Gators Play Against Missouri Reveals They're Still an Unfinished Product
Gainesville, Fla. – The Florida Gators men’s basketball team is one of the best teams in the country, even after the loss to the Missouri Tigers. However, this second SEC loss shows that there could be improvements.
Potentially the most annoying takeaway for Gators head coach Todd Golden and his players from Tuesday’s loss is how similar of a loss it was compared to Kentucky. The 3-point defense, free throw shooting and the turnover battle all dictated both games.
One of the first things that the Gators will be disgusted by when they turn on the film is that they let a single player dominate them in 3-point shooting.
In the Kentucky defeat, guard Koby Brea was the catalyst for the Wildcats. He drained seven 3’s off the bench and finished with 23 points.
As for Missouri, they had their own sniper off the bench in Caleb Grill. Grill finished with a team-high 22 points with 18 of them coming from behind the arc (Should’ve been 17 points after seeing that his final one should’ve been changed to a two pointer with his foot being on the line).
The players and coaches can’t let this happen. Florida’s defense entered this matchup as one of the top 3-point defenses, having the third-ranked 3-point percentage defense (Opponents were making 27.0 percent of their 3’s). Additionally, Golden talked about it after the loss, but it starts with not letting these level of shooters even take the shot in the first place.
“It's less about, you know, being able to contest it – you can't let them get it up,” Golden said. “If you want to control the three-point game, you can't let them get it up…You know, allowing them to come in here and make 11 was one of the differences in the game.”
Limiting the attempts is the first step to fixing it. They can’t put 3-pointers on the board if they aren’t taking them.
But this wasn’t the only problem in the game. Florida also struggled at the line like they did against the Wildcats. In Rupp Arena, the Gators missed 13 free throws and eight of them came from Walter Clayton Jr. and Alijah Martin.
Well, the number may not have been as high this time, but these two missed another three in a one-point loss. And, if you add in Will Richard, it moves up to four misses. That’s painful. Three of their best, who they consistently rely and depend upon, missing free points.
Additionally, Clayton Jr.’s two missed free throws came on back-to-back attempts very late in the game when they were very close to completing the comeback.
However, Clayton Jr.’s head coach doesn’t feel the blame is on him.
“And it's easy to point at things like that when you lose by one, but that was definitely not the reason why we lost,” Golden said. “There were a lot of other things that were way more important that we just weren't able to execute."
Furthermore, this lack of execution from the Gators led to too many turnovers. Against Kentucky, Florida only committed 9 turnovers, so not as high. But these nine resulted in 20 points for their opponents.
Then, against Missouri, they had 13 turnovers that gifted the Tigers 18 points. Just too high of numbers in both categories when trying to win basketball games and the Gators know that.
“Our goal is to stay under 12 turnovers, under six a half and obviously we didn’t do that and they got some buckets off of it, so it’s kind of like giving the other team points,” Clayton Jr. said.
Uncharacteristically, a lot of these turnovers came down to the physicality of Missouri and Florida not being able to match it, which is a pretty big difference to the Kentucky loss. It seemed like in the first half the players either didn’t expect it or couldn’t cope with it.
But guard Will Richard didn’t feel the same. He felt that they just needed to respond better.
“I wouldn’t say surprised,” Richard said on if they were surprised by Missouri’s physicality. “We knew it was going to be a fight like every other game is in the SEC, but we’ve definitely got to respond to it better.”
He’s right they do need to respond to it better. They also need to clean it up before the game even starts. Florida can’t allow the same mistakes to keep hitting them below the waists.
Like many have said before, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.