On a night where the Gators weren’t able to get a single clean look offensively they fell behind early and could never get back in the game, falling to the Texas Southern Tigers by a score of 69-54. This game will go down as one of the bigger upset wins in college basketball in recent history, a black cloud that the Gators will hope doesn’t follow them for the rest of the season. Texas Southern entered the game 0-7 on the season with this win bringing them to 1-7, while the Gators fell to 6-2.
Offensive Struggles
There were a number of things that went wrong for the Gators on Monday night but the biggest thing was their inability to get clean looks on the offensive end. Oftentimes when an underdog beats a high major team it’s due to the favorite going ice cold and missing shots but that wasn’t really the case in this one, instead the Gators were unable to get open looks all night long. Florida’s five-out offense has been largely figured out by opponents, something we saw with Oklahoma suffocating them last week and something that continued with Texas Southern denying cuts and switching Florida’s main actions, leaving the Gators in late shot clock situations forcing up contested looks. Ultimately the Gators shot 38.2% from the field (with some help by some made buckets in garbage time) which will get you beat on most nights.
No-Boards
Another area where the Tigers soundly thumped the Gators was on the glass where they won the rebound battle 46-23, a truly astonishing number. Getting pounded like that on the glass meant that Florida got a lot less possessions than Texas Southern which allowed them to pile the points on the Gators. Texas Southern is an old, veteran team with some big, physical guys on the inside, but getting beat on the glass by any opponent is something that likely shouldn’t happen to a high major team, really no matter who they’re playing. Some will chalk up the rebound disparity to effort or toughness, but a lot of it had to do with the fact Florida was scrambling defensively which meant they weren’t in a position to defensively rebound when a shot came up. On a night where many things went wrong for the Gators, this was one of the main ones.
Back Cuts Galore
While Florida’s offensive problems will (understandably) get more of the press, their defense wasn’t stellar either. They did turn the Tigers over a ton (22 times) but when they were able to get a shot up, more often than not it was going in. Texas Southern shot 54.4% from the field and 45.5% from three, both numbers that were the product of the Tigers getting a lot of what they wanted offensively. Most notably–they were able to back cut the Gators for a number of easy baskets that left Florida’s players frustrated. The Gators play an aggressive brand of defense that tries to make it difficult for opponents to move the ball around the perimeter and while it had that effect at times, particularly with the turnovers, Texas Southern was able to turn the aggressiveness against the Gators and cut behind the defense for layups. Florida mostly has work to do on the offensive end but it’s got plenty to shore up defensively as well.
Final Thoughts
This was a pretty devastating loss for the Gators. To get hammered by 15 points by an 0-7 SWAC team is beyond disappointing, and it’s not even like they had the excuse of being really cold from the outside or struggling with turnovers. They got beaten badly and looked like the inferior team in a number of categories. The Gators only have a bit of time for soul searching before taking on North Florida back in Gainesville on Wednesday.