(Note from Ray: Welcome to another newsletter exclusively for VIP members. Introducing “Around the Hoop” by Eric Fawcett.
We gotta give Gator hoops it’s due, right? ; )
The first couple issues will be free to all to offer a sneak preview,. Enjoy and stay tuned for more!)
By Eric Fawcett
Florida’s basketball season is well underway and despite some speed bumps early there has to be some optimism due to the improved play of late, highlighted by a dominant performance against Providence.
It may still be early in the season, but I’ve got some thoughts.
For Florida to reach their ceiling, Tre Mann needs to be a key contributor.
Let’s be honest, modern basketball is a shot maker’s game. Good offense is going to beat a good defense and you need players who can step up and make a play at the end of the shot clock or at the end of the game and looking up and down the Gators’ roster the best man for the job is local product Tre Mann.
Mann plays with swagger and has shown the ability to finish with a circus shot at the rim or a step back jumper from NBA range that leaves viewers in awe. He might over-dribble from time to time and you might be tempted to see the shine wears off when his flashiness results in a turnover but when he’s able to get his rhythm and string together multiple combinations of moves he’s Florida’s best individual offensive player.
Early in the season he wasn’t able to fill the role of a floor spacer for Andrew Nembhard and Kerry Blackshear Jr., something that could have been expected based on the fact he was a ball dominant player in high school. Now that he’s gotten the ball in his hands more often he’s shown some of his offensive repertoire and he brings electricity to the backcourt that just isn’t there from Nembhard, Noah Locke, or Scottie Lewis.
Will Mann have some bad turnovers and force some awful shots at times? Maybe. Well, probably. But you’ve got to take the bad with the good and let him cook offensively because when the Gators play a tough defensive team they’ll need his shot making.
Kerry Blackshear Jr. is a versatile offensive player but he is best utilized on the low block.
Blackshear’s versatility can be a major strength but when you ask him to do too many things it can look like he’s a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none.
The thing is, there is an area of the floor where he’s close to being a master and it’s not out on the perimeter as a jump shooter and it’s not in the high post as a passer, it’s near the rim.
Finishing on 70% of his shots near the cup he’s been tremendously efficient when he gets the ball down low. His chemistry in the pick and roll with Andrew Nembhard is unmistakable and he’s been able to post up pretty much any matchup he’s been faced with.
When things haven’t gone well, it’s when he’s went back to the 3-point line to put up jump shots.
If you want to look at where he’s most effective I’d simply look at how teams guard him.
What are opponents scared of? When you watch the games, they aren’t fearful of him being a jump shooter.
They’re a bit concerned when he gets the ball in the high post to be a passing threat, I’ll give you that.
But when he gets the ball on the low post, teams collapse. They sent frantic doubles, they leave shooters, and the paint looks like a Target on Christmas Eve as people desperately try to get the last box of instant stuffing.
It’s clear that teams are more concerned with Blackshear as a post player than a perimeter player and I think that should guide the coaching staff’s decision making when discussing how to use him. I’m not suggesting he should exclusively post up, that would be foolish, but when it comes to important possessions in important games you need to know how to deploy him in the best possible position and right now that’s looking like the low block.
Should the Gators schedule an easier non-conference slate? The NET makes you wonder….
The NCAA released their initial NET rankings, the NET of course being their official sorting tool as it relates to selection and seeding for the NCAA Tournament. Florida came in at #78, a disappointing number considering none of their losses are particularly ugly. A ranking that low is a bit frustrating considering the Gators went out and challenged themselves, but hey, they’ve got three losses so it’s understandable.
But wait… let’s look at where some other teams landed.
San Diego State came in at #3. Their best wins are Iowa and BYU which are some nice resume pieces but they have also played primarily low major teams.
Auburn started off really well at #9, a great ranking in the area you probably would have thought Florida would be at before the season. Let’s look who they’ve played. Their best opponents are…
…Richmond, and Furman? Okay…what else do we have from the SEC?
Hey, look at Arkansas up there at #23, 55 spots above the Gators. Good for them in a rebuilding year, they must have gotten some surprisingly good wins.
Uhhh, actually their best win is at Tulsa, and the best team they’ve played is Western Kentucky, who they lost to.
