GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The hallmark of Florida’s spectacular start to
the college basketball season was defense. No one in the country played
it better.
That has not been the case the last three games.
It will need to be Tuesday.
“I think we lost our focus a little bit,” junior guard Scottie Wilbekin.
Right
about now would be an ideal time for the seventh-ranked Gators (19-3,
9-1) to relocate that focus, what with the surging, 25th-ranked and
reigning national champion Kentucky Wildcats (17-6, 8-2) coming to the
O’Connell Center for a Tuesday night ESPN game, complete with Dick
Vitale at midcourt.
Those (big) blue and white uniforms have a
way of getting an opponent’s attention, but UF coach Billy Donovan has
tried to be proactive on that front relative to his team’s defense after
what he considered to be a sub-standard performance in Saturday’s 83-58
defeat of Mississippi State.
“Everyone keeps talking about our
defense, our defense,” Donovan said. “Just because you’re doing
something well doesn’t mean you’re going to maintain doing something
well.”
The same logic can be attached to Kentucky, which at one
time was 12-6 and nowhere to be found in either poll, causing much
concern among a rabid fanbase that expected yet another wave of freshmen
phenoms -- Coach John Calipari’s third straight No. 1-ranked recruiting
class -- to flatten foes the way Anthony Davis and Michael
Kidd-Gilchrist did last year en route to the NCAA title.
Calipari
said this rookie class, led by 6-foot-10 shot-blocking menace Nerlens
Noel and off-guard Archie Goodwin, needed some time. Now they’ve had it
and are better for it.
“Right now, we’re a confident team,” Noel
said after Saturday’s home win against Auburn. “We’ve got some good
momentum right now.”
It’s a better momentum buzz than what the
Gators have, especially as they try and piece together roles after the
crushing loss of forward Will Yeguete for the rest of the regular season
to a knee injury.
“We’ve had slippage,” senior guard Kenny Boynton said. “But we can fix it.”
In
winning 18 of their first 20 games -- with the lone losses by one point
at Arizona and by six against Kansas State at Kansas City -- the Gators
surrendered an average of 53.1 points per game and posted an
other-worldly defensive efficiency rating (DER, which translates to
points per possession) of below 0.80.
In the previous three
games, wins over Ole Miss and Mississippi State sandwiched around a
resounding loss at Arkansas, the Gators gave up an average of 67.3
points and more than a point per possession.
Those are
unacceptable numbers for a UF coaching staff that spent the offseason,
the preseason and those first 18 games using DER as its baseline for
success.
“It’s all about the focus level,” Boynton said. “I think
Coach has resorted back to putting us through harder practices,
defensive-wise, to get us back to where we need to be.”
That was
certainly evident during a high-intensity Sunday afternoon practice,
with more of the same Monday. One of the biggest points of emphasis was
closing out 3-point shots. For good reason.
The Razorbacks
ambushed the Gators by hitting seven of their first nine from distance.
That was not expected, given Arkansas came into the game making 29
percent for the season.
UF did itself no favors by letting the
Hogs hit some open long ones early. Some of that showed up again for
Mississippi State, which made four of nine 3-point shots in the first
half and went 6-for-16 for the game.
In those first 18 games, Florida defended the 3-point line at 29.7 percent.
The last three, it’s 41.2 percent.
“Our
close-outs have been a little bit shorter than normal. We have not
gotten out there,” Donovan said. "That is an area where we need to do a
better job. We need a greater sense of urgency, understanding our
personnel [and] understanding who we’re closing out on. Those kinds of
things are important.”
They’re tantamount against the Wildcats, a
team that is starting to gel its immense wealth of talented freshmen
just in time to make a run at yet another conference championship.
UK
ranks second in the SEC in 3-point percentage (36.2), but UF will need
to be just as alert on Goodwin’s drives to the basket, limiting the
options of sophomore forward Kyle Wiltjer in the halfcourt, and in
defensive transition, especially after a Noel rejection.
“We’ll
see how it goes [Tuesday],” Boynton said. “But I think, overall, we’ve
bought into getting our numbers back to where they were -- starting with
this game.”
Perfect place to start.
