It was close to a must-win situation for the Gators on Saturday as they welcomed the Vanderbilt Commodores to town but they weren’t able to take care of business, losing 88-80 and putting their NCAA Tournament hopes into a critical situation. It’s hard to say whether or not the Gators took the Commodores lightly but Vandy controlled the play for much of the game and looked like the more confident, free-playing team particularly down the stretch. It was close entering the final minutes and it seemed like the Gators were a team that knew that it couldn’t lose and the Commodores were able to win the execution battle in the final minutes handing Florida a tough loss.
Defensive Breakdowns
The 88 points Vanderbilt scored are a bit misleading because the Gators had to do a lot of desperation fouling in the final 90 seconds of the game with ratcheted up the Commodores’ point total but even with that accounted for, Florida’s defense which has been the backbone of their culture wasn’t good enough. The Commodores shot 48% from the field which might not look like a massive number but it includes 12-23 from the three-point line which torched Florida’s defense. Head coach Jerry Stackhouse is an excellent offensive mind and he had a clear plan of attack to pick apart Florida’s defense and it included interior touches that resulted in kick outs to open shooters, creating efficient looks all game long. Right now the margin for error is slim for the Gators and when they don’t defend at an elite level, they’ll be in tough to try to beat anyone in the SEC.
Interior Force
Center Liam Robbins had what was likely the game of his career on Saturday, hanging 32 points, 10 rebounds, and 4 blocks on the Gators. Entering the game you would have thought it was Colin Castleton who was going to have the biggest game for either side but Robbins not only stepped up to the challenge but dominated the matchup leading his team to victory. Many of his points weren’t him taking on and beating Casteton in one on one matchups, but more Coach Stackhouse generating deep catches for him where he was able to finish with easy layups. Robbins’ big night offensively was an indictment of Florida’s defense that wasn’t sharp and lacked energy with rotations and he was able to put up huge numbers because of it.
Scoring Droughts
As has been the case in several games this season it was long scoring droughts that plagued the Gators as they went 6 minutes, 5 minutes, and 3 minutes without scoring at a few pivotal moments of the game and because of it they weren’t able to keep up with a surging Commodores offense. Overall the Gators had an offensive performance that wasn’t terrible by any stretch, actually, it would be one of their better showings in recent weeks–but it was the droughts that kept them out of the game. This isn’t anything new for the team who has lacked answers offensively all season, but it bit them in what was a very important game.
Final Thoughts
The season isn’t done so this isn’t the nail in the coffin, but the Gators are now well out of the NCAA Tournament picture and now will have to do some serious work to make the Dance. The strength of Florida’s resume up until this point was the fact that they hadn’t suffered a bad loss but with where Vanderbilt sits in the NET Rankings this is a quad-3 loss for the Gators which is a devastating blow to their body of work. Perhaps the most disappointing part of the game was the fact that it wasn’t one side of the ball that let them down, it was at times both sides of the ball–something that suggests a team isn’t NCAA Tournament quality unless they show several steps of improvement before Selection Sunday.