By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:
WHERE WAS THE DEFENSIVE INTENSITY?
When the Florida Gators took down then No. 2 Auburn Saturday at the O-Dome, they proved they’re capable of playing with and beating just about any team in the country when they maintain an almost fanatical defensive intensity for 40 minutes. Taking down No. 18 Arkansas (22-6, 11-4 SEC) Tuesday night would have required a similar defensive effort but as we’ve learned this season, inconsistency is the hallmark of this Florida team.
The Gators (17-11, 7-8 SEC) played well enough offensively to win the game even with the Razorbacks kung fu approach to defense. Colin Castleton took a beating and still scored 29 points. The zebras said he was fouled 11 times but he should have shot twice that many. Still, his career-high game combined with 19 from Tyree Appleby did enough damage that the Gators could have won the game instead of going down for the count, 82-74.
The defensive effort was almost non-existent in the final eight minutes when Arkansas came from six down to win by eight. It’s not that Mike White didn’t scramble to come up with something that would work. He couldn’t press because Arkansas was breaking the pressure from the get-go. He tried playing straight up man-to-man but that was a problem. He trapped. He doubled. Finally, he threw out some zones that the Gators haven’t even used recently.
“We tried to throw everything up at the wall, gave up 82 at home,” White said. “We did enough offensively. Our biggest concern coming into this against the team that has the best defensive numbers in the league play is can we score enough? We did some really good things offensively to score 74, drew a lot of fouls and had we get a few more stops we could have scored 78 or 80. We were pretty good offensively. Defensively, we’ve got to do better and we’ve done better.”
For all the Razorbacks’ talent, and they are plenty talented, they aren’t as good on the offensive end as the Auburn team the Gators held to 62 points Saturday. Florida had good schemes for Arkansas just as they had good schemes for Auburn. The difference is the Gators executed and played like a hungry school of piranhas every time Auburn had the ball.
The Gators struggled the entire game to stop Arkansas. The Hogs rarely turned the ball over (only six) and only had 16 second chance points to show for 12 offensive rebounds. They helped themselves immensely by corralling perhaps 70 percent of the 50-50 loose balls on the floor, saving possessions for themselves or preventing the Gators from getting a second chance to score. Arkansas went after loose balls with two hands. Too often, the Gators stabbed at the ball with one hand which is why Arkansas won most of those battles.
“Unfortunately, we have not embraced pursuing the ball aggressively with two hands as much as a team like Arkansas,” White said. “With most of the fifty-fifty situations, they came up with the ball. I thought that was the difference in the game.”
In the final eight minutes of the game Arkansas drilled three 3-pointers that were like daggers, but the points that hurt the worst were the two scored by Au’Diese Toney with 3:18 left in the game. After a pair of Castleton free throws brought the Gators back to within two (68-66), White put the Gators in a zone that was quite effective, forcing a miss but Davonte Davis outbattled Phlandrous Fleming Jr. for the ball. Davis dribbled into the lane and hit Toney on a back door cut that could have been and should have been defended except Anthony Duruji lost sight of his defender. That made the score 70-66 and there was still plenty of time for the Gators to come back, but every time the Gators pulled close on one end of the floor, they gave it back at the other.
Instead of back-to-back wins over ranked teams that might have gotten the Gators off the NCAA Tournament bubble, they lost a game they should have won and now the pressure is on.
The Gators travel to Georgia Saturday and they play Vanderbilt in Nashville next week before returning home to face No. 6 Kentucky. There can be no slip-ups against Georgia or Vandy. Close out with three straight in the regular season and the Gators probably get into the tournament. Win the next two and lose to UK and the Gators will have to get to the 20 or 21-win mark at the SEC Tournament to get into the NCAAs.
“We have to be desperate,” Duruji said. “We have to be urgent now. We’ve got another one coming up on Saturday. We’re off tomorrow. We’ve got to respond.”
SEC Basketball
Tuesday’s scores: No. 18 Arkansas (22-6, 11-4 SEC) 82, FLORIDA (17-11, 7-8 SEC) 74; No. 17 Tennessee (20-7, 11-4 SEC) 80, Missouri (10-18, 4-11 SEC) 61; Texas A&M (17-11, 6-9 SEC) 91, Georgia (6-22, 1-14 SEC) 77; No. 24 Alabama (18-10, 8-7 SEC) 74, Vanderbilt (14-13, 6-9 SEC) 72
Wednesday’s games: Mississippi State (16-11, 7-7 SEC) at South Carolina (16-10, 7-7 SEC); Ole Miss (13-14, 4-10 SEC) at No. 3 Auburn (24-3, 12-2 SEC); LSU (19-8, 7-7 SEC) at No. 6 Kentucky (22-5, 11-3 SEC)
UF BASEBALL: THOMPSON, TALBOTT LEAD GATORS PAST STETSON, 7-1
Redshirt freshman Tucker Talbott had four hits and two RBI and Sterlin Thompson had three hits and three RBI Tuesday night as the 15th-ranked Gators (2-2) bounced back from their poor opening weekend showing against Liberty with an 8-1 win over Stetson in DeLand.
This was Talbott’s Florida debut. He didn’t play in a single game in either 2020 or 2021, then sat out all three games against Liberty. Given the chance to show what he could do against the Hatters, Talbott had three singles and a double. Thompson, who hit two home runs in the season opener Friday night, had a single, a double and a home run. Additionally, freshman Deric Fabian had two singles, two RBI and a stolen base.
