We’re well into the dog days of Summer and that means it’s time for another Gator Country subscriber mailbag!
One of the great elements of Gator Country is the ability to regularly hear from subscribers about the content they want, and mailbag series have become a regular part of the writing here. If you have a question you want answered, you can head to the message boards and post it now. There will be multiple parts of this series, so there is plenty of time to get your questions submitted.
This is part two of the series so if you haven’t yet read part one, you can do so here.
Let’s get into part two!
67walkon: ”How does this team lose a game?”
The professional basketball coach in me absolutely loves this question. It’s so easy to have hindsight with teams and diagnose what went wrong, but I think there is a lot of power in the “pre-mortem,” taking a look in advance of a season and looking for what could be weak points that could cause issues.
With this year’s Florida team I think this process is easier than ever because of just how much returning talent there is. In a world of constant roster turnover and changes, Florida’s roster is about as known of a quantity as you can possibly get. For that reason, I think it’s pretty easy to look at some of the issues Florida had last year and think that those are the weak points:
1) They could lose by not shooting the three well enough. Florida is hoping they just drastically improved their shooting with Denzel Aberdeen coming in for Xaivian Lee, and perhaps they get a boost from AJ Brown should he play–but they’ll need some returners like Boogie Fland and Alex Condon to really improve their production there.
2) They could lose by being too vanilla. Florida has not been a team that’s particularly pragmatic with their style of play–they like to do one thing, and do it really well. Now, that worked pretty well in the National Championship year where they had Walter Clayton, Alijah Martin, and Will Richard, and it worked pretty well last year in a down SEC. However, the league should be a lot better this year, and the Gators might need to be able to show some different styles of play.
3) They could lose by being complacent. This is two straight years of the Gators having pretty dominant SEC regular seasons, and they saw that much of perception was defined by what they ended up doing in the postseason for better and for worse. Just how easy it will be for the Gators to muster up enthusiasm for a road game against a team in the bottom third of the league this season could be interesting.
Belloit: “Do we have anyone else in the portal to bring in if Aberdeen does not get the waiver?”
Florida seems extremely confident that Denzel Aberdeen will be eligible next year (I still don’t share the same optimism and wrote about this in part one, for whatever it’s worth) and at this point–he better. The Gators have a ton of eggs in the Denzel Aberdeen basket, as right now the portal is entirely picked over. There isn’t anyone the Gators could grab that could be penciled in as a starter, or even anyone that’s really a strong rotation piece–at least in a proven capacity. There are still some international players the Gators could look to, but that would be a challenging endeavour. Trying to get a waiver for an international player with pro experience that late could be a problem and they might not be available for game one. Additionally, if Florida is hunting for a starter level player in July or August, they are going to get absolutely leveraged beyond belief–agents will know their desperation, and make them drastically overpay.
Needless to say, Florida better get Aberdeen. They’ve put themselves in a position where they really need it to happen as there won’t be any other “free agents” really available to fill the spot. Additionally, if Aberdeen were to not get eligible–Florida should get some serious heat for their roster building. They clearly needed a guard, and they went after one with a dubious eligibility situation–a risk they should have been fully aware of. If that didn’t end up working out then it would be a mistake that could have been predicted from the moment the move was done. Golden and his staff seem pretty certain Aberdeen will get that waiver or they will have a favorable court to fight it, so we’ll see how things go.
Dnaughty23: “Who’s top 5 on paper next year and if we have the roster we expect to, who is as talented as we are?”
I am assuming this means top five teams in the country and not Florida’s starting five, but if I’m wrong–correct me on the message board and I’ll address starters.
In terms of top five teams in the country, it will likely look something like this:
1. Florida
2. Duke
3. Michigan
4. Illinois
5. UConn
Pretty much all of these teams have the 2026 model for being a top projected team–a decent core of a great team is returning, and that group is bolstered from the transfer portal.
I do think that Duke, Michigan, and Illinois have rosters that are roughly as talented as the Gators, but as much as these three teams do have a bunch of returning talent–no one has the amount of returning production as the Gators. This makes Florida the “sure thing” pick which is why so many people are going to have them at number one.
BMFGator: “Minutes speculation: AJ Brown, CJ Ingram?”
This is a tough one, for sure.
Going into last season when we thought AJ Brown was going to play, I did not expect him to have much of an impact. I thought the defensive film was problematic, and I don’t think he did enough offensively to make up for that. Now, I do believe in him as a shooter–and Florida could have really used some of those makes. Coming off a redshirt year it’s hard to know exactly where he’ll be, but hopefully a healthy body will make him a more mobile defender than he was at Ohio. I’d still expect he’s someone who doesn’t see action in every game.
CJ Ingram I’d see with a bigger role, and I’d maybe pencil him in for 7-8 minutes a game. Florida’s roster last season was crying out for a big wing to take some minutes and Ingram just couldn’t get to the level where he could command a spot there, but if he is improved that same pathway remains.
GatorNeil: “Who will be the guy or guys to take the “tough” shots when we “need” them. We seemed to not have that guy last year.”
Awesome question and statement, and I probably could have had this in the “how does Florida lose a game” question.
Having a great shotmaker can cover a lot of sins, and not having one can cause major problems–and we saw this over the last two seasons. During the National Championship season Walter Clayton papered over a lot of Florida’s half court offensive execution problems, as a play wouldn’t work and the clock would wind down and he’d just go hit a 29-foot step back.
Last year, Florida didn’t have this, and stalled out offensive possessions often ended terribly. The Gators really thought that Lee was going to be this player, and he certainly had the profile–he just wasn’t able to play that style of game in the SEC.
Right now the best option for this is Urban Klavzar who shot 41% from three last year, many off the dribble and against heavy defensive pressure–something last game guards need to do. Klavzar is also a very good ball handler and can create some space with the dribble to free up that shot, but he isn’t super quick or explosive and he doesn’t have great height to shoot over longer defenders which would be the knock. Though he might not be the perfect late shot guy he has a lot of potential there due to the shooting stroke, his handle, and intelligence, and right now he would be Florida’s best option.
This was part two of the Summer Mailbag series, and there will be plenty more parts–so if you have a question you’d like answered head to the message board now where you can post it.