5 random thoughts from the weekend

[REM08]

1) I'm of the opinion that Florida lost the game more than UK won it. To state the obvious, the offense was more to blame than the defense. Florida's D gave up only 11 points in the final 7:30 of the game to team that was desperately trying to score. Florida's O suffered from some bad luck and some bad decisions. I saw three different categories of plays. 1 - good shots that just happened to miss. 2 - easy shots that should not have been missed. 3 - careless turnovers. I think Kentucky played better than average defense over that time period, but it didn't cause the bad turn overs and it didn't cause open shots to miss. I did wonder about their energy a little bit. Wilbekin, who I've loved all year, didn't seem as upset as I would have guessed he would be after his missed allyoop attempt. That was a big play. Maybe I'm reading to much into it.

2) Home court advantage or away court disadvantage? Which is it for this Gator team? Is it both? Is the real potential of this team on display any time the crowd is in their favor, or is it any time the crowd is at least not 100% hostile? Obviously probably some combination here. But I doubt its exactly an even split. My guess is we'll find out how important these factors are in the coming tournaments. Either way, the road games are over.

3) The fact is that if you win a national championship this year, no one will care how the SEC tournament went. However, I do think this weekend may be telling. I wonder how important it is to the team. Would an early loss hurt their confidence or sharpen their focus? Is it inconsequential either way?

4) Patric Young is a guy I'm a big fan of. I can't think of many opposing players I've seen Kentucky play against who have that sportsmanship thing down better than he does. From attempting to help Noel during his injury, to often helping opposing players up off the floor, he's a hard guy not to like. He's often chatting with other players too and almost always seems to have positive energy.

5) According to Calipari, he and Billy's dad are fairly close (my interpretation). Cal talked to him before and after the game and, in the post game show, Cal told a story about how during both of Florida's championship runs, Cal and Billy's dad would meet at a Dunkin Donuts for breakfast from the final four on. Cal told Donovan's dad after the game that his son needs to get back to the final four so they can get some breakfast again.

[gatorbogey]

good stuff.
interesting about cal and billy's dad.

like young's play and sportsmanship too. good for a fan of a rival to see that. kudos to u.

i think we need to use the SEC-t to get some confidence back. if not for the team, for some of the fan base.

sagarin gives [only] 3.5 pts for homecourt. i think some venues it's more like 10.

there were alot of things that went wrong in that last 7+ minutes. we did still play sound 'D', considering. it was like the zona game, except extended. alot that is/was correctable. alot that is just the way the ball bounces sometimes, and alot to do w/ UK contesting some shots.

[MadduxFanII]

This is fair. You don't have the results we did in the last seven minutes without everything going wrong for you: we played badly, UK played well, there was some bad luck and there were some (not a lot, don't want to over-emphasize it) questionable calls.

We earned it with, what was it, four straight turnovers? Kentucky deserves credit for clamping down on D, especially Cauley-Stein who didn't foul over the last 10 minutes. We had what seemed like half a dozen follow-up tip-in attempts that were agonizingly close to going in. And Prather got fouled on his follow-up attempt.

Like I said, it all "helped." Stretches that bad are never caused by just one thing, much as some folks here would like to attribute all failures to "CHOKE! CHOKE! CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKE!"

[akaGatorhoops]

Good post, REM.

[themistocles]

Originally Posted by gatorbogey

sagarin gives [only] 3.5 pts for homecourt. i think some venues it's more like 10.

Interesting notes, as usual, REM.

Regarding the homecourt:


Bogey Sagarin is incorrect for exactly the same reason you think that in some venues it is 10. It also differs somewhat for every team in every different situation and every different matchup.

