While one Florida Gators team that will not be named continues a long span of disappointment on offense, another is shaping into a potential offensive power.
Florida’s basketball team took on the Division-II Tampa Spartans in a home exhibition on Sunday afternoon. The Gators nearly broke triple digits in a 94-57 victory.
Of course, it was against an inferior opponent, but it gave another glimpse as to where this team could be this season.
Florida shot 53.8 percent from the field (35-for-65) and 48 percent from beyond the arc (12-for-25). That makes a total of 12 three-pointers in each of the exhibition games this season, and that’s the way head coach Mike White wants it to be.
Following the game, he said it isn’t necessarily a goal to hit a ton of three’s every game, but when his shooters see an opportunity, he wants them to let it fly.
The Gators’ effort from long range against Tampa was led by three apiece from Egor Koulechov and Jalen Hudson.
Scoring was pretty evenly spread as all 10 players who saw time had at least six points. Hudson led the team in scoring for the second game in a row with 18 points. Keith Stone followed him with 12 points, and KeVaughn Allen and Mike Okauru each had 11.
The offensive performance was a great showing without the production and leadership of Chris Chiozza, who is currently out with a shoulder sprain.
“I told Chris we don’t need him anymore,” White said. “Mike’s come a long way in the first month of practice. He’s settling in a little bit. Of course, much more room for improvement. KeVaughn played one of his better games. Again, it was an exhibition. I loved his approach, his mentality. I thought he played as hard as I’ve ever seen him. Defensively, he was all over the place, really pushing it in transition. He played with a really high level of intensity.”
Aside from Allen’s all-out performance and some impressive plays here and there, White was not happy with Florida’s defense overall.
The Spartans shot just 34.3 percent and only made one three-pointer late in the game, but the Gators only scored eight more points than the Spartans in the second half. Florida allowed 16 Tampa offensive rebounds and let nearly every loose ball go the other way in the second half.
White wants to see a better defensive mentality and effort from his players moving forward.
“We can’t control the fact that we’re not quite as long, not quite as athletic right now, but we can control how important defending and rebounding is to us, and we’re gonna work every day to try to fix it,” he said “I think our guys are saying the right things and they’re listening in regard to practice. You see glimpses of some high-level defense, and then you see some glimpses of some head scratching.”
The biggest disappointment of the night from that perspective was defensive communication. Last year’s team was full of great communicators, but as this team continues to find its way, the veteran players will be looked at to take control and fix that problem.
“As bad as it’s been since I’ve been here,” White said. “I just told our guys that. It wasn’t a sign of a high-level defensive team … Our level of communication, for whatever reason, wasn’t as high today as it’s been in practice. It’s confusing.”
Despite getting two convincing wins over the last few days, Florida heads into the season not satisfied with the positives, but focused on the things that must improve. The Gators have almost a full week to prepare for their first regular season game against Gardner-Webb next Monday.
They plan to take advantage of that time and be a more balanced team when they take the court next week.
“Coach kind of put it into perspective that we are probably at like a five or six out of 10 for where we need to be, so we’ve got a ways to go,” Hudson said. “We’ve gotta make a big jump here soon with our first game coming next week. In these two exhibitions, we learned what we need to work on and we need to focus on for these next couple weeks.”