You might not think anything Florida has done offensively could be classified as amazing or excellent or any positive adjective like that but there is actually an element of scoring the ball the Gators have done with quality.
Attack zone defenses.
Florida hasn’t seen a ton of zone this year and there is actually a good reason why—they have torched zone defenses whenever an opponent has tried to roll them out.
The Gators are shooting 55.3% when facing zone and putting up a ridiculous 1.311 points per possessions.
Contrast that with their offense against man defense where they are shooting 41.7% and putting up 0.876 points per possession and you can see why teams are keeping the zone defenses at home and rolling out man looks against the Gators.
When faced with a zone the Gators have done an excellent job of getting into gaps and feeding the ball into the soft spots forcing the zone to distort and sometimes even collapse, the result of which being wide open threes from the wings or a dunk from a cutter on the baseline. Andrew Nembhard and Kerry Blackshear have both been outstanding passers against zone defenses, especially when one of them gets stationed in the high post where they can be key pivots that find shots for their teammates. Keyontae Johnson and Scottie Lewis have been tremendous cutters against zones and once the defense falls apart Noah Locke is the perfect player to drill a wide open three.
For whatever reason zone offense has come much easier to the Gators than man offense. This is also a bit surprising because last year’s team had massive struggles against zone and could never really figure it out, and this team is that opposite. They seem to have their mojo going when teams sit in a zone and they haven’t gotten that same rhythm against man, and it’s possible that this young season could have gone drastically different if they simply had more teams on the schedule that played primarily zone than man (anyone with say in Florida’s scheduling next season—take this advice and schedule teams that play lots of zone!).
With the non-conference portion of the season mostly completed (just Baylor is the Big 12-SEC Challenge remaining) the most important games are about to begin in league play. Knowing that the Gators play much better against teams that play zone you can look ahead on the schedule and see what might be good matchups for the team. If an opponent has played a lot of zone and will likely play it against the Gators there is a far better chance of Florida putting up points than if it’s primarily a man team.
Here is the percentage of possessions played in man and zone defense for each team left on Florida’s schedule this year:
Alabama
Man: 100%
Zone: 0%
Arkansas
Man: 99.6%
Zone: 0.4%
Auburn
Man: 99.6%
Zone: 0.4%
Georgia
Man: 93.4%
Zone: 6.6%
Kentucky
Man: 98.9%
Zone: 1.1%
LSU
Man: 87.5%
Zone: 12.5%
Ole Miss
Man: 80.5%
Zone: 19.5%
Mississippi State
Man: 99.6%
Zone: 0.4%
Missouri
Man: 99.3%
Zone: 0.7%
South Carolina
Man: 89%
Zone: 11%
Tennessee
Man: 99.3%
Zone: 0.7%
Texas A&M
Man: 96.9%
Zone: 3.1%
Vanderbilt
Man: 96.6%
Zone: 3.4%
Baylor
Man: 96.9%
Zone: 3.1%
That’s a lot of numbers but as you can see… It’s not looking like Florida is going to see a lot of zone the rest of the season. Adding together all the possessions from Florida’s future opponents, a total of 4.5% of possessions of zone were played.
However, many teams don’t show everything in their playbook in the non-conference portion of the season and there is a good chance teams end up playing more zone league play than they did in non-conference. Teams don’t want the opposition to have a bunch of film of everything they do defensively and considering how much SEC teams know each other from year to year there are always surprising zone defensive looks during league that are meant to surprise an opponent who wouldn’t be properly prepared to see a zone.
Considering Ole Miss, LSU, and South Carolina have played a good deal of zone already it’s probably safe to assume it’s part of their regular defensive game plan. That’s good news for the Gators who should be happy to see zone, but there is also a good chance teams recognize how much better Florida is against zone than against man and scheme accordingly. For that reason Florida’s man offense is going to need to continue to improve. Recently we’ve seen the Gators get more and more comfortable with the set-based offense Mike White has had to pivot to after trying to start the year with free-flowing offensive concepts and the more they can get comfortable with those actions the better.
Starting the season with Alabama, a team that hasn’t played a single possession of zone defense this season, the Gators will have to be crisp with their man offensive sets and be ready to attack an aggressive defense. It’s quite unlikely they’ll go to a zone look at any time so Florida will need to break through their base man defense.
Even though on the whole Florida’s offense hasn’t been great this year their ability to at least generate consistently great offense against zone has to give some hope that they can vastly improve against man. There will be opportunities to develop offensive cohesion in league play and if they do that there is still a chance this team makes noise in the postseason.