Florida Basketball: Gators Beat Miami in Closed Door Scrimmage

It was only a scrimmage so it won’t count as a win when games begin for real in a couple of weeks, but Florida’s 91-89 buzzer beater win over Miami in closed to the public scrimmage in Coral Gables might be a sign of good things to come. Miami made the Final Four a year ago and returns several key pieces from that team while Todd Golden had to do a total rebuild from last year’s 16-17 team that made the NIT.

The win came on a fallaway bank shot off the bounce from Cal-Riverside transfer Zyon Pullin. Sophomore Riley Kugel led the Gators with 20 points, nine rebounds, three assists and three steals, while Seton Hall transfer Tyrese Samuel had 19 points, six rebounds and Iona transfer Walter Clayton Jr. had 15 points and nine assists.

Florida’s starting lineup was 7-1 Marshall transfer Micah Handlogten, 6-10 Samuel, 6-5 Kugel, 6-4 Will Richard and 6-2 Clayton.

At a Tuesday afternoon session with the media, Golden seemed rather pleased with the win and the overall effort.

“I feel like we have a good team,” Golden said. “I feel like we’ve grown and gotten better, but until you go up against someone else you always have those doubts and question marks. The thing that I was most pleased with, I thought our effort was great. I thought we played really, really hard. I thought we played with pace and we were super unselfish. I thought we did a great job sharing the ball and with a team on the floor with eight new guys and only two guys who had any rotational minutes last year, the way we played together is something we’re going to focus on and talk about and work on all the time. For our first effort, I thought it was really good that way.”

The Gators were vertically challenged a year ago when the only quality minutes they got in the paint came from Colin Castleton. When he went down with an injury, so did Florida’s inside game. The Gators have more size both up front and on the perimeter, but they have the ability to push the ball up and down the floor.

While the Gators played at a much faster pace against Miami – “It would have been our highest possession game of the season last year” – Golden was pleased that turnovers were minimal as were rushed shots in transition.

“if you can play that way and take care of the ball, and play with efficiency that we did, pace is going to be really good for us, you know,” Golden said. “You start getting yourself into trouble when maybe you start taking bad shots or you’re getting loose to the ball and giving them easy run-outs and stuff like that, but I do think the strength of our team is ball-handling and ball-security, and if we can take advantage of that, as well getting the number up in terms of the pace and the way we’re playing, I think that’s going to benefit us for the long run, for sure.”

Defense was not a strong suit. Playing with a small, quick lineup loaded with shooters, Miami shot nearly 50 percent (30-62) for the game and the Hurricanes hit 12-26 of their 3-pointers. If there was an alarm bell sounded with Golden, it had to do with Miami squeezing off 26 3-pointers.

“I think it’s about containing the amount of attempts they get, you know, because once the ball’s in the air there’s only so much you can do when you’re guarding the three-point line,” Golden said. “We want to run them off, we want to follow them up, make them take those tough twos at the rim. So, you know, multiple games we don’t want to see more than 20 attempts from three, and we didn’t achieve that on Saturday.”

From an offensive standpoint, the Gators had excellent ball movement which resulted in hitting 34-71 shots from the field. The Gators struggled a bit from the 3-point line, hitting only 6-24, but this team has more capable shooters on the team than last season. Kugel (2-5) and Richard (2-6) shot well, but the others combined to go just 2-13.

The Gators had a very efficient game in the paint, where the added size paid off both in putting the ball in the basket as well as kicking out to shooters.

“We shared it really well,” Golden said. “We played out of the pick-and-roll really well most of the day. We had a lot of assists. We had a lot of baskets close to the rim that are high-percentage baskets. Our depth up front really showed. ‘Reese (Samuel) and Micah started. Our freshmen came in and really did a great job carrying the load as well. Again, that was one of the encouraging things. We didn’t shoot it great, but we were able to be efficient and finish around the rim."

Freshman Thomas Hauck (6-9) came off the bench to grab six offensive boards in 15 minutes while 6-11 freshman Alex Condon played 20. “We didn’t drop when they were in there,” Golden said, noting the two will have to be contributors this season.

The big who showed up at both ends of the court consistently was Samuel, who spent four years at Seton Hall where he started on some very good teams. A very physical big guy (6-10, 240) Samuel is expected to bring toughness in and around the rim, something the Gators lacked if Castleton wasn’t in the game a year ago.

Samuel’s offensive production was off the charts against the Hurricanes.

"He's just a really good player,” Golden said. “He's a veteran, played in the NCAA Tournament before, a guy who averaged double figures in the Big East, so he's not scared out there. He's a guy who really understands the game and he's really good with the ball, he's really efficient. I think he only missed one shot on Saturday and he scored a good amount. Really impactful player.”

Golden on Riley Kugel: “He’s made a huge jump. It’s really in his consistency. At times last year, you saw the ceiling and how well he can play, whether it was when he had [24] at home against Kentucky or when he carried us down the stretch to wins at Georgia and against LSU at home. But, for us, the way he’s practicing has been super consistent in going really, really hard and it really raises the level of our team. He’s just playing at a really, really high level and being really efficient, unselfish, smart and competing really hard on both ends. He had a great rebounding performance on Saturday, which was really encouraging. It’s just what we expect in our program. When guys go from freshman to sophomore we expect them to make a really big jump. He’s doing that."

Riley Kugel - Photo Credit FloridaGators.com

Golden on the big guys finding open shooters from the paint: “The way we want to play, I think it's really, really important because we want all five guys to be decision-makers. A big part of being a decision-maker is not turning the ball over when you touch it, so I think our bigs had 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio and close to 10 assists combined and they found easy baskets for guys. Again, all four of those guys that played in the front court can really pass it and really have good feel and good understanding of the game. So again, that was that was what I walked away from most pleased with was the way we moved the ball. We did a really good job that way.”

Golden on Zyon Pullin: “You know, he’s an incredibly smart player, you know, so he is good about being in the right place at the right time, and he can sneak out an extra one every now and again, but just his stability on both sides of the ball is where I think he’ll really help us and where I think he did on Saturday.”

Golden on Joakim Noah visiting with the Gators in Miami: “It was special. It was really awesome. We talk a lot about the history and tradition of our program, and it's one of the things that we really sell when we recruit is we want guys that want to become a part of that. And so when Jo came by and visited with a lot of the younger guys it was really impactful. He shared some messages with the team. My favorite thing he said to the team was simply do your job. Do your job. And you know when a multiple all-NBA, NBA All-Star guy that’s made over $100 million in the NBA comes with a simplistic message like that to the team it resonates. It was really neat.”

Injury update: San Francisco transfer Julian Rishwain (knee) has been cleared to practice. Sophomore Aleks Szymczyk (6-10, 250) just got his broken foot out of a boot. “He’s out of the boot, now it’s just about getting in shape and getting strong,” Golden said. “I’m not sure how quickly he’ll be ready to go. I think Julian’s ahead of him. I think we’ll see Julian before we see Shimmy. My hope is somewhere around the middle of November, maybe that third week of November we’ll get Shimmy back. But it’ll help, you know, having another body there will be beneficial for us, for sure.”