The Florida Gators suffered their first loss of the season to FAU, falling 76 to 74 on Monday night.
Todd Golden said the difference in the game was three-point shooting.
“From my early observation, them going 13-24 from three was the difference in the game,” Golden said during the post-game press conference. “We did a pretty good job at minimizing the amount of threes they took, 24 out of 69 is about 37%, something like that, against a team that is lethal from behind the arc. But again, the fact that they were so efficient, 54%, we just got bombed out tonight. A lot of it was in transition. I thought they did a really good job locating shooters in transition. The way they play, it’s a difficult guard. They play about four guards usually. Johnell Davis is, I would call, kind of like a hybrid wing-guard. He can handle it. He really shoots it well as you guys saw tonight.”
Florida didn’t disappoint from behind the three-point line either, connecting on 8 of 17 shots (47.1%).
Poor transition defense was a point of emphasis in the Gators’ post-game presser.
“Transition was an area where we got bopped pretty good,” Golden said. “I thought our endline, out of bounds defense wasn’t great either. We laid on a lot of screens tonight, we weren’t able to fight over, and make these guys curl going towards the basket which was kind of the game plan. They were 16-47 from two, they weren’t really efficient shooting twos. In a game like tonight, we talked about it with the team at halftime, they bombed us in the first half 8-13 from three, we said, ‘we have to limit them to seven or less attempts in the second half ‘and if we do that, I thought we would win. Well, they got 11 up, they made five more of them and we lost by two.”
Senior guard Kyle Lofton played 38 minutes in the contest, totaling 14 points, six assists, and seven rebounds.
“I just think our transition defense was bad,” Lofton said. “They were getting out rebounding, and getting out running. We had trouble finding guys, then they’d swing it one more or set a back screen, we just wasn’t together or talking today .”
“It wasn’t really a tough matchup, we just got to be better at transition defense,” Lofton said. “I think our half-court defense was pretty solid, but they got a couple ones in transition, dunks, open threes, so we got to get better on that.”
Colin Castleton posted 30 points in the loss, becoming the first Gator since Anthony Roberson to post consecutive 30-point games.
Castleton says the defensive struggles are very correctable.
“Very correctable, I feel like there’s just things we needed to focus on coming in a little bit more than we did,” Castleton said. “Coach Golden gave us a great gameplan, told us don’t let them shoot threes, don’t let them get it off when their big set really good screens and they have good plays for their two guards who shoot the ball really well. We just didn’t execute that, and that’s something we can correct with film. We’re going to watch it tomorrow and get better at the areas we need to improve on.”
The Gators have three full days to prepare for their first road game of the season against a winless FSU team.