Given his preference, Billy Donovan would rather his teams play 90 feet of in-your-face, high-pressure man-to-man defense. That’s the formula that he cut his coaching teeth on at Kentucky when he was Rick Pitino’s top assistant and that’s the foundation for the Billy Ball formula that he brought to Florida 13 years ago. It is a philosophy you can live with if you have the personnel to make it work. You can die with it if you can’t match the scheme to the personnel so rather than die this season with a formula that won’t work with the players he’s got, Donovan has adjusted.
“I would really prefer to play more man-to-man but I don’t think we have a real man to man team to do that,” said Donovan before Thursday afternoon’s practice as the Gators (18-3, 5-1 SEC East) were starting to game plan for tonight’s game with Tennessee (12-7, 3-2 SEC East) in Knoxville (9 p.m., ESPN).
Donovan tried man-to-man last year and experimented with it some early in the season but foul problems, depth issues and a lack of overall team quickness torpedoed that idea. He swapped that out for a zone, but even the zone has undergone some evolution. From a standard 3-2 which players say was more difficult for boxing out and rotating, the Gators have found a level of comfort in a matchup scheme that seems to work well in tandem with a full-court trap that has helped the Gators to a +3.71 turnover margin per game.
“It’s something that’s probably evolved from trying to shrink the court a little bit and trying to use full-court pressure to create more turnovers and create more tempo,” Donovan said. “We played some zone early in the year and I thought the zone got way too extended and really got opened up and we were still getting driven.”
So Donovan adjusted the defense, switching to a matchup that uses man-to-man principles on the side where the ball is and rotates the zone to cover the back side. The zone works like an amoeba in that it stretches to wherever the ball is. Whoever has the ball offensively there will be a Gator trying to get a hand in his face. When the ball moves to another player, a new defender moves to the ball while the other four players adjust.
The defensive adjustments have plenty to do with why the Gators have held six straight Southeastern Conference opponents below 50 percent from the field and just 26.6 percent (32-of-120) from the 3-point line. It’s quite a difference from last season or even early in the current season when the Gators were finding it tough to stop anyone.
“Last year we were trying to play zone and the zone we played was confusing,” junior forward Dan Werner said. “A lot of guys were confused and really didn’t know where to go when we had to block out or rotate. What’s changed even from earlier in the year is we understand how to rotate and where to rotate now. I think we’re getting better at it. We’ve got some things figured out but we’re still learning and growing.”
Improving defense has everything to do with the Gators’ 5-1 start in the SEC. They are giving up only 64.4 points per game on the season and in Southeastern Conference play, only South Carolina has reached the 70-point plateau.
Defensively, the Gators are nowhere near where Donovan would like them to be, but he’s pleased with the progress they’re making at getting stops.
“I think it’s gotten better for us,” Donovan continued. “I think we’re doing a good job and we’re making some adjustments and we’re growing. I think every time we’re going into a half, teams are trying to do different things against us and we’re trying to maybe match up a little bit differently. We’re still trying to do a lot of different things in terms of in the middle of a possession changing to a man from a zone or a certain front in our zone, whether it’s 2-3 or 3-2 and switching to something else to try to keep teams off-balance. I think the biggest thing for us is trying to break offensive flow.”
Since they don’t have the luxury of playing lock down man-to-man defense, the trademark of those two NCAA championship teams, these Gators have to make constant adjustments. The principles of the matchup are pretty much the same no matter if it’s an even- or odd-man front. But every time the Gators adjust what they’re doing and where they place their personnel in the scheme, it forces an adjustment from the other team. That has plenty to do with the fact the Gators have forced six shot-clock violations this season and they are forcing teams to go deeper into the shot clock because they’re finding fewer holes in the Florida defense to exploit.
“We just don’t want a team to come down and see the same thing over and over and start to get a rhythm and start to get comfortable and try to pick out a player that they’re going to really try to go at and try to keep teams somewhat off-balance,” Donovan said. “Six games in it’s been good for us but like anything else teams will adjust and make changes on their own as we have tried to make changes and adjustments to our zone.”
Tennessee will try to push the ball up the floor and get the Gators into a running game. Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl likes the helter-skelter approach to the game far more than a half-court, grind-it-out affair. The Vols are leading the SEC in scoring even though they are only seventh in the league in shooting percentage (45.1 percent) and next to last in 3-point shooting (30.6 percent).
Donovan won’t let the stats dictate what the Gators are going to do. He expects an up-and-down game that puts a lot of points on the board, but not every trip down the floor is a fast-break or a one-on-one opportunity in the open court. When the ball slows down, the Gators are still going to have to play defense and that means the matchup has to find the ball and get into the proper rotations.
“I think what we’re trying to do is close the 3-point line, protect the paint and get help inside,” he said.
If the Gators can keep the defensive focus they’ve shown the past two games in particular, this could be a different outcome for senior guard Walter Hodge, still looking for his first win in Knoxville.
“I’m 0-3 but if we play smart, don’t turn the ball over and stay focused on defense that could change,” he said. “If we play some defense, we’ve got a chance.”