The Florida Gators men’s basketball team suffered their worst performance of the season in Knoxville, losing 64-44 to No.8 Tennessee last Saturday. Florida’s 44 points was a season low, having averaged 85 points per game and scoring 70+ in every contest prior to the Vols.
As one can imagine, the vibe in the locker room postgame wasn’t very cheerful. Sophomore Thomas Haugh and the Gators leaned on the veteran leadership of Florida’s front court after a frustrating loss to Tennessee.
“We were definitely a little down on ourselves, but a lot of our leaders, Will [Richard], Walt [Clayton], and Alijah [Martin] all just said, ‘we’re good, we didn’t hit anything today, we couldn’t shoot, we didn’t get to our principles’, and stuff like that. It was definitely down a little bit but they kept us back up. We’ll be good,” Haugh told the media on Monday.
“It definitely left a little sting in us, but we’re gonna get back at it this week and practice and then tomorrow get back on the roll we were on before that game,” Haugh added.
The Gators want to put this game behind them as it was an outlier performance, but there’s also a motivation factor they want to lean on.
“Definitely a little bit of both,” Haugh said. “You want to put it behind you, but at the same time you do want to use that as motivation and realize that if we don’t get our stuff done, if we don’t do some of the stuff that coach tells us, that’s what happens. Road games are really tough.”
One of the contributing factors in Florida’s loss to Tennessee was their lack of rebounding success, getting out-rebounded 12-10 on the offensive glass.
“That’s what coach Golden said was one of the main reasons why we lost that game, because we lost the battle on the glass. Usually when we win those battles on the glass and get back, it’s like 35-40% of our makes, we’re able to deal with some of those misses that we had, and since we couldn’t do that, it just kind of fell apart a little bit at Tennessee, but we’ll get back at it against Vanderbilt,” Haugh said.
Florida is currently the 4th best offensive rebounding team in the country, which has given the Gators plenty of second chances and allowed their offense to flourish. Haugh says Florida’s Monday practice won’t be easy as they look to get back on track.
“Getting back to the stuff we know our team’s good at. That’s rebounding, transition points, and playing really good, solid defense. Coach is going to stress that to us I’m sure today a lot in practice and probably get on us a little bit but we need that,” Haugh said.
Another emphasis for Florida is finishing around the rim after a poor display vs Tennessee. Sophomore forward’s Alex Condon and Thomas Haugh were both 1-6 from the field on Saturday, and the team as a whole struggled to finish close to the basket.
“We are starting to do a lot more contact drills in practice,” Haugh said on Monday. “We all notice that we just aren’t finishing at the rate we were at the beginning of the season when it came to these bigger SEC guys. Coach Hartman is doing a good job of like, we’re using Oli [Rioux] trying to go through him to finish, he’s a really tall body, or even a lot of pad work too, get stronger down in the post and make those layups.”
No.6 Florida hosts Vanderbilt on Tuesday at 7:00 p.m.