Five Gators shared the pitching with Nick Ficarrotta picking up the win in relief, allowing one hit and striking out six in 4-2/3 innings. The Gators gave up three hits, walked four and struck out 10.
The Gators return home tonight to face North Florida (7 p.m., SEC Network+).
UF SOFTBALL: GATORS MOVE TO 11-0
Cheyenne Lindsey led an 11-hit Florida attack with three hits including a pair of triples and freshman Lexie Delbrey pitched a 4-hitter, striking out seven, as the Gators (11-0) kept their record perfect with a 7-1 win over North Florida in Jacksonville. The Gators only had one earned run as the Ospreys committed a whopping seven errors.
In addition to Lindsey, Kendra Falby, Hannah Adams and Charla Echols contributed two hits. While improving to 4-0, Delbrey walked only two and hit one batter as she lowered her earned run average to 1.06.
The Gators face the Ospreys this evening at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium (6 p.m., SEC Network+).
UF WOMEN’S BB: ZEROING IN ON THE DOUBLE BYE
The Florida women’s basketball team knows it will be in the NCAA Tournament. The Gators (20-7, 10-4 SEC) are the surprise team of the Southeastern Conference. Picked dead last because Cameron Newbauer was fired back in the summer and replaced by interim Kelly Rae Finley, the Gators have responded in a big way to the change in leadership. After an 0-2 start in SEC play, the Gators have won 10 out of 12 and have wins over five ranked teams. With a win Thursday night against Vanderbilt (12-16 3-11 SEC), the Gators will tie the all-time school record for SEC wins (11, set in 1998). If the Gators win their regular season finale against Missouri (17-10, 6-8 SEC), the Gators will clinch a third-place tie and the double bye at the SEC Tournament in Nashville no matter what Ole Miss (21-6, 9-5 SEC) does this week.
It is the quickness of Florida’s three guards – Kiki Smith, Zippy Broughton and Nina Rickards – that makes the Gators the team nobody wants to play. It shows on the defensive end where the Gators make up for a lack of overall height by creating serious defensive pressure on the perimeter and it shows on the offensive end because UF’s guards consistently beat the other team down the court for transition layups.
Considering where they started and where they are now, it seems a no-brainer that UF athletic director Scott Stricklin will soon announce that the interim tag has been lifted off Finley. Given what she’s done this year after inheriting such dire circumstances, most who have watched the Gators would agree that Finley is the right person to resurrect Florida’s long stagnant women’s basketball program.
Thursday’s games: NO. 15 FLORIDA (20-7, 10-4 SEC) at Vanderbilt (12-16, 3-11 SEC); Mississippi State (15-11, 6-8 SEC) at No. 16 Tennessee (21-6, 10-4 SEC); Alabama (14-11, 5-9 SEC) at No. 8 LSU (23-4, 11-3 SEC); No. 25 Georgia (18-8, 7-7 SEC) at Arkansas (16-10, 6-7 SEC); Kentucky (13-11, 6-8 SEC) at Missouri (17-10, 6-8 SEC); Ole Miss (20-6, 8-5 SEC) at Auburn (10-15, 2-12 SEC); No. 1 South Carolina (25-1, 13-1 SEC) at Texas A&M (14-12, 4-10 SEC)
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Arkansas coach Eric Musselman coaches the same way his dad did. It’s a no body bag, no foul approach. As long as the zebras let him get away with it, he’s not going to change. It worked Tuesday night against the Gators and has worked well enough that the Razorbacks are going to wind up with a really good NCAA seed. Mike White thinks the Hogs have a chance to do some serious damage in the NCAA Tournament, and they probably will as long as there are people doing hard time in Raiford for less than what Arkansas does when it’s playing defense.
I bring this up because 50 years ago, Musselman’s dad was coaching Minnesota and the Gophers were beating up on people because they were the most physical team in the Big Ten and probably the entire country. Physical got out of hand on January 25, 1972 when Ohio State came to town. A brawl the likes of which we’ve never seen in college basketball erupted when after a hard foul that knocked Ohio State center Luke Witte, Corky Taylor kneed Witte in the groin. In the ensuing brawl, Ron Behagen stomped the head of the Witte, who was rendered unconscious. Dave Winfield (yes, the baseball Hall of Famer), came off the bench and severely beat an Ohio State player who was already on the ground. Witte was taken to a hospital on a stretcher. He never the same. Two other teammates were hospitalized. Ohio State coach Fred Taylor, considered one of the great college coaches in the country, was never the same. He was 43-59 in the four years after the brawl and retired, still shaken.
A week ago Jay Bilas wrote at ESPN, “This season freedom of movement does not exist and the college game more closely resembles the NBA in the 1990s, a physical slugfest and fistfight every night. Turn on any major conference game and you will see arm bars on ball handlers not in the post, handchecking, bumping and chucking of cutters, illegally riding cutters and screeners off their paths, and overt physicality in the post area, including a lack of enforcement of verticality on shooters. Whatever you see on the floor in major conferences this season is not basketball and would not be allowed in the NBA or FIBA. Hell it would not be allowed in the NFL on wide receivers.”
I agree with that assessment. What concerns me is that one of these days, a physical game is going to get out of hand and we’ll have another Minnesota-Ohio State brawl on our hands. I watched the film of that ugly brawl back in 1972 and have watched it several other times in the years since. What I see in college basketball today reminds me that it could happen again if something isn’t done.
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