Here at Gator Country we like to keep a close connection to our subscribers, and that means giving the opportunity for questions asked on our message boards to be answered in an article.
With Florida’s non-conference portion of the season finished and the Gators about to open up SEC play with an important bout with Kentucky, I thought this would be a perfect time for another Q&A article!
If you are a Gator Country subscriber you can post a question on the “Gator Insider Full Court Press” board, and if you’re not but want to have a question answered–now would be a great time to join!
Brewski: It seems like Golden continues to use many different rotations and even different starting 5s. With the injuries, I get it, but do you expect him to settle in on a top 7 or 8, or would you expect all these rotations for the rest of the season?
Here is my personal belief–depth is underrated from November to January, and overrated in February and March. I’ll give you a second to digest that one.
Early in the season, having multiple options is huge as young players learn the game, transfers aclimatize, and you find out which guys can really play. You want to have multiple options to throw out there and see what works, and when you’re a high-major team playing buy games you want to be able to completely overwhelm your opponent with pace and physicality–just like the Gators have done.
However, when it really gets to the nitty gritty of the season and there are important games to be played–nearly every good team in the country is playing 7 or 8 guys. Quite simply, at the college level it is extremely difficult to have 9 or 10 or more championship level players, and when you see what teams use their bench a lot and who doesn’t it can be a pretty interesting curve. Most teams at the top of their leagues use 7-8 guys in important games in February and March, and teams in the middle of the pack use 9-10. Then teams at the bottom of leagues usually use 7-8, but that’s due to a lack of talent.
Florida’s depth has been great when it comes to overwhelming teams that aren’t super talented, but they need to prove they have 7 guys that are as good as the top 7 guys on the best teams in the SEC. There are going to be a lot of one possession games in league play and what matters in tight games is who has the best 5 players on the floor, and it doesn’t really matter if one team’s 6-11 guys on the bench would crush the other teams’ 6-11 guys. Basketball is a top heavy sport, and while Florida’s depth was a big advantage in non-conference play I don’t think it will be as important in the late stages of the SEC.
Jayhovah: What’s up with Kugel and how do you see his role developing going forward?
If you want to see my full thoughts on this you can check out my article I just wrote at Gator Country, but I’ll summarize here.
Kugel is a player who struggles to play without the ball, and is largely a player that wants to get to a pull-up or stepback jumper at all times. Last year when Florida was desperate for anyone to make a play–he was able to put up points. This year when the Gators have more offensive talent and the ball moves more–Kugel is struggling to fit it.
What was pretty interesting when going through the advanced numbers to see that in a lot of ways Kugel is a nearly identical player this year to what he was last year, and you’ll see more of this in the article. He is struggling to finish at the rim–which he did last year, his playmaking numbers aren’t great–which they weren’t last year, and his shooting off the dribble numbers are just okay–just like last year. The difference is that last year Kugel got to put up a lot of shots in inconsequential games for a Florida team whose season was essentially over, and this year the Gators are trying to be competitive. The only major change from last year to this year is that as a freshman Kugel was a very good catch and shoot three player whereas this year those shots aren’t falling at all which is certainly making his struggles playing without the ball even more amplified.
I can’t quantify it with numbers, but watching Kugel play it’s clear he doesn’t know the proper times of when to attack and when to move the ball. The Gators have run a ton of plays for him to attack downhill, but he’ll negate the advantage by coming to a stop and hiding behind a screen trying to get to his pull up. There have been countless pindown into dribble handoff and dribble handoff into ball screen plays that are designed to get him downhill to the middle of the floor but he never uses them to attack–which either tells me he fundamentally doesn’t understand the offense, or he’s not comfortable handling the ball and attacking.
Going forward I think he’ll continue to come off the bench where he can get some easier matchups and be in a bit more of a microwave role.
GatorGolfer4: Where do the Gators currently rank in some advanced metric team rankings?
Great question! I’ll go through the three most important and most popular metrics.
First, KenPom. If you don’t know KenPom by now, you probably should–it’s the most popular predictive metric used by coaches, fans, media, the NCAA selection committee, and of course, it’s extremely popular in the betting community if you are into that.
In KenPom, the Gators are 35th. They are 32nd in adjusted offensive efficiency and 57th in adjusted defensive efficiency. “Adjusted” means that the algorithm accounts for quality of competition and pace–making it the best way to evaluate a team in those areas.
Another extremely popular predictive metric is T-Rank, also referred to as Bart Torvik or Torvik.
Florida is 32nd in T-Rank, 32nd in adjusted offensive efficiency and 47th in adjusted defensive efficiency.
Now, the most important number–the NCAA’s NET Rankings–the official sorting tool of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.
Florida is currently 48th in the NET.
It’s still early and I know some of you will cringe at the idea of bracketology, but just based on those numbers the Gators would find themselves on the bubble–so they have work to do in SEC play.
Tim: Is it reasonable to assume Denzel Aberdeen’s minutes may affect Kugel’s?
Possibly? Right now Kugel hasn’t been great, but he’s far from unplayable. Early in the season he was playing around 30 minutes per game, and recently he’s been at 21. That opens up a few more minutes that Aberdeen could absorb, but I’m not quite at the point where I think Aberdeen is necessarily pushing Kugel for minutes. It’s great to see his aggressiveness as a young player and he has great length and energy on the defensive end, but right now I think he’s in quite a battle for minutes with the amount of proven guards on the roster.
CharGator: If Aleks Szymczyk makes it back, how do you see him fitting into the rotation?
We’re still unsure when Szymczyk will be activated but the original timeline was January and we haven’t heard of any setbacks. I think he will be healthy and activated soon.
Unfortunately for him, I think it’s going to be a challenge to make it into the rotation. Coming off a lengthy injury and jumping right into SEC action is a tough ask, especially for a player that hasn’t had a lot of experience at the collegiate level. At the same time, you could see him getting a shift here and there due to the skillset he brings as a pick and pop player, something the Gators don’t really have in the frontcourt other than with Thomas Haugh. Injuries are always a possibility, and if healthy Szymczyk likely would have had some run when Micah Handlogten was out. We have also seen Florida’s frontcourt struggle with fouls at times which could make for some opportunities for Szymczyk.
I think Shimmy is a good player that has long term potential for the Gators, it’s just that an injury that takes a young player out of non-conference play really puts them behind the 8-ball in terms of trying to jump in during league action.
That’s all for today–thank you to everyone who sent in questions!