Well, it’s been quite the week since we last spoke.
I wish I could say it was an up and down week, but really it was just down with the Gators getting outclassed at home in a loss to Baylor only to follow it up with a game against Mississippi State where they at one time had a 16-point lead. They fell to 4-3 in the SEC standings and the chance they once had to compete for a regular season title is now looking like a distant memory.
I could probably go on forever with my thoughts about this basketball, but for the sake of time, here are five of them.
1) This is the most disappointing time of the Mike White era so far.
Two seasons ago there was a small faction of fans dissatisfied with the way things were going in a year following up the Elite Eight run, but generally fans thought things were on an upward trajectory. Then, last season saw a decently sized group of fans frustrated with a team that seemed to have the talent but never seemed to come together. There were enough injuries in the frontcourt to warrant grace from most fans, but the group angry with the program’s direction grew steadily.
This year things have been taken to another level, and the loss to Mississippi State had brought the vibe around the program to the darkest point it’s been in quite some time.
And I can understand why. They’re firmly on the NCAA Tournament bubble and despite the SEC being on the weaker side Florida is looking like a meddling team in the middle.
Florida hasn’t beat Florida State in ages.
Even though the crowd of Mike White detractors has been around for a while there usually has been a vocal crowd of people defending him, but even that group has started to openly question their leader. The program definitely isn’t in a healthy place right now but there is a lot of season left to turn things around. Even if the Gators go on a major run there are going to be a lot of people unsold on where the program is headed, but some wins would at least make things feel a lot better in the short term.
2) Florida’s pick and roll defense has been the cause of all kinds of defensive problems.
There are a lot of people who look at Florida’s defensive woes and say it’s due to a lack of effort, hustle, or toughness. Those intangible things are a bit tough for me to point to if we’re being honest, especially when I see such glaring errors in the way Florida is guarding the most basic action in basketball.
The pick and roll.
The way Florida is guarding it is a fairly aggressive defense where the big man whose man is setting the screen, usually Kerry Blackshear, “hedges” or jumps towards the ball handler to deter a driving lane. He does this for a second or two, or a few dribbles of the ball by the handler, before bailing and recovering onto his man. This is a relatively difficult way to guard screen and rolls and it’s the way White’s teams have usually guarding screen and rolls, especially because they have had Kevarrius Hayes who was outstanding at the skill.
Kerry Blackshear is not Kevarrius Hayes defensively.
He’s relatively slow and can’t comfortably stop the ball on his hedges, and even if he does he has been slow to recover. This isn’t a question of his hustle or effort, I truly think he’s giving it his all, it’s just a defensive scheme that puts a ton of pressure on him and he’s simply not built as an elite defensive center.
Opposing teams know this and have been abusing the Gators on pick and rolls. When Florida hedges ball screens it’s almost like they’re doubling the ball handler, and when that ball handler has been able to move the ball it turns into a 4 on 3 scenario and that becomes extremely difficult to guard.
Florida is down to 77th in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metric, a number that I would have never believed in a million years if you told me this is where they’d be before the season. There are a few factors contributing to their poor defense, such as their struggles in transition D, but I think a lot of it can be traced back to their issues in the pick and roll.
3) The more Florida has to run sets, the easier they’re going to be to scout and defend.
Florida’s offense has become a lot more set based and they run a lot of plays that begin with certain players on certain spots on the floor. This change to their offense has worked really well, elevating their scoring numbers to the best they’ve been under White. Calling a lot of plays has allowed Florida’s best playmakers to be the ones with the rock at key moments and ultimately they’ve been a good offensive team after a terrible start to the season.
However, there are some downsides to being so set reliant.
You see, Florida doesn’t actually have a lot of sets in their playbook and they don’t have a ton in their arsenal. That is making them an easy team to scout and you’re seeing teams adjust to their offense. Look at both the Baylor and Mississippi State losses. In both games Florida had torrent offensive starts to the game, only to go ice cold in the second half. Looking back you can see both teams made adjustments at halftime once it seemed they were really comfortable with what the Gators were running.
Overall I think running sets is the right option for this team. Honestly, I don’t know how you could argue otherwise. They’re unquestionably playing the best offense of the last 5 seasons since they started to run more sets, and that was on a short learning period after starting the season playing a totally different way. However, there is a negative side to running this many sets and that’s because at this point everyone in the SEC knows everyone’s playbook and if you play incredibly structured your opponents know exactly what the key plays are they need to stop.
Playing more screen and roll with Andrew Nembhard and Kerry Blackshear wouldn’t be a bad way to go as even though teams know what’s coming it’s hard to stop and it allows for some creativity while also using some structure. It’s simply offense but it’s been effective for the Gators even though it’s not surprising their opponents.
4) If Florida is going to turn their season around, this is the time to do it.
Florida’s next five games are as follows:
At Vanderbilt
Georgia
At Ole Miss
At Texas A&M
Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt is riding an eight-game losing streak, and if you recall they didn’t win a game in the SEC last year. Georgia isn’t anywhere near the NCAA Tournament picture, Texas A&M has spent most of the season as the lowest high major team in the NET rankings, and the Gators handled Ole Miss easily in their first matchup of the season (though they were missing two key players in Breein Tyree and Khadim Sy).
This could very well be the easiest stretch any team has in the SEC this year. Yes, 3 of the 5 are on the road, but still. In a great basketball league like the SEC it’s not often you have 5 consecutive games against teams projected to miss the NCAA Tournament by a mile and it’s not often you get to play a winless team like Vanderbilt twice.
Even though this is a relatively easy stretch there aren’t easy games in the SEC, I get that, but for a struggling team you couldn’t have asked for a better schedule. I’m not sure the Gators are going to be able to turn the season around but the SEC schedule makers definitely gave them a chance here.
5) Omar Payne is shaping up to be one of the best shot blockers in the country.
Omar Payne has been protecting the rim at all costs coming away with 7 blocks in his last 3 games punctuated by a massive rejection on a thunderous dunk attempt by Mississippi State. He’s currently blocking 7.6% of all field goal attempts when he’s on the floor, a number good for 58th nationally. Let’s remember too that playing next to Kerry Blackshear he hasn’t always been the primary defender at the rim so the amount of shots he’s been able to block has been outstanding.
Not only has he been getting his hands on a lot of balls but he’s been deterring the other attempts too. He’s only allowing opponents to shoot 32.7% at the rim, a ridiculously good number considering the national average is just over 52%.
This is shades of Kevarrius Hayes who was one of the best rim protectors in the country as a senior. Like Hayes, Payne has incredible length and fairly quick feet that allow him to race to the rim to get to shots. Another thing Payne has going for him is bulk. He can take contact from opposing players and not bounce back which allows him to continue to contest shots, and when he has his long arms up in the air there isn’t much opponents can do.
He has already been a fantastic defender and his potential is through the roof, so it looks like the Gators got a good one in Payne.