The Florida women's basketball team has more to be thankful for than just the holiday season and the end of final exams.
After dropping two of their last three games, both on the road, the Gators (8-3) return to the O'Connell Center for the next two days for the 20th Gator Holiday Classic.
Action starts Monday when Robert Morris (3-5) plays Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (0-8) at 5 p.m. UF takes on Alabama State (2-6) at 7:30 p.m.
The two-game homestand is coming at the perfect time for coach Amanda Butler's squad. The team is 5-0 in the O'Dome this year and has had all three of its defeats come on away courts. The team suffered a shocking loss Dec. 5 with a 56-50 decision at Brown, bounced back with an 86-65 trouncing of Harvard, then lost 69-54 at Hampton before taking 10 days off for exams.
But that's not all the team was getting ready for.
“We haven’t been focused exclusively on preparing for our opponents in the tournament,” Butler said. “We’ve been cleaning up some things and making sure we’re paying attention to the details within our offense and defense.”
Butler made it clear early in the year that fans could be in for an up-and-down season. With four freshmen, two transfers and another rotation player, Lily Svete, coming off of a missed freshman year following knee surgery, the team is slowly starting to find its identity.
But with youth and inexperience comes mistakes. At times this season, the team has struggled to complete shots, only to bounce back the next game and show flashes of the exciting brand of up-tempo basketball that Butler is trying to grow. She's hoping that those glimpses come more often as the team nears its SEC schedule.
“Practice has been very intense and I think that our team has sensed the opportunity to get better,” Butler said. “It’s been a great response coming off a disappointing loss. We’ve spent a lot of time on the court as well as time away to study and prepare for exams. Our focus has been trying to get better."
For the first time in a while, Butler may also have a healthy team on the court. After the team's lone senior, Ebonie Crawford, suffered a preseason concussion, freshman guard Jaterra Bonds had her hot start curbed with an ankle injury. As soon as Bonds returned, fellow freshman Brittany Shine missed two weeks with her own ankle ailment. Shine returned against Harvard and dropped a career-high 16 points on the Crimson. With the team together for the first time since early in the season, Butler is hoping to end 2010 on a high note.
"We’ve had a level of consistency in our practices the past week that we haven’t seen all year," she said. "The individual and the collective effort has been present in practices and that’s really pleasing.”