It probably doesn't average 10 across an entire season, but a simple comparison of home versus away comparisons of teams that play each other twice in a season should provide some indication. I will look at the net point difference home/away divided by two for a few teams in the SEC this year, each of which had 5 home/away games and give the median and mean differences below - I selected 3 top teams, 1 mid team (LSU) and the bottom team (Auburn) just to get some variability:
Med - Avg Home-Away Difference
Florida - 28 - 18
Kentucky - 0 - 1
Ole Miss - 20 - 22
LSU - 2 - 0
Auburn - 5 - 11

Now these teams records in those 10 games - everyone except Auburn, which was 1-9, had a 7-3 record in those 10 games.

As you can see, these are all over the place, ranging from the Gators median high of 28 to Ky's 0 and from Ole Miss's mean high of 22 to LSU's 0.

Among those 25 games by team, the average and median of the mean were respectively 10 and 11 points; with the average and median of the Median respectively 5 and 11.

So, it looks like perhaps 10 points is the most consistent advantage for home court, at least roughly in the SEC this year.

So, again, I argue that Sagarin is quite a ways off.

[UFish]

Originally Posted by REM08

2) Home court advantage or away court disadvantage? Which is it for this Gator team? Is it both? Is the real potential of this team on display any time the crowd is in their favor, or is it any time the crowd is at least not 100% hostile? Obviously probably some combination here. But I doubt its exactly an even split. My guess is we'll find out how important these factors are in the coming tournaments. Either way, the road games are over.

Opposing crowds rattle us. Favoring crowds energize us. That's obviously true for every college basketball team to some extent but for us I think both are extremes.

So the good news is we won't be playing anymore road games. The bad news is we won't be playing anymore home games either.

4) Patric Young is a guy I'm a big fan of. I can't think of many opposing players I've seen Kentucky play against who have that sportsmanship thing down better than he does. From attempting to help Noel during his injury, to often helping opposing players up off the floor, he's a hard guy not to like. He's often chatting with other players too and almost always seems to have positive energy.

He's a great person. Too great almost. I like to think that if he had more of a mean streak, someone built like he is would get more than two rebounds in a game like the one played Saturday. But nice guys have rebounded well before so I guess someone needs to teach him how to do it consistently.

[regurgigator]

Originally Posted by REM08

3) The fact is that if you win a national championship this year, no one will care how the SEC tournament went. However, I do think this weekend may be telling. I wonder how important it is to the team. Would an early loss hurt their confidence or sharpen their focus? Is it inconsequential either way?

I consider the SECT to be the least important of the three "seasons" compared to the regular season and the NCAA Tourney. However, I'll specifically be looking for signs in the SECT of whether our suffocating and "connected" team defense is showing signs of returning. I think there's a good chance we'll see it, and if we do, I'll feel a lot better going into the NCAA Tourney.

If we don't see it in the SECT, I'll still be hopeful as (1) it takes time and practice to get that "connectedness" back together and (2) I know the veterans on this team are really pointing toward the NCAA Tourney this year, and will either be totally psyched up or psyched out



My random thought is that Cauley-Stein went from looking like a stiff in the first game we played UK to looking like a lottery pick in this last game. He's not the defender Noel is, but he's pretty stout. (But, I'm betting Young will be readier for him if we play again.)

[GatorLurker]

I watched the game in a hotel room in California. Here are my random thoughts:

1) I had never seen the Gators so careless with the ball this year. Many of the turnovers were totally unforced.

2) Going inside because Cauley-Stein was in foul trouble was the plan, but this Gator team is pathetically poor at drawing fouls. We are one of the worst in Division 1 in that regard. I think that it is due to our normally good offense resulting in uncontested shots. It is hard to get fouled when you are all alone.

3) Too many missed point-blank shots.

4) I do not subscribe to the "choke" theory. UK looked like they were going to blow the Gators out early and the team showed a lot of poise.

5) The weakness of UK is guard play and we did not pressure enough when we had opportunities, especially when WY was in the game. Perhaps he is not fully recovered.

[ThePlayer]

I agree Lurker.

We have a team full of guards, but none of them are comfortable with going to the hoop and drawing fouls.
Maybe it's lack of size...or maybe it's lack of heart.