouts of energy lapses and defensive breakdowns the likes (and multitudes) of which have been unlike the anything seen duringthe current coaching staff's five-year tenure. The Gators, under White, have always been ultra-sound on that end.
White pointed a finger at himself Friday. Just like he did Tuesday.
"I've never had a team that defended this poorly. Ever," he said. "So I've got to figure it out. I've done a poor job with this team defensively. I have. What we've done, obviously the last month, is not translating to defending at a high level in games."
UF freshman forward Scottie Lewis on the defensive against Mississippi State.
The Gators have been blistered in at least one half of each of the previous three games, each of which they led by at least eight points (albeit early in the first half of the former two). LSU shot 52 percent after halftime (despite just 1-for-9 from 3) in its 84-82 win on Jan. 22. Baylor, the nation's top-ranked team, shot 57 percent in the first half to open an 11-point lead. The Bears, despite less than 30 percent after halftime, were never threatened on the way to winning 72-61. Then came Mississippi State, which at one point in the game knocked down an otherworldly 20 of 25 shots (80 percent), while UF was clanging at 29 percent in the second half.
Oh, and there was also the trip to Missouri on Jan. 11, where the Tigers, one of the SEC's worst shooting teams, hit 60 percent for the game and nearly 64 percent from the 3-point line (14 of 22) and ran away with a 91-75 rout of a win.
UF followed that performance with back-to-back wins and, so it seemed, had righted whatever was wrong.
Wrong.
"Sometimes we don't have our focus at the right spot," sophomore shooting guard Noah Locke said. "When we have a lot of energy, when everyone's out there talking and communicating, when we're connected in those regards, I mean, it's much better for us. We just got to get back to [that]."
The Gators had some of that in November when they played their most connected basketball of the season in winning three games in four days and taking the title in the Charleston (S.C.) Classic. Yes, they have to get back to that level of energy and communication, but they also have to figure out why they ever got away from those staples in the first place.
"I think it's more so just getting confidence, like, just being fearless," said freshman guard Scottie Lewis, arguably the team's best all-around defender, and leader in both steals and blocked shots. "I think defense is heart. I think defense is pride. I think defense is effort. I think if you're a fearless player, you can guard anybody, and you can use some of your attributes to kind of guard certain players and do certain things throughout the duration of the game."
Lewis certainly exudes those traits when on the floor, but it needs to be a collaborative effort from he and his teammates — within the framework of the system; each player working hand and hand with the next; helping the helper, as they say in the business — that the Gators need right now.
They also need to win a game, just to get that feeling again.
Guess what? The Commodores are saying the same thing.
"We trust our coaching staff and we trust our preparation," Lewis said. "I think once we have a true A-game, where we're 'A' defensively and 'A' offensively, we're going to have a kind of visual of what that looks like and we can take that from there."
It starts with the right mentality. Maybe being on the road will help. Maybe facing a team about eight times more desperate for a taste of SEC victory — something Vandy has not enjoyed since March of 2018 — will unleash something.
It better.
"We lack an edge defensively," White said. "Our defensive numbers have steadily declined over the past month. We've got to screw ourselves back down defensively and do what we know we're capable of and play with the amount of edge necessary to win an SEC game."