So what I’m gathering so far is that the NET looks favorably upon teams that play easy schedules but gets wins. I know Florida has taken 3 losses to Arkansas’ 1 loss, but the Gators have played real teams and gotten some decent wins and Arkansas has played mostly bad teams and lost to the best team they’ve faced, who is Western Kentucky of all teams. Is Arkansas’ resume better than Florida’s now in this small sample size? I mean, sure, you can argue that, but 55 spots better?
This is a small sample size and there is plenty of time for things to correct but 10 games in (for most teams) and the NET is showing what it is—a metric that isn’t fully rewarding teams for playing a challenging schedule.
The Gators are always going to have good win opportunities in the SEC so seeing how the NET is playing out I’m really wondering if in the future the Gators are going to start playing easier non-conference slates. If Florida played a schedule of absolute cupcakes they would have had a drastically better NET rankings, even though they are the same team.
Hopefully these challenges early offer some experience late in the season which makes the losses, and the unflattering NET ranking, worth it.
Florida’s offense is actually improving.
This probably seems like an easy statement to make after they just had one of their best performances of the season against Providence but I truly believe their offensive improvement really started against Butler, even though they weren’t able to put many points on the board.
This is a sentiment echoed by Mike White who got raked over the coals in forums and on social media after saying, and then doubling down in a press conference, that Butler was the team’s best offensive performance and the shots just weren’t falling.
You really can’t look at whether or not a shot went in to decide if it’s a good shot or not. The quality of the shot is established before the ball leaves the player’s hand and if you get an open shot in rhythm you have to say that the offense did it’s job, even if the ball ends up spilling out.
Look at it this way. The shots they got against Providence weren’t all that different from the shots they got against Butler, and even though they put up drastically more points against the Friars I don’t think you can say it was a drastically better offensive performance if the quality of the shots was roughly the same.
Coach White has instituted a lot of new sets and it may have taken some time but it’s clear the players are starting to understand them backwards and forwards and now that they really understand them they can start making reads and plays them out, resulting in what’s a far more aesthetically pleasing product.
The groundwork was laid in the Butler game and the fruits of their labor were seen against Providence.
Ques Glover is already good, going to be really good, and will be the first winner of the unofficial Scottie Wilbekin award for under-recruited point guard star in Gainesville.
Glover has only shown glimpses of his potential and is already a fan favorite so his sky’s the limit for what he does in his time at Florida.
I don’t want to sound rude by limiting his ceiling and saying that he’s for sure a 4-year player but at his size there’s a good chance he plays out his college career until he’s an upperclassman and that’s amazing for the Gators and I’m sure they’ll be happy to have him as long as Glover is there.
When Wilbekin committed to the Gators he was the 602nd ranked player in the country.
At the time Glover committed he was unranked, but if we’re being honest here I don’t think there is really much of a difference between 602nd and unranked so really they entered college with about the same level of fanfare.
Both players had some perceived weaknesses by recruiting analysts, as well as the teams that didn’t give them offers, but both had two major strengths. For Wilbekin, it was his defense and his leadership. With those two traits he showed he could carve out a miraculous college career, as well as a superb pro career where he’s making great money and is a star in Turkey.
Glover has two marquee skills as well—his speed, and his ability to shoot off movement.
Recruiting analysts looked at his limitations, his lack of size and the fact he didn’t have true point guard vision, and looked over the fact he was an elite shooter in high school with top tier speed.
Not only could Glover shoot, but he could shoot off movement and off the dribble, an absolute premium skill in modern basketball and in my opinion one of the best indicators of college success for a guard.
It’s also a bit odd they dinged Glover for his size given the fact it doesn’t seem like he has any trouble guarding his position. Sure, he might get caught in a switch that isn’t favorable for him but if a 6’9” center gets a switch onto a point guard I’m not sure if it matters if the PG is 6’2” or 5’10”.
Ultimately, it’s maybe a good thing he wasn’t rated higher because if he was he wouldn’t have been available so late in the offseason and the Gators wouldn’t have been able to land him. In getting him the Gators not only have a guard of the future but a guard of the present, one that uses his speed to provide a perfect change of pace to the more tactical and precise Nembhard.
It takes confidence for a coaching staff at a school like Florida to take an unranked high player but this shows they have the ability to identify talent from off the radar, which is incredibly important in recruiting moving forward. The Gators have now landed multiple 5-star players showing they can get the big fish but they’ve also shown they can go to that hidden stream in the forest to find the best spot no one knows about.
These were some of the musings I’ve been ruminating on and you can be sure I’ll have some more of these thoughts next week.