GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- Florida basketball was humbled this week.
“We didn't have a great offensive game that day," said Florida freshman Scott Lewis of the loss to Florida State. "I don't think we used all of our weapons, like we have some of the best scorers in the country like KJ (Blackshear) and guys like Noah (Locke) and Tre Mann."
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The Gators program had plenty of expectation surrounding them, however, last Sunday the offense fizzled out - even grad transfer big man Kerry Blackshear, who had 20 points against North Florida in the season opener, only managed ten points - all of the them coming from the three-point line.
“He was open the whole game — the whole game,” Mike White told reporters on Wednesday.
According to the Gators head coach, he needs to send a message to his side, look to Blackshear often and early, don't worry about the perfect set up.
The message was received by his group.
"We have to capitalize on getting the ball to KJ since he's our best player, "agreed Lewis. "That was definitely a point for us, especially for the young guys and how the older guys can teach the younger guys. It definitely brought us together.”
"I think there’s a lot I can do better to give those guys confidence to throw it inside in some of those situations," said Blackshear. "I can do better about sealing earlier, holding my post a little bit better to give those guys an easier outlet and then also just a balance of always making the right reads and looking for a teammate, but also being basketball players, if they got a shot, I’m definitely looking for them shooting it because we have some high-level guys who can score the ball."
"Moving forward offensively, we are definitely a work in progress," said White. "We can all see that. I do like where we are, defensively, especially with our vets, and competing, and to match those guys on the glass. We did some good things. We have to settle in offensively, find some identity offensively, find out who we are and play to our strengths.”
This is a young team. The Gators welcomed several new faces to the program this offseason, including Blackshear. Growing pains are expected.
“Experience is always going to be a factor with this team,” White said. “But I think it’s more so the mentality. I just think we have the wrong approach. I was most disappointed, again, I thought we fought, I thought we competed. And that thing would not go in for us, and we kept competing. So those are some positives there. The biggest negative, again, is guys trying to do it on their own. And we hadn’t seen that to this point.
“You’re on ESPN, we got a great crowd and we tried to play some hero ball," White added. "I thought we lost connectivity...We shot 8 or 10 contested ones, ‘well I can make that shot’. Yeah well, he’s wide-open. And I don’t necessarily think it’s a selfishness thing, I think it’s just ‘I’m trying to do it for us, I’m gonna put it on me’ and it’s not the way to play, especially against high-level defenses. And so we did a lot of extra passing yesterday and we’re going to do a lot more today.”
White also wants to see more of an effort defensively. The Gators held Florida State to 36.4 percent shooting, however, the intensity and focus needs to be there for the entire game.
"I thought the first 20 minutes defensively we were very good, very good. And outside of three or four mistakes defensively, definitely an ‘A’ in the first half," said White. "And I just think it’s tough to maintain that level of focus and intensity, level of accountability defensively, when the ball’s not going in for you. But we did for 20 minutes. Maybe it would have been a different story if we had just gotten in some type of flow offensively.”
The Gators will hope to bounce back at home Thursday night with Towson in town.
"We have an opportunity to build on the things we messed up a little bit and build on some things we’re doing well," said Blackshear. "And then as a competitor you always want to like not leave that last loss out there over your head, you want to get back to winning. I think we’ve been building habits in practice the last day or so, and then also today … just try to get back to winning.”
"We've got understand that it's a process we've got to, we've got to filter out all the exterior noise," said White. " I think we've got to maintain our progress defensively and on the glass which, to me were significantly better in those two areas than we were a month ago and we've got we've got to continue to evaluate, who we are, what we are what we're doing, offensively, because we've got good offensive pieces, we do, I mean, some very good offensive pieces and we just got to put it together and have faith that it will find a way to put it together."
GATOR CHOMPS
How much of the need to move the ball falls on Andrew Nembhard
”In Andrew's defense, nobody's open because everything's denied. And, you know, when Andrew is against a conventional defense, and again, they're unique, and they're really good at it. We tried to do the same stuff at Louisiana Tech you know so I'm pretty familiar with everything being denied and switching everything and we had some success with it. Leonard's [Hamilton] done it for a long time, and so, Andrew crosses half court and, you know, I'm yelling move the ball; this guy's denied, this guys denied, and they force you to be stagnant at times or to put your head down and go make plays and, and then there's such good one on one defenders they swarm to the ball when they force us to make plays. We made some good plays but we also made some plays where we were rushed and [we] made the wrong reads. I've got to give these guys some more structure. We've, we've also got to figure out that these, these couple guys are our best shooters, this guy's really good on the post he needs more touches there. When our freshmen come in, this is where they can help us. We've got a ways to go offensively."
On Gak's return
” I think there's a chance, I don't know for sure. There's some stuff he did more yesterday than he's done in a long time. And, uh, [I] was, was pleased it didn't- it wasn't bothering him a lot. He actually did some good things. Happy to see him out there."
