Hello, my wonderful Gator Country subscribers! It’s Thursday, which means I am once again hitting your inbox with some thoughts I’m having regarding Florida basketball.
Quite frankly this is a strange team, so these newsletters might continue to get more and more bizarre as I try to parse out what exactly this team is. But, I hope you come along for the ride!
This is the worst Florida offense in at least two decades.
Popular analytics tool KenPom has been around since 2002 and this is quite easily the lowest ranking offensive team the Gators have had in that era.
Using “adjusted offensive efficiency” which adjusts numbers for quality of competition, the Gators are now 125th in the country in offense. Prior to that, the worst the Gators have ever ranked is 85th in Mike White’s first season taking over for Billy Donovan. Even though things seemed very rough offensively in recent years, the worst they fell to was 61st in the Kerry Blackshear season.
As long time Gator Country readers will know, I did not think highly of Mike White’s offenses…but they were much, much better than what we are seeing right now.
Generally, there are two paths coaches might go down when deciding what offense they want to run. On one hand, you can run an offense that you inherently think is a quality structure–an intelligent design that will create good shots by stressing defenses. On the other hand, you can create an offense that suits the strengths of your players. Even if it might not be an inherently good offense, if it works for your players–it’s going to be effective.
Here’s the thing–I think Florida’s offense fails on both spectrums.
The continuity ball screen offense they are running isn’t seen at the high major level, but it’s very common at the mid major level. That should be a huge tell–it’s just not an offense that’s built to be effective with top level athletes. So, in a vacuum, I can’t say I’m a fan of what the Gators are running?
To make matters even worse–I don’t think it suits Florida’s talent. It’s not something that showcases Colin Castleton’s best skills, and it makes for a lot of ball screen actions with Florida’s guards who aren’t very good in ball screens.
Mike White’s offenses were bad in recent years but only got as low as 61st in the country. How do you get to 125th? With an offense that is unfortunately failing on two dimensions.
However, if Florida can get at all respectable on offense…
…they’ll win some games, because this defense is awesome.
I really wish the Gators were winning more quality games because it would be easier to get excited about this defense which has been stellar. They have absolutely frustrated some quality offensive teams starting with Missouri and now Texas A&M. Buzz Williams had a lot of really nice action drawn up to take on the Gators the second time around but Florida’s defense was too disruptive and they handled a very potent offense, almost making it look easy at times.
While Florida is free falling down the KenPom offensive efficiency charts they are quickly rising in defense and are now up to 13th. That is even more impressive considering that to start the season the Gators were terrible defensively and had a lot of ground to make up–so recently they have been playing like a top-5 defensive team in the country. That defense has kept them in a lot of games, but it just makes it that much more noticeable when their offense lets them down.
The final two plays of the Texas A&M game were a perfect microcosm of Florida basketball right now.
There were 4 seconds left and the Gators were down 2. The Aggies had the basketball.
Florida’s stellar defense forced a turnover, giving the Gators a sideline out of bounds with the chance to send the game to overtime or win with 2 seconds remaining.
Then…the action went nowhere, and the Gators couldn’t even get a shot in the vicinity of the rim. Florida loses.
This was a perfect microcosm of the season–Florida’s defense was good enough to give them a chance to win, but their offense let them down.
With the Gators 13th in the country in defensive efficiency and 125th in offensive efficiency, it’s clear where the issues are and where the Gators need to improve.
I have spent plenty of time in these newsletters talking about why I don’t love Myreon Jones, but he’s playing good basketball right now.
With Trey Bonham struggling and Myreon Jones playing some of his best basketball recently Todd Golden decided to take Bonham out of the starting group and insert Jones in his place, and the move worked pretty well.
Jones ended the game 3-10 from three which isn’t great, but on a night where pretty much no one had anything going for the Gators, it stood out as a positive.
What has been most impressive about Jones is his defense, however. He is much better suited for Todd Golden’s scheme than Mike White’s last season and he is thriving, particularly as a help defender where he can use his veteran savvy to be an excellent help defender who is always in the right play to help on a drive or tag a cutter. He finished this game with 3 steals, and played a significant role in slowing down Tyrece Radford and Wade Taylor who were both very good in the earlier meeting between the Gators and Aggies. Look, I have been critical of Jones in the past, but he is playing really good basketball recently and I have to give him a ton of credit.
That’s all, see you next week!