GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- Something strange has happened to the Gators in the past few games. They run up the score, secure a nice lead, and then suddenly defense becomes leisurely, shooting gets lazy and Florida falls into the loss column.
“We get casual,” said head coach Mike White. “We’ve got to be more disciplined than that and stay the course and continue doing what we were doing to get us there.”
In all but one of Florida’s last four games, they’ve held the lead at the end of the first half, but they only won one of those games. That victory came against an 8-13 Vanderbilt team, and the three losses came against LSU, Baylor and Mississippi State.
A win in any of those three games could have been huge for the Gators. However for some reason, this team can’t make momentum last throughout the whole game.
Florida’s best 40-minute performance recently came against Vanderbilt. That was the only game as of late the team hasn’t stalled after getting ahead.
“We had less defensive clips than we’ve seen in a while in the film room with these guys,” said White. “I really liked the overall effort. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best defensive game that we’ve played in a while.”
Now the challenge White faces is eliminating what he calls ‘freshman stuff,’ something he said he thinks is contributing to blowing leads.
'Freshman stuff' that has seen Omar Payne see more bench time in recent weeks.
“Your goal is to get all 13 or 14, however many you’ve got on the roster, into a pretty good place to where you can perform at your best collectively,” he said.
Sophomore forward Keyontae Johnson remembers his freshman year and recognizes that college basketball is very different than high school.
“Coming out of high school you really don’t know every possession,” he said. “You could take plays off.”
He said the game against Vanderbilt was a good learning experience for the freshmen.
“It helped show the freshman that you need to have a good shot or get something out of it, you can’t just have a wasted possession,” he added. “I think that shows and helps everybody out, getting better and reading stuff over.”
As the season has progressed, we’ve watched this team seesaw from a great defensive team to a great offensive team, and it’s possible that too much focus has been placed on balancing that out in practice than on the mental side of things and not giving in until that final buzzer.
“It has a lot to do with our focus,” said guard Noah Locke. “We get a little comfortable when we get leads sometimes. It’s just something that we got to get over with."
