Notebook: Florida reaches ‘fork in the road’ after Vanderbilt loss
------
* Instant Analysis: Despite Allen's 29, Florida falters late against Vandy
* Jim McElwain addresses the O'Dome crowd with recruits on hand
* Parting Thoughts, Part I: Alex Anzalone discusses his time at Florida
* Parting Thoughts, Part II: Anzalone shares thoughts about teammates
* Parting Thoughts, Part III: Anzalone talks draft decision, future plans
* Q&A: Stricklin discusses Florida’s recruiting, upcoming facilities projects
------
Following a seven-game winning streak, No. 19 Florida had itself a tough week, as it has dropped two consecutive SEC contests -- including a 68-66 loss to Vanderbilt on Saturday in the O’Connell Center.
In the past couple of games, the Gators have struggled at times on both ends of the floor. Florida notably struggled shooting the ball from deep at South Carolina in a loss Wednesday, but that inconsistency crept into Saturday’s game as the Gators shot 8-of-25 (32%) from downtown a game after going 0-of-17 from three.
In recent weeks, Florida’s intensity on defense has also been inconsistent. On Saturday, the Commodores went 23-of-50 shooting (46% from the field) and 10-of-25 from downtown (40%) against the Gators, but went 13-of-23 (56.5%) from the field and 5-of-11 from downtown in the second half.
"We're switching one through five, [Vanderbilt head coach Bryce Drew] knew that, everyone in the arena knew that,” Florida head coach Mike White said. “When you’re switching one through five to negate Luke Kornet's ability as a five-man to stretch the defense, they had five guys behind the arc, to negate their ability to get a bunch of threes off, and they still get 25 threes off. It's beyond me. It's absolutely incredible.
“I guess I didn’t do a good enough job explaining. We had eight or 10 miscommunications that led to threes. It’s pretty simple. I yell ‘switch,’ you yell ‘switch.’”
During his postgame press conference, White continued to express that he wasn’t pleased with the Gators’ communication level on Saturday. He added that he has seen his team struggle communicating on the defensive end of the floor in the second halves of recent home games, in part due to not being able to handle the noise level of the Rowdy Reptiles student section.
"I don't know what to do. We've got to figure it out," White said. "I'm at a complete loss with our communication level. The entire focus for this game, the entire scouting report, hours and hours and hours went into it. Hours went into drilling it with the guys. In fact, probably an hour or two showing the guys on film.
“It’s beyond me with the mistakes that we made when the game plan was that simple. It was the simplest plan that we’ve had all year.”
Junior forward Devin Robinson shared the same sentiment.
“Focus, we need to stay locked in whatever time we go,” Robinson said. “We’ve got to communicate more, talk more, just rekindle everything together, just come back together. … We haven’t been talking to each other like we’ve been in the past. I think that’s a big thing. We’ve got to change that. I’ll be the first one to change that right now.”
On offense, outside of KeVaughn Allen’s 29 points on 10-of-18 shooting, Saturday was a poor outing for the Gators. The rest of the team went 16-of-39 shooting (41%) and just 3-of-13 (23.1%) from three-point range, as stagnancy on offense was often an issue. White said that Vanderbilt did a good job of keeping the Gators off-balance with switching up man-to-man and zone looks on defense.
White felt the Gators played lazy offensively at times and looked tired running up and down the court.
“I told our guys, ‘We went 63 minutes yesterday, we went 45 minutes the day before. I don’t understand how we’re tired.’ It’s not physical. I guarantee you Vanderbilt practiced longer than we did - and traveled here,” White said.
"Our focus needs to improve immensely. We've known that all year. Now it needs to improve tenfold, after we took about six steps backwards today. Our ownership needs to improve. For whatever reason, we couldn't get stops against Georgia but there was a better aura. There was better body language. I'm not sure if you guys noticed that or not, but our timeouts, we had some finger-pointing going on. A lot of immaturity that showed up. Our culture has really improved. Today, we had a lot of ugliness that showed back up."
The Gators are currently at a crossroads, White admits. How the second-year head coach’s team responds to this two-game skid will go a long way for the rest of the season.
“Before the game, we talked about certain teams in our league and certain teams throughout the country in college basketball. Right about now, head upward and some head downward,” White said. “We want to be the first, and we weren’t. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought that up, but now we are. There’s a fork in the road here.
“Do we panic? Do we point fingers? Do we blame each other? Or do we simply man up and put some of our deficiencies on ourselves and find a way to … get better every day?”
A DIFFICULT THREE-POINT ATTEMPT
Down 68-66 with seven seconds left and a timeout remaining, instead of White using a timeout to reset the play, Florida opted for Allen to attempt a difficult step-back three-pointer from the left corner that was highly contested.
The shot was no good, as Vanderbilt got the rebound and ran off with the ball to clinch the victory.
“I felt like it had a chance to go in, yes,” Allen said.
White put the blame on himself after the game for not calling a timeout.
“We ran it a couple of times during the game. We’ve run it for KeVaughn a bunch this year,” White said. “I should have used one – I had one (timeout) left. I thought I could get down there in the corner and see if we had an open look and if not I could holler timeout, and before you know it the ball was in the air to KeVaughn. We put him in a difficult situation. That’s my fault.”
ALLEN BOUNCES BACK
After combining for just 16 points on 5-of-18 shooting (and 0-of-10 shooting from downtown) in his previous three outings, Allen got back on track Saturday with 29 points on 10-of-18 shooting and a 5-of-12 clip from downtown.
“It did help me a little bit, getting in that rhythm,” said Allen, who has been the key focus of opposing teams’ scouting reports in recent games and has seen a number of double teams come his way.
“Seeing it go in, it helped me a lot.”
Allen’s coaches and teammates were pleased with his performance Saturday.
“KeVaughn was terrific. He was really good,” White said. “If he doesn’t throw in 4-5 high degree difficulty shots, the game wouldn’t have been close. They had their way with us, other than KeVaughn hitting some hard shots, Vanderbilt was great.”
Added Robinson: “We just kept talking to him all week. ‘Keep your confidence up, it’ll fall for you.’ Glad that he got it going again for today’s game. Sorry we couldn’t get the win for him, but he had a great game. He played really well.”
------
Thank you for reading this Inside the Gators article. To discuss it, please visit the Alligator Alley Forum.