It’s no secret that the Gators want to play faster.
Mike White has been open about the fact he’s wanted to play up-tempo and it’s a sentiment that has been echoed by the players on multiple occasions. Many fans would be happy to see that style played, especially with the roster’s athleticism and footspeed improved recently. Unfortunately, despite playing fast being a focus, the Gators have spent the last two seasons playing at a methodical pace.
Now that the Gators will be returning some pieces and inserting some quick-footed athletes in transfers Tyree Appleby and Anthony Duruji as well as bouncy freshman wings Samson Ruzhentsev and Niels Lane they’ll have the opportunity to really accelerate pace—if it’s possible.
How easy is it for a team that has spent the last two seasons playing slowly to crank up the intensity and thrive in the fast break?
It’s tough to say—but right now the thought among fans and media is that the Gators will be able to simply flip a switch and start playing at a lightning pace. Is that actually the case, or is expecting the Gators to make a huge leap in pace an unfair expectation?
Let’s take a deeper look into the situation and see what we can find.
How Slow Were The Gators? (A Lesson In KenPom)
I have a grievance that has been stewing for quite some time. Now that it’s the depths of the offseason, it’s time to get it off my chest.
People have been improperly citing tempo numbers from analytics site KenPom, and it really grinds my gears. Perhaps more than it should. But many high-profile media types covering the Gators have inadvertently used incorrect numbers from KenPom when discussing the team’s pace and it has painted a false picture of the team. I don’t think it’s intentional, but it’s a key miss in understanding the numbers.
When discussing how fast or slow a team plays, many people have been using KenPom’s Adjusted Tempo stat to gauge the speed of a team.
This might sound like the statistic you’re looking for, but it’s not and it gives an incomplete look at how fast a team plays.
The Adjusted Tempo metric accounts for the total number of possessions in a given team’s game, adjusting for quality of competition and then putting it against every other team in the country to generate a ranking. The problem with that when using it to evaluate how fast a team plays is that it is factoring in the length of defensive possessions, something that has nothing to do with how fast a team is playing offensively.
What you’re looking for instead as a measure of how fast a team plays is their average offensive possession length, a number that is also conveniently available on KenPom.
As an example, let’s look at a very popular team in college basketball this year—the Dayton Flyers.
They had a reputation of playing up-tempo basketball with a lot of their shot attempts being in transition. When you look at their Adjusted Tempo metric on KenPom, you’d see them ranked…220th. That number would come as a surprise to a lot of people, but I’ll explain why it’s so low.
It’s because Dayton was a fantastic defensive team, and their stout defense made their opponents take lengthy offensive possessions, thus making the overall number of possessions in their game low. Therefore, their Adjusted Tempo number is low.
Dayton was 146th in the country in offensive possession length, quite fast actually, and 326th in defensive possession length which dragged down the Adjusted Tempo mark to 220th.
When discussing how fast Dayton played, it would be most accurate to say they were 146th in the country, not 220th.
Another perfect example is the Gators in 2018. They were 226th in Adjusted Tempo, but they were actually 110th in offensive possession length… and 333rd in defensive possession length. Someone would look at the 226th Adjusted Tempo mark and think the Gators played slow but in reality they were quite fast, 110th in the country to be exact.
Honestly, the answer to why so many people, even high-level media types misuse KenPom is probably rather simple. The Adjusted Tempo number is available on the main page of the site that’s available for free, and the average possession length numbers are behind a paywall and require you to look at individual team pages.
This season you probably heard the Gators’ Adjusted Tempo metric cited by different people—they finished 326th in the country. That number definitely fit people’s narrative of how slow the Gators played but again, it wasn’t accurate. The more accurate number to use would be that the Gators were 238th in offensive possession length. Still slow—but not as bad as the incorrectly used Adjusted Tempo number would suggest. In 2019 the Gators were 291st in offensive possession length, so now you know just how slow the Gators have played the last two seasons.
Making The Leap From Slow To Fast
Considering the number of D-I programs in the country it’s fair to say teams in the top 115 of offensive possession length can be considered fast teams as they would be in the top third of the country. If the Gators truly want to be a team that plays fast, being in the top 115 of offensive possession has to be the goal.
So, can a team make a leap from being 238th in offensive possession length to top 115 in a single season?
I wanted to find out. I wanted to see if there were teams in the same situation as the Gators who were able to make a huge tempo leap in one offseason.
