Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Kowacie Reeves remains a key factor for the 2022-23 Florida basketball team and will be back on the floor Wednesday night when the Gators (4-3) take on Florida A&M (1-4) at Exactech Arena. 

UF coach Todd Golden said so Tuesday and went a stop further by taking ownership of Reeves' recent run of extended bench time, including two DNPs in the team's two losses at the Phil Knight Legacy tournament in Portland, Ore. ESPN crews broadcasting the game speculated that Reeves, who started the first four games of the season, might have been sitting for disciplinary reasons. 

Not the case, not at all, Golden said. 

"I did a bad job this past week and a lot of ways I need to be better, I thought, speaking about Kowacie, specifically. Definitely nothing disciplinary," Golden said. "I need to do a better job of managing rotations. Wacie got the short end of the stick, that's on me. He didn't deserve to not play, but just kind of caught in the moment."

[Read senior writer Chris Harry's "Pregame Stuff" setup here]

Reeves, the 6-foot-6 sophomore wing from Macon, Ga., started home games against Stony Brook, Kennesaw State and Florida Atlantic to open the season and went to Tallahassee for Florida's road game against Florida State on Nov. 18 averaging 10.0 points and shooting 50 percent from the 3-point line on a team-high 14 attempts. He started that game, went 1-for-4, hitting one of three from deep, in the first half against the Seminoles, a game the Gators trailed by 17 at the half, and was replaced in the second-half starting lineup by junior Trey Bonham. 

Bonham helped lead the second-largest road comeback victory in program history, while Reeves sat on the bench the entire second half. Bonham replaced Reeves in the starting lineup in UF's opening game at the "PK85" and stayed there. Reeves did not play in the first or third games of the tournament, but scored two points and grabbed two rebounds in just over eight minutes in Florida's second game, an 81-68 win over Oregon State. His lone basket of the tournament was a baseline drive and reverse (and violent) highlight-reel dunk. 

For the season, Reeves is averaging 7.2 points, 2.2 rebounds, shooting 41.4 percent from the floor (12-for-29), 44.4 percent from the arc (8-for-18) and 57.1 percent from the free-throw line (4-for-7). 

Golden praised the way Reeves handled a roadtrip that, individually, was frustrating. 

"He was disappointed, obviously, as any competitor would be," Golden said. "Kowacie is a great young man. I thought he did a relatively good job of not allowing it to affect others, for the most part. And the message for him is, "Keep digging, keep going.' We firmly believe he'll be an impactful piece for our program moving forward."  The coach also had nice words for Bonham, who was terrific — averaging 21.0 points and making 16 of 29 field-goal attempts — in UF's first two "PK85" games, but like the rest of the Gators did very little right in the 84-55 loss to West Virginia in their tournament finale. Bonham went 0-for-9 from the floor and scored three points against the Mountaineers.

"He was probably our most impactful offensive player over the first 40 minutes of that event," Golden said of Bonham, the transfer from Virginia Military. "I feel bad for [Reeves], and, again, I need to do a better job as a leader of this program balancing things and putting him in a position to be successful."

The UF coach and his staff have other concerns — many — coming off a 29-point loss in which the Gators shot just 34.5 percent for the game (only 11.8 percent from distance), were out-rebounded 49-28 and surrendered 20 points on 14 turnovers. And that was just the WVU game. Against Xavier in the tourney opener, Florida was bombed from the 3-point line (the Musketeers went 10 of 20) and gave up 21 fast-break points. 

"Atrocious" was how Golden termed his team's transition defense to date. 

The red-eye flight home after the WVU disaster only made the Gators more irritable. 

"Nobody is OK with how the weekend went," Golden said. "We feel collectively as a staff like we were making some good progress; [that] we were starting to hit our stride and then a game like that happens and you've got to sit back and evaluate and see how things happen and what we can do better. I think we've identified a few areas that we need to address quickly to reach our potential -- to reach our capacity -- but you obviously don't want to sit on a flight after a game like that. It's not an enjoyable feeling for any of us."