It’s a familiar script again for Gators fans as the dialogue following another tough loss is centered around an offense that didn’t look cohesive or potent enough to win in a game their defense kept them in the contest and gave them a chance to compete. Utah State is a lethal offensive team and the Gators protected their side of the floor, finding a way to limit the Aggies’ scoring despite Sam Merrill’s offensive mastery. On the other side of the court Florida couldn’t find the same level of success.
For some people the problem is a lack of fast break attempts. The thing is, the Gators are currently at 0.86 points per possession in transition making it an inefficient way for them to try to score, and they’re turning it over 22.1% of the time.
Some will say they need to get the ball down low to Blackshear more often, but the Gators did that against the Aggies with volume as he shot 14 times from the field and attempted 17 free throws but that still didn’t clean up Florida’s offense.
Some people think it’s a matter of Florida not hitting their shots. Only shooting 13 catch and shoot jumpers the hit only 4 of them, and aided by a Noah Locke 4-point play they were at an even 1 points per possession on those attempts which, while is a bit low for catch and shoot possessions, is a great number when you’re talking overall half court offense (Florida is currently 0.886 PPP as a team so getting 1 PPP on catch and shoot attempts in a game still means it’s a very solid possession).
There is an area of the Florida’s offensive game that has challenged the team and limited their offensive ceiling and there was no more perfect example of this than the game against Utah State.
Shot selection.
Taking good quality shots that have a high percentage chance of going in or drawing a foul and avoiding the low quality shots that are inefficient and unlikely to put your team in a winning situation.
Credit Utah State’s defense for goading the Gators into poor attempt after poor attempt but this also seems to be a running theme for Florida as taking difficult attempts early in the clock before they can work for a better shot is seeming to be a trend.
Let’s start with the floater, a shot the Gators are hitting at a 25% clip and 0.5 PPP this season.
They attempted 6 of these shots, and not a single one of them was in the final 10 seconds of the shot clock. These were attempts that came early in the attack, the kinds of low efficiency shots that should be used only in desperation attempts at the end of a clock when you need to force an attempt up.
They hit only 1 of these shots, giving the Gators 0.17 PPP on their floater attempts.
Then we have to talk about the jump shots off the bounce. Shooting the ball off the dribble is much more difficult than simply catching and shooting so the number of dribble jumpers needs to be limited for good offensive teams, usually to wide open threes if the defense falls under a screen or, like tough floaters, for the end of a shot clock where you just need to get something up.
Against Utah State, Florida took 15 jump shots off the dribble. Only one attempt, a turnaround jumper from Ques Glover, was in the final 10 seconds of a shot clock, every other attempt was in the meat of the offensive possession where they could have worked for something better.
Making matters worse is that 11 of these shots were dribble jumpers from 2-point range. Long midrange jump shots are some of the most inefficient shots in basketball and the Gators took a bunch of them at times when they didn’t need to. Players passed up making the extra pass to take a few bounces and shoot a contested look and they passed up on 3-point attempts off the catch (great shots) for long dribble twos (bad shots).
Ultimately hit 4 for 15 of their dribble jumpers, all of which were the 2-point attempts. That makes for 0.53 PPP on dribble jumper possessions.
When you add the floaters and the dribble jumpers together that makes 21 difficult, inefficient shots against Utah State that the Gators took. Considering they had 62 field goal attempts (though, that doesn’t factor in the offensive rebound put back attempts that Kerry Blackshear Jr. kept getting fouled on) the bad shots account for over a third of their total attempts. With those 21 low efficiency shots the Gators were 0.48 PPP.
Considering one third of their shots yielded only 10 points, the Gators actually played solidly offensively when they got into their system and worked the ball around. When they got catch and shoot attempts they converted a decent enough amount of them and when they got the ball inside Kerry Blackshear Jr. and Keyontae Johnson finished.
Had they not used 21 of their shots for difficult looks and instead continued through the offensive progressions this could have been a very different game. In a 65-62 loss showing even marginally better shot selection could have made a world of difference and it’s something that likely needs to be addressed for this team to improve offensively.
So, was this shot selection against Utah State a one-off performance or has this been a common trend?
Let’s start with the shooting off the dribble.
So far this season the Gators have taken 111 jumpers off the bounce, and for some context they have shot 159 catch and shoot jumpers.
That’s a lot of attempts off the dribble and considering how much more efficient shots are off the catch than off the dribble you’d like to see a lot more distance between those two numbers with there being vastly more shots off the catch. Making the dribble jumper attempts worse in the fact that 72 of those shots are in the midrange.
Florida is at 0.75 points per possession on midrange dribble jump shots which is one of the best numbers in the country which tells you two things:
1) If you’re one of the best teams in the country at a type of shot but are only 0.75 PPP, it’s probably not a good shot.
2) If the Gators are near the top of the country in a particular shooting category they are probably going to regress more to the national average or slightly below it which is where they are in most other shooting categories, and if that happens the shot becomes even more inefficient.
Currently dribble jumpers are accounting for 19.9% of Florida’s total shots and if that continues it will be tough for the Gators to get to where they want to go. Historically if you want to be a team that reliant on dribble jumpers that’s good offensively you need a Trae Young, Carsen Edwards, or Markus Howard and right now the Gators don’t have that guy.
Floaters are accounting for 5.3% of Florida’s attempts and while that isn’t an exceedingly high number it’s still multiple shots per game and for the Gators to improve offensively they need to get better in whatever margins they can.
There are a few reasons why floaters are bad shots. First of all, they are statistically a difficult shot to hit and they go in far less than you’d think. Secondly, floater attempts hardly ever draw fouls, and actually the player taking the floater has a better chance of committing an offensive foul.
Right now there are only 72 teams in college basketball at over 0.9 PPP on floaters, so you could say that it’s only a good shot for one fifth of teams and that’s a higher number than in past years.
For the Gators they’re shooting 25% for 0.5 PPP. Considering the fact that they’re at 0.75 on midrange jump shots off the dribble they’d be better off stopping and pulling up in the midrange than leaning into a difficult floater, and ideally if a player was in a position to take a floater they would continue to drive closer to the rim for a layup where even if the increased defensive pressure would make the shot harder the chance of drawing a foul would go up exponentially.
Shot selection is so important because it’s the easiest way for an offense to improve. It doesn’t require overhauling a system and it doesn’t require adding anything to a player’s arsenal of skills, it just takes education and an understanding of what shots should be looked for and what should be avoided. It would be ridiculous to think that a team could go without taking bad shots and shot selection perfection will never be achieved and it’s not a goal that should be set. For the Gators what should be prioritized is having players know what shots they should be looking for.
On far too many occasions, like against Utah State, players were getting the ball with the express purpose of getting to a dribble jumper or a floater. You see time and time again those are the shots players are looking for and they’re hunting for them early in the shot clock. Settling for inefficient shots early in the clock has made a struggling Gators offense look worse and those difficult shots clanking out has made for criticism aimed at the offensive system put in place by Coach White. Playing outside of the sets and not adhering to the team’s offensive philosophies are what got them into trouble against Utah State and it will likely continue to bite them if the shot selection isn’t tidied up.