To do this I looked at all the high major leagues over the past decade and looked at their offensive possession length from year to year. In doing so, I wanted to see how common it was for teams to be in the 200s of offensive possession length and jump up to 115 or higher in one season. The reasoning behind looking at this would be, hey, if it happens all the time then why couldn’t the Gators do it? If it barely happened—maybe expecting the Gators to make a huge tempo leap is unreasonable.
Here is what I found.
In total, there were 20 occasions in the last decade where a team made a jump from the 200s to top 115 in offensive possession length in one season.
Considering the fact there are 75 high major teams and we’re looking at 10 years of college basketball, 20 seems…quite low.
Actually…don’t get married to that number, I’m not finished yet.
In 6 of those 20 occasions there were coaching changes. A coaching change and offensive philosophy change is an easy way to totally change a team’s tempo and the Gators aren’t going through a coaching change so those scenarios aren’t relevant to the Gators’ current situation, so they’ve got to be axed from the sample size.
Down to 14 times.
I hate to do this but…I’m not done cutting down the sample size.
There are few teams that had tempo seasons in the 200s and jumped to the top 115, but really their one season in the 200s was an outlier. For example, in 2014 Syracuse was 234th in offensive possession length and in 2015 jumped to 25th. However, in 2011, 2012, and 2013, Syracuse was in the top 30 in possession length and then just strangely had one slow season. That situation is very different from the Gators, so I’m taking them out of the sample. 2011 to 2012 Indiana (238th to 82nd) is also getting eliminated for the same reason—Indiana had a bunch of really fast years in a row before one anomaly slow season which makes them very different from Florida’s situation so I’m taking them out.
Down to 12 teams. But I’m still not done.
The Gators were going to be an NCAA Tournament team this past season. There were 4 teams in this sample (’16 Boston College, ’12 Georgia Tech, ’13 Mississippi State, and ’12 Auburn) that had slow seasons in the 200s and had losing records and then jumped in the top 115…and had another losing record.
Although the Gators underachieved last season they still won and were still going to make the Big Dance and I think everyone can agree they’re on pace to be good next year, so comparing them to teams that had a losing record, changed their pace, and still had a losing record wouldn’t be helpful. We’re looking for teams that are in similar situations to the Gators to find out if a big tempo leap is reasonable so putting in these basement dwellers wouldn’t help and just skew the sample.
Okay, one more thing. I’m excluding the jump Kentucky made from ’16-’17 (219th to 16th) because they had an almost wholesale roster turnover. For obvious reasons that’s a pretty unique scenario, one that’s totally unlike Florida’s and wouldn’t help the sample.
So, with all the being said, there have only been 7 teams in the last decade to do what Florida is hoping to do. Those teams and their offensive possession length rankings were:
Illinois ’14: 244th
Illinois ’15: 95th
Penn State ’16: 311th
Penn State ’17: 36th
Minnesota ’14: 209th
Minnesota ’15: 20th
Villanova ’11: 240th
Villanova ’12: 76th
Seton Hall ’17: 253rd
Seton Hall ’18: 94th
Xavier ’17: 208th
Xavier ’18: 54th
Alabama ’17: 301st
Alabama ’18: 87th
If you thought that it was as simple as a team flipping a switch to play faster, clearly that’s not the case. It has happened so rarely in the last decade that a team has made such huge changes in one season that expecting the Gators to do it could be a bit far fetched.
This is important because there is going to be a lot of pressure for the Gators to be one of the faster teams in the country, but people calling for them to do that probably don’t realize what they’re asking for. They are asking the Gators to do something that only 7 high major teams in the last decade have done. It’s not impossible, but huge jumps in tempo from one season to the next simply don’t happen that often.
How The Gators Could Learn From Teams Before Them
Considering only 7 teams in the past decade have done what the Gators will be trying to do we can look at how those teams were able to increase their pace so drastically and see what Florida can learn.
One of the big changes to Florida’s roster will be the fact that point guard Andrew Nembhard is out and they’ll have a new lead guard at the helm, likely transfer Tyree Appleby. He thrived in transition at Cleveland State, something that definitely will support the case that the Gators will be able to play faster, but let’s see if changes at point guard helped any of the other teams play much faster.
The answer: absolutely.
