ESPN 3/11/13 article

[GatorRider]

Sums up the trouble with this team in the last month:http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebaske...rday-afternoon


1. I don’t trust Florida anymore. Sometimes, the numbers lie. Sometimes, a team with dazzling stats fails to justify the analytic mechanisms that elevate it. That could be the case with Florida. The BPI, the RPI, Ken Pomeroy and Sagarin all love the Gators. Per the film, however, I see problems. The same Florida team that amassed a plus-18.8-points-per-game scoring margin in SEC play entering Saturday’s 61-57 loss at Kentucky (more on that soon) and crushed Marquette and Wisconsin in November has suffered four road losses in February alone. The Gators were outplayed by Arizona and Kansas State off campus in the nonconference portion of their schedule. Sure, they’ve spent of a chunk of the season punching teams in the mouth, but they’re 0-5 in games decided by six points or fewer and haven't beaten a single top-50 RPI team in a road game. And we really haven’t seen that dominant version of Florida, which began SEC play with historic margins of victory, in a month. Who are the Gators now? Well, the final minutes of the Kentucky loss told their story. They’re balanced and talented, but they fumbled in the last stretch of that loss because they couldn’t find that catalyst, that Ben McLemore/Marcus Smart/Doug McDermott/Trey Burke, to lead them beyond the funk that ruined the moment. They did not score in the last seven-plus minutes of the second half. They were the veterans, but they played like freshmen. It’s tough to believe in this program’s postseason potential when it continues to suffer road losses against hungry SEC opponents that don’t match them on paper. Guess what they’ll have to do to advance in the NCAA tournament? Beat hungry underdogs outside Gainesville. Yes, Kentucky re-entered the bubble convo with this win, but Florida did little to prove that it’s worthy of its statistical hype. Again.

[Jaggator]

Link???

Hard to read on the eyes because of no spacing.

[GatorRider]

Sorry, link attached above...

[xenythx]

Here's the truth of it all, this team is not really as talented as people think and their early season results would suggest. It is a very flawed offensive team. Billy has done an amazing job masking their deficiencies with his offensive system.

We have MAYBE one 1st-round pick on this team and, while he plays hard, he certainly has not played like one his entire career. You'd be hard to find many NCAA champions that didn't have at least 1 or 2 first-round type talents.

What I'm hoping is that this team is like the '09-'10 Duke team, who really wasn't all that talented but got hot at the right time, had incredible coaching, and got lucky with the tournament draw.

[Jaggator]

Originally Posted by GatorRider

Sorry, link attached above...

Thanks!

[MadduxFanII]

It's a tiny point, but I absolutely would not say that Arizona "out-played" us. KSU, absolutely.

[j7]

I wonder if Billy should take a similar approach to that taken by Muschamp in calling his team "soft." Mentally that is.

[pinecrestgator]

Originally Posted by j7

I wonder if Billy should take a similar approach to that taken by Muschamp in calling his team "soft." Mentally that is.

Billy said they had no fire this morning. With what the media is now saying and with Dononvan's presser this morning, We're going to have an angry/salty team going into Nashville on Friday. We'll be hard to beat in that scenario.

[cuzzgator44]

I am sorry we were not outplayed by Arizona. If my memory recalls we were up double digits with 10 mins to go. Did they outplay us the last 10 minutes, yes, but for 30 minutes we dominated.

[ReggieNelson]

Originally Posted by xenythx

Here's the truth of it all, this team is not really as talented as people think and their early season results would suggest. It is a very flawed offensive team. Billy has done an amazing job masking their deficiencies with his offensive system.

We have MAYBE one 1st-round pick on this team and, while he plays hard, he certainly has not played like one his entire career. You'd be hard to find many NCAA champions that didn't have at least 1 or 2 first-round type talents.

What I'm hoping is that this team is like the '09-'10 Duke team, who really wasn't all that talented but got hot at the right time, had incredible coaching, and got lucky with the tournament draw.

excellent post.

[Jonas]

two points:

1) I understand the authors points, but I highly doubt the "statistics" lie at this point. The models are probabilistic in nature. Having a 90% chance to win, doesn't mean you have a 100% chance to win. I think our recent losses are expected from the statistics models such as KenPom and Sagarin as even the best teams will have losing streaks (see our 2007 NC team or the Heat last year).

While not having a good away win is worrying, I think it has more to do with the fact that most of the road games we've played were against desperate teams that needed a signature win to get into bubble discussion (Ark, Mizzou, UTenn, and Kensucky all fall into this). There is no other team in the SEC that is going to boost a resume like a win against Florida. I also think the KSU loss was more because we were still hung over from the Zona game. KSU wasn't ranked at the time, and I can see our guys under estimating them.

2) Arizona didn't outplay us. We played better than them by a whole lot for 36 minutes out of 40 that game. They had a really good run at the end of the first half, and then essentially "cheesed" us at the end of the second half by pressuring us from the out of bounds play. We executed really poorly from it, and it allowed Zona to score a quick 10 points.

You could say we "choked" there, or simply, we were just bad at out of bounds plays. Since then, Billy has spent time in practice working on it, and now when teams have tried it against us, it has been no where near as effective.

[regurgigator]

Originally Posted by MadduxFanII

It's a tiny point, but I absolutely would not say that Arizona "out-played" us. KSU, absolutely.

Agree.

And, while KSU outplayed us, it was their awful game beating our horrible game. We just didn't play well, but KSU also didn't impress me at all in that game. They played the worst, by far, of any team that beat us IMHO.

[gogators73]

Arizona and KSU were hostile environments. Arizona was a true road game. When he says "off campus" he makes it seem like we played both in NYC.

No correlation between finishing hostile road games and winning a national title.

[gatorchris]

Originally Posted by gogators73

Arizona and KSU were hostile environments. Arizona was a true road game. When he says "off campus" he makes it seem like we played both in NYC.

No correlation between finishing hostile road games and winning a national title.

So what teams have won it all after going 0'fer against top 50 RPI teams on the road in the regular season? If theres no correlation I assume you have an example or two.

[regurgigator]

Originally Posted by xenythx

Here's the truth of it all, this team is not really as talented as people think and their early season results would suggest. It is a very flawed offensive team. Billy has done an amazing job masking their deficiencies with his offensive system.

We have MAYBE one 1st-round pick on this team and, while he plays hard, he certainly has not played like one his entire career. You'd be hard to find many NCAA champions that didn't have at least 1 or 2 first-round type talents.

What I'm hoping is that this team is like the '09-'10 Duke team, who really wasn't all that talented but got hot at the right time, had incredible coaching, and got lucky with the tournament draw.

I haven't seen many (any?) people talking about how supremely talented this team is supposed to be. We have some very good college talent across the board, but no one that's sniffing lottery pick status.

What some of us saw that impressed us so much is a team that has completely dismantled a bunch of opponents this season, including some pretty good teams, in a way I've never seen before.

I think our suffocating defense that we saw in most of our games prior to Yeguete's injury issues was the primary reason for the devastation we wrought on so many teams. And, I'm hopeful we'll get that level of defense back for the NCAA Tourney now that we're healthy again. If we do, not much luck will be needed.

[rtgator]

Originally Posted by MadduxFanII

It's a tiny point, but I absolutely would not say that Arizona "out-played" us. KSU, absolutely.

I agree.

Also, he did not mention the injuries at all. While we certainly have some issues (no denying that), we have not been the same since Yeguete' s injury. Maybe that explains why he hasn't seen "that dominant version" in a month.

We'll see if we can get it back again.