It’s rare to face a team with an interim head coach in college basketball unless there’s some type of off-the-court scandal. It’s especially rare less than 10 games into the season.
For various reasons – the fact that a team is usually not out of postseason contention until late in the season due to the 68-team NCAA Tournament field is probably one of the biggest ones – athletic departments seem much more willing to let the entire season play out and then make a decision afterward than they are when it comes to football.
But that’s exactly the scenario that the No. 20 Gators face on Sunday when they take on Maryland in the Basketball Hall of Fame Invitational in Brooklyn, New York. Maryland and coach Mark Turgeon, a coaching veteran of more than 20 years, parted ways last week with the Terrapins off to a 5-3 start.
In his place, the school promoted Danny Manning to interim head coach. Manning is best known for being a two-time consensus first team All-American and winning a national championship at Kansas in 1988.
However, he’s also forged a nice coaching career. He was an assistant coach on Kansas’ 2008 national championship team, and he was the head coach at Tulsa and Wake Forest for a combined eight seasons. He led Tulsa to the 2014 Conference USA regular season and tournament championships, which also earned him the C-USA Coach of the Year award.
In Manning’s first game as the boss at Maryland, they lost their Big Ten opener to Northwestern, 67-61, on Sunday.
Florida coach Mike White said that the element of the unknown is providing a nice challenge for his staff as far as game-planning.
“It’ll be interesting to see how different they are with a week,” White said. “We just don’t know what’s coming. [Manning] was a great player. He’s a really good coach. I’m sure they’re excited, and we’re excited to tip it up.”
White said that Maryland (5-4, 0-1 Big Ten) is a prototypical Big Ten program – they’re long, physical, defensive-minded and scrappy. Florida has already played one Big Ten team in Ohio State, and White expects Maryland to be an even longer and more athletic version of the Buckeyes.
Guards Eric Ayala (13.1 points, 4.7 rebounds, 2.7 assists) and Fatts Russell (12.1 points, 4.1 rebounds, 3.7 assists) provide the scoring punch, while forwards Qudus Wahab (11.1 points, 6.8 rebounds, 60.7 field-goal percentage) and Donta Scott (10.2 points, 7.6 rebounds) can be a handful inside.
“Very talented, very physical, a rebounding and defensive program, of course,” White said. “They’ve had guys come through there in the past however long that are talented players. They can score it. They’re obviously dealing with some stuff right now. Veteran backcourt. Old, very tough. Wahab was a great addition, of course. They can beat you in a lot of ways. They’re a very good team. They’ll be a big challenge for us.”
As he’s done throughout his seven years at Florida, though, White downplayed the significance of their opponent or even the outcome of the game. In his view, their goal is to continue to play well in the areas that they’ve played well in and shore up their deficiencies. If they do that, the results will take care of themselves, and they’ll be in a good position come March.
For this particular team at the moment, that means rebounding better, being smarter about not fouling and taking better care of the ball.
After winning the rebounding margin in five of their first six games – which included games against Florida State and Ohio State – they’ve now lost the rebounding margin in three consecutive games, including a minus-23 effort against Texas Southern on Monday.
Five times this season, the opposing team has shot more than 20 free throws against them, including three games of 29-plus attempts.
They’ve turned it over 10 or more times in every game except for one, and their assist-to-turnover ratio is at exactly 1-to-1.
“Foul discipline continues to be something we focus on,” White said. “We’ve got to continue defending the three at a high rate. We’ve got to rebound it more cleanly. Turnovers have to decrease. I really like where we are with our physical toughness. We have room to grow with our mental toughness. Saw some of it [on Friday], and I’m sure that’s a lot of teams, but that’s something that we’re working on.”
Perhaps more than anything, though, the Gators (7-2) just need to make more shots. They’ve done a good job of moving the ball and finding wide-open looks for the most part, but they’ve just been a bad shooting team. They’re shooting just under 43 percent as a team, including a woeful 29.7 percent from three. They’ve only made 14 of their last 71 three-point attempts over the past three games (19.7 percent).
While they’re a better shooting team than that and likely are due to go on a hot streak sometime soon, White isn’t just going to sit around and patiently wait for the shots to start falling. They’re taking a proactive approach to their shooting struggles.
“We’re trying to get more shots in practice right now while winded,” he said. “We’re mixing some conditioning in with some shooting. We’re spending a lot of time with some shooting groups at different parts of the day. That said, you’ve got to be careful with that, too, because it’s a long season, and you don’t want these guys on their feet too much throughout the year.
“In addition, we’re considering putting in different things. You always are. When you’re not shooting it well, you always, as a head coach, it starts with you, and you can’t just be overly stubborn about it. I like a lot of our looks, but we’ll continue to consider, moving forward, ‘What if we put this wrinkle in? What if we tried this or that?’ But we’ll see. We like some of the stuff we’re doing right now as well. We’ll see how we shoot it moving forward.”
Their next opportunity to shoot better comes on Sunday against that mysterious Maryland team.
Could you ask coach why given the crippling disparity in rebounding ability that we have seen over the past three games he would not consider putting in Castleton and Jitoboh at the same time? Since Jitoboh is seldom used, and often is not even used when Castleton is out of the game, it would seem to me that if nothing else, Jitoboh would keep some of the offensive rebounding out of the paint just on sheer space occupation.
Sometimes having fewer options on offense causes the offense to focus more. Keeping Fleming, Duraji, and Appleby or jones on the floor during those instances would create a competent offensive alignment while at the same time, making it more difficult for opponents to rebound their misses. Having a big man in the middle and one on the post enables us to clog the paint from easy lay ups and lobs for slams.
McKissic would also be an option in place of Fleming. McKissic has proven to be one of the most important elements to our success, and should along with Fleming, Castleton, and Duruji be given the lion’s share of minutes. Those four should definitely be part of the permanent starting 5 for our program. The verdict is out on Appleby and Jones at the point. Neither has been consistent offensively and therefore has not separated themselves from the other. Their minutes should be split evenly. As one emerges as being the most stable on ball handling and distribution and field goal percentage, we can revisit their status as starters at that time.