One of the great elements of Gator Country is the connection that the writing staff has to the members through the forums. For that reason, with Florida basketball close to firing up I thought I’d go to the message boards and ask Gator Country subscribers for their questions entering the 2022-23 season.
So many questions were asked that this is going to be a multi-part series answering all kinds of questions previewing what will be an exciting first year under Todd Golden.
If you want to ask a question you can join Gator Country today and enjoy all the benefits of being a subscriber! Let’s get to it.
Although I’ve heard that Golden is a defensive focused coach, what is his typical offensive strategy? Does he like to go up tempo; does he like to press? Interested in his typical offensive sets at a high level.
Brewski
I’m going to start this question with a bit of context to remember when we start looking at how Golden’s teams played at San Francisco. They are one of the lowest budget teams in the West Coast Conference with a religious affiliation and a very high academic standard, so they are almost always going to be the underdog going against Gonzaga, BYU, and Saint Mary’s. Golden’s style of play there was built to upset teams with more talent and athleticism, so things could certainly be different now that he’s at a very different situation at Florida.
What jumped out the most about Golden’s style of play offensively was their use of dribble handoffs to free up talented guards to get attacking downhill. When used effectively dribble handoffs are like supersized pick and rolls giving the guard an even bigger advantage and it was one of the ways the Dons were able to score so effectively. Golden also played two true bigs a lot of the time and these were big bodies that could protect the ball and create excellent angles with the dribble handoffs making it an effective action.
Golden was also a fan of Princeton-inspired offense that uses off-ball manoeuvres called “split action” where two players converge with multiple different options of how to use screens, reject screens, or slip screens, with the randomness coming from the multiple options making it difficult for defenses to read and respond to. I’m definitely anticipating a lot of these actions as they are generally triggered through the high post, so to feature Castleton it would be a great action to run through him.
In terms of pressing–no. Again, without Gonzaga or BYU level athletes it probably wouldn’t have been a good move.
Tempo wise–and I know everyone is going to be very, very interested in this question–Golden’s teams were about average from a national standpoint. BUT, this is once again an area where the context matters. Gonzaga is arguably the best team at playing up tempo in the country, and BYU thrives in those settings as well. Santa Clara and Pepperdine excelled on the break too. Golden had to shorten these games and keep them from becoming track meets in order to give his team the best opportunity to win.
Will he be middle of the pack in tempo at Florida? He has certainly talked about wanting to run, so we’ll just have to see.
Interested in your expectations regarding PG/SG lineups with Kyle Lofton and Trey Bonham? Play together?
EvenParGator
Trey Bonham has had a great offseason by all accounts and seems to be commanding minutes and since the staff is going to be really reluctant to take Lofton off the floor the two point guard lineup is a definite possibility. San Francisco had two really talented point guards that shared the floor for long stretches because hey, you want your best players on the floor, so if Trey Bonham is commanding minutes I don’t see why Golden wouldn’t try it out.
One thing to remember is that Golden is a self-professed defensive-first guy and I don’t believe that Lofton and Bonham together would create a positive defensive outcome, though I’d happily be proven wrong. Two point guards on the floor means that one of Kowacie Reeves, Niels Lane, Will Richard, Myreon Jones, or Riley Kugel isn’t on the floor, and competing with that group for minutes will be a challenge especially as Golden tries to have lineups with SEC size, length, and athleticism on the floor.
I definitely think we’ll see the two point guards together at points, especially early, but later in the season I don’t think it’s going to be a regular rotation.
Just curious, what are your thoughts/expectations regarding how the Gators will do this season, and why? Thanks!
Ragator
Two of my favorite analytics tools for college basketball are KenPom and BartTorvik, both sites that rank college basketball teams and also have preseason projections. Usually they are quite similar as they are looking at similar data sets and weigh things similarly, but they actually have a bit of a range for the Gators entering this season.
KenPom, the godfather of college basketball analytics, has the Gators as the 35th best team entering the season. BartTorvik had the Gators 26th.
Truthfully…I think those two numbers reflect my expectations and thoughts on the team perfectly–I think they’ll fall somewhere between the 26th and 35th best team in the country this year. Falling in the middle of that range would of course mean making the tournament somewhat comfortably, but if they were to finish 35th or slightly below you start to get into the danger zone.
I love the talent and athleticism this team boasts and I’m expecting a big leap from Kowacie Reeves to supplement some of the proven talent of Colin Castleton. A healthy CJ Felder could be a massive boost.
My one main concern is that I don’t think the Gators have a player who can take over a close game with his individual shot creation and offense, and often at the end of close games it’s the team with the better one on one player who wins. The Gators have great depth and loads of complimentary pieces but I do fear that they’re missing an offensive alpha. However, even without that player this could still be a very successful season for the Gators.
How likely do you see us having a great recruiting class and how likely do you think Golden is to upgrade the current talent level within the next few years?
Kdm
I think the 2023 class will be solid with some nice program pieces, but it’s clear the Gators are going all in on the 2024 class. For a new staff, particularly one that’s new to the high-major level, it’s probably too late to get at the best of the best in 2023 so putting most of the effort towards 2024 is a wise move.
And boy have we seen the Gators go hard after elite kids in 2024.
You may have seen it in my recruiting articles but I have been keeping a running count of how many top-50 kids in 2024 that Golden has offered and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that number hit 15 or 20. Golden is loving his opportunity to have a chance at every kid in the country, something he didn’t have at San Francisco, and he’s going to recruiting events with confidence that he can land future NBA talent.
We saw Golden upgrade the talent through the transfer portal quite quickly and I think he’ll do the same with high school recruiting shortly, and while 2023 might not be the year for a monster class, 2024 very much could be.
How much do you expect Jason Jitoboh to play?
Bturner623
My heart hurts for Jason Jitoboh who has had such horrible injury luck. It’s great to hear that he is cleared and has been looking great in practice, and he should have every opportunity to compete for minutes.
However, since you asked me how much I expect him to play…man, I hate to say it, but truthfully not a ton.
It pains me to say it because I love the young man and respect what he has gone through and the perseverance he has shown. However, the archetype of 300-ish pound 6’11” centers is just not one that has great success at the high major level. Look around the SEC, look around the top leagues in the country, and think back to the NCAA Tournament last year. How many teams had players in the Jason Jitoboh genre playing significant minutes? Not many. It’s just tough for those types of players to hang at the highest level of the sport right now, and while there are going to be advantageous matchups he can take advantage of, I think he is going to struggle to see a lot of minutes in SEC play against teams that are going to go at him defensively every time down the floor.
Something that he simply needs to do better at to command minutes is to defensively rebound the basketball. Throughout his career at Florida his rebounding numbers have been well below average for a center, something that can’t be the case for a player of his size. If he can score and rebound the ball, some of his defensive deficiencies can be overlooked. If he struggles to defend and struggles to rebound, I just think that CJ Felder and Alex Fudge at the backup center spot are going to be better options.
That’s all for today, but with so many amazing questions there will be more parts to this series. If you want to have your question answered, join Gator Country today and I’ll see you on the message boards!