In the case of Illinois from ’14-’15, Penn State in ‘16-’17, and Alabama from ’17-’18 it was totally fresh backcourts that totally changed the way these teams played. Illinois had Jaylon Tate and current NBA standout Kendrick Nunn come in, Penn State had Tony Carr and Lamar Stevens enter the mix, and Alabama had studs Collin Sexton and John Petty come in as freshman. In these three cases the biggest change from the slow to fast season was a new lead ball handler coming in and with the Gators set to have a new lead guard—this helps the case that they could play faster.
Getting in new players that play with pace certainly helps but with the other four teams it was the exact opposite case.
Minnesota from ’14 to ’15 had four starters return.
Villanova from ’11 to ’12 had four starters return.
Seton Hall from ’17 to ’18 had four starters return.
Xavier from ’17 to ’18 had five starters return.
This goes to something I have been preaching for the last two seasons to some resistance. Playing in transition is much more difficult than simply energy and running as fast as you can and having wings that can run the floor and finish is more important than a ball handler with wheels that can beat everyone down the floor. Transition requires the ability to make proper reads and smooth finishing moves at max speed and it’s not easy to do. Each of these four teams that were able to make the tempo jump the Gators are dreaming of had a bunch of returning players with experience and the experience helped them thrive on the fast break.
Considering the Gators were one of the youngest teams in the country the last two seasons perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised at the fact they didn’t play well on the break and had to play slower and under control.
The Gators will likely have three starters carry over in Noah Locke, Keyontae Johnson, and Scottie Lewis. They’re not going to be able to make the four or five starter numbers of some of the teams that made the tempo jump Florida wants but their bench will have a good level of continuity—something that should really help.
Other Observations From Teams That Made The Tempo Leap
To see what Florida would need to do to accelerate their pace the way they want to, I looked at not only the seven teams we looked at that made the jump but also high major teams in the last couple of seasons that have been near the top of the country in pace. In doing so, hopefully some trends would emerge.
Florida has really struggled to rebound defensively over the last few seasons and it has been something I have cited as one of the reasons I thought they haven’t been able to play fast. The reasoning behind that thought being that you need to be able to confidently secure a D-board to be able to then turn and sprint the other way.
When I look at teams that are able to play really fast—there doesn’t actually seem to be much correlation between elite defensive rebounding and the ability to go fast. Teams in the top 115 of offensive pace have defensive rebounding numbers all over the map from really good to really poor and everything in between, and truthfully it seems quite random. These findings have changed the way I have looked at the relationship between defensive rebounding and playing fast as there doesn’t seem to be the correlation I thought there would be. That puts one of the reasons Florida wasn’t able to play last season out the window, something unfortunate for them as I thought it would be a reasonable excuse.
In terms of something with definite correlation there is one stat that every team that successfully plays fast ranks highly in—assist rate.
When you look at the teams that made the tempo leap Florida wants and look at the teams with the fastest offensive possession length there is something unmistakable about their team profiles and that’s that they all have a high percentage of their buckets assisted. This makes total sense because if you play fast you’ve got to be able to pass the ball well. A ball travels faster in the air than it does with someone dribbling it and for that reason you’ve got to pass the ball on the fast break.
So, functionally speaking—if the Gators want to get better on the fast break and they want to play faster they’re going to need to get way, way better at passing the ball. Here is where the Gators have ranked nationally in assist rate over the past few seasons.
2020: 289th
2019: 207th
2018: 235th
2017: 285th
Simply put—if you look at the trends of high major teams that play fast, there is no way the Gators are going to be able to accelerate their tempo if they don’t get drastically better at passing the basketball.
Can Florida Make The Leap In Tempo Everyone Wants To See?
Looking at college basketball history it’s surprisingly difficult for teams to suddenly start playing a lot faster, it’s usually a far more gradual climb in pace. However, Florida does share some traits with the teams that were able to make that jump.
They are getting a new lead ball handler that has proven in the past he has been able to play fast and push tempo, something that has worked for teams in the past.
They’re also going to have a veteran team with returning pieces that are going to be more experienced. Playing in transition is harder than you think and experience is huge in this area and an older Gators team is really going to help here.
Still, when you look at how few teams were able to accelerate so quickly in one year it looks like the deck is a bit stacked against the Gators. Expecting them to be in the top third of the country in offensive pace might be too much of an ask, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be faster. Even a leap into the 150s or so would be a great improvement—especially since it’s looking like the Gators are going to have a lot of talent next year. The more talented team always wants to try to push games to more possessions and for that reason it’s going to be important for this iteration of the Gators to at least get somewhat faster than what they’re currently at.
Florida should be a faster team next year, but maybe don’t expect too many barnburners.