Billy Donovan wouldn’t come right out and say it Wednesday night, but he made an example of his best player when he sat Nick Calathes on the bench to start the game with the Florida Gulf Coast Eagles. For the first time in his University of Florida basketball career, Calathes didn’t start and Donovan says that it wasn’t for disciplinary reasons and wasn’t for a lack of hard work in practice.
The reasons that Calathes was held out of the starting lineup aren’t really clear and Donovan didn’t really go into detail at his post-game press conference after the Gators hammered the Eagles, 94-60, before an announced crowd of 10,885 at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center.
“It wasn’t really a benching,” said Donovan who started freshman point guard Erving Walker in Calathes’ place. “It wasn’t anything that Nick did wrong. There was no disciplinary action because of behavior problems. Nick is a great kid and he works hard.”
We can all agree that it wasn’t a benching. After all Calathes played 30 minutes, second only to Walter Hodge. You don’t bench someone for four minutes and 19 seconds, which is the amount of time that Calathes lingered on the bench until Donovan finally inserted him into the game. If you’re benching someone, you hold them out well beyond the first television timeout.
So what was it? Why did Billy Donovan feel it was necessary to keep his top scorer and the leader in assists in the Southeastern Conference on the bench when the game began?
Apparently it began in practice on Tuesday.
“There’s a certain level of preparation that we have to go through that we hold our guys and want our guys accountable on,” said Donovan. “It wasn’t just Nick. Nick happened to be a starter. Basically we put the guys in there that had to do some things preparation-wise for this game. I have no problem with Nick. Nick is one of the hardest workers on our team.”
The guys that started the game were Walker, senior guard Walter Hodge, junior forward Dan Werner, sophomore center Alex Tyus and freshman power forward Kenny Kadji, who was making his first start as a Gator. Because he has logged fewer minutes than any of the four freshmen that have dressed out for all nine games, Kadji’s presence in the starting lineup seemed almost as strange as Calathes’ absence.
Donovan did some more explaining.
“Really what it was, there was a level of accountability on things that we do preparing and we basically put those guys in there because we felt at that moment in time when we were preparing that those guys seemed to be the most prepared,” said Donovan.
Apparently, Donovan didn’t feel that Calathes was as prepared or as focused as he needed to be in practice. Every Gator is required to know the scouting report forward and backward and that means knowing what plays the opponent likes to run out of a time out, what defense they prefer to run on an inbounds play, what offensive sets do they run in the half court, who are their three-point shooters and where do they like to shoot the ball … and the list goes on and on.
Considering the amount of time Donovan dwelled on the subtleties of preparation in his post-game remarks, it might be safe to assume that Calathes couldn’t or didn’t answer the questions about Florida Gulf Coast to Donovan’s satisfaction. That’s bad for any Gator, but especially the point guard.
It takes someone with tough skin to handle Donovan, who tends to ride his point guards hard. When the Gators were winning those back-to-back NCAA championships, Donovan was always on Taurean Green’s case for something. While it might have seemed like Donovan was bullying Green, what he was doing was turning his point guard into the unflappable leader that couldn’t be shaken when the game was on the line. Games were easy for Green because Donovan turned him into a tough guy that got calmer the more difficult the situation.
It is entirely possible that Donovan is trying to transform Calathes into a Taurean Green type that is at his best when games are on the line. In Florida’s 57-55 loss to Florida State Sunday evening, Calathes led all scorers with 16 points and he had a game-high six assists but he also turned the ball over six times in a game where every single possession had to count.
When he finally got into the game Wednesday night, Calathes rarely looked for his shot. He scored a season low seven points, but he handed out a season high nine assists. More importantly, he had zero turnovers.
“He played a great game,” said Donovan. “I think that he took it upon himself — after six turnovers against FSU — and the fact that he didn’t score tonight and have a big offensive night but he had nine assists and had no turnovers and really probably was the guy that ignited our fast break more than anybody else in terms of getting guys shots. I think it was because of him in the open floor and him in transition that our team had some good things happen to them offensively.”
After a sluggish first half in which the Gators held a 37-29 lead on the strength of 10 offensive rebounds and 10 second chance points, the Gators got going offensively behind Calathes, who seemed to turn every possession into an opportunity to run. Calathes had no points and only two assists in the first half. He had seven points and seven assists in the second.
He wasn’t the only one that found the mark in the second half. The Gators registered an assist on 18 of their 22 made baskets in a second half in which they shot 61.1 percent. They also heated up from the three-point stripe, hitting 8-15 in the second half after a poor 3-11 in the first half.
The good ball movement opened things up on the interior, where the Gators finished the game with 40 points in the paint. Tyus hit 9-13 of his shots, scoring 19 points to go with eight rebounds, and Werner went 6-10, finishing with 16 points and seven rebounds. Even Kadji got into the act with six points and six rebounds in one of his better performances of the young season.
On the perimeter, Hodge and Walker kept finding seams in the defense and when they were open, teammates found them. Hodge finished with 19 points, hitting 4-6 of his second half three-pointers (5-8 for the game) and Walker had 13 points, connecting on 3-4 from the three-point stripe.
It was an easy win and it should have been. Florida Gulf Coast had no way to match the Gators size, speed or athletic ability so it proved to be the perfect opponent for a coach that was trying to send a message loud and clear. These Gators aren’t nearly as young as they were last year, but they remain one of the youngest teams in the nation. In another month they start swimming with the sharks when conference play begins in the SEC and that means Donovan has to get their attention now.
“We’re trying to build a foundation of competitiveness, toughness and teamwork that we have to try to build with this young group,” said Donovan. “The first thing we have to do is create that kind of environment in practice where it’s competitive, it’s tough and there is a level of accountability. Once they realize what they have to do and what being held accountable and responsible is, then they can start to grow from the next phase to the next phase.”
The example Donovan used Wednesday evening was that not even the best player on the team is immune from a public wakeup call. Finals are next week so it’s ten days before the Gators play again. Donovan has that long to find out if everybody on the team got the message he was sending out Wednesday night.