Intense defense has Gators moving up in the hoops rankings

Mike White was in a nitpicky mood as he surveyed the box score of Florida’s 84-45 win over Troy Sunday afternoon at the O-Dome.

He didn’t look like a coach whose team is 6-0 out of the gate with impressive wins over Florida State and Ohio State. He certainly didn’t look like the coach of a team that has now moved up significantly in the rankings – No. 12 in the Coaches poll, No. 14 in the Associated Press.

He wasn’t scowling. There really wasn’t anything to scowl about, but he knows very well that it’s still early in the season and the Gators are still a month away from the start of the 18-game Southeastern Conference grind. He also knows the Gators will be playing Oklahoma in Norman Wednesday evening, the first road trip outside the state of Florida for a team that is still trying to get the hang out of playing together.

The win over Troy could have been a teaching video for high school coaches who want to implement a 2-2-1 zone press that drops back into tight man-to-man and actually ratchets up the intensity once the ball is over half court. The press is designed to force tempo and make the opponent start its offense late in the shot clock.

The man-to-man? Well, that’s the bread and butter of this Florida team. Against Troy, the Gators played with the ferocity of schooling pirahnas. It was obvious in the first five minutes of the game the Trojans hadn’t seen anything close to this level of intensity in their first six games. In their win over Florida Atlantic just a few days more, they had scored 83 points, drilling 11 3-pointers in 20 attempts.

You win a lot of games when you shoot 55 percent from the 3-point line, but against the Gators the Trojans struggled to get clean looks at the basket and when they did have an open look, the shots were rushed, almost in anticipation of a Florida defender flying at them. Troy shot only 32 percent for the entire game and an even worse 2-16 – 12.5 percent – from the 3-point line.

You win a lot of games when you hold your opponent to 32 percent shooting, even more when they hit just 12.5 percent on their 3-pointers. You can read just about anything you want to into stats. Troy fans might think the Trojans simply couldn’t find the ocean from the end of the pier. The Gators – and everyone who saw the game whether in person at the O-Dome or on the SEC Network – know the bad shooting was all about Florida’s defense.

And yet, there was Mike White, searching for something to nitpick. He found it.

“We’ve got a pretty good defense,” he said, an understatement if ever there was one. “Defending the three is probably our best defensive category, I think.”

It is. Opponents are shooting 39 percent over all from the field, but a wretched 25 percent on their 3-balls.

“I haven’t studied the numbers but I will when I get home this afternoon,” White continued, “but two of 16 … you would have liked to have seen honestly, even though it’s a worse percentage, two for nine, two for ten more than two for 16. We lost some shooters a few times. We had a couple of lost rotations.”

The men of Troy might have a hard time believing that.

It is defense that is setting this Florida team apart from any team White has coached in his previous six seasons at Florida. The 2016-17 team that was a couple of shots away from the Final Four was very good defensively, but not this good and certainly not this intense from bell to bell.

Some of it has to do with the fact the first seven players in White’s rotation are grown men, all of them at least 21 years old. Some of it has to do with the mindset of the four transfers – Brandon McKissic, Phlandrous Fleming Jr., Myreon Jones and C.J. Felder – rubbing off on the rest of the team. McKissic was a finalist for the Lefty Driesell National Defensive Player of the Year. Fleming was a two-time defensive player of the year in the Big South Conference. Jones was a solid defender in the Big Ten where if you don’t play defense, you don’t see the floor. Felder was one of the top shot blockers in the ACC and is perhaps the most versatile defender on the team as he can guard all five positions.

These four added to point guard Tyree Appleby, athletic stretch four Anthony Duruji and big man Colin Castleton give the Gators a tenacious unit that gets after people and plays with a level of physicality that hasn’t been seen since Billy Donovan’s 2013-14 team that won 30 straight games and made it to the Final Four.

In the Gators’ win over Ohio State for the championship of the Fort Myers Tip-Off, Buckeye coach Chris Holtman said Florida was so physical that “we just weren’t able to get to our spots offensively.” In their win over Florida State three weeks ago, FSU coach Leonard Hamilton, whose teams are known for their mortal combat style of defense, said the Gators “out-Florida Stated Florida State.”

The Gators haven’t always shot the ball well this season, but they showed what they could do in the first half against Troy when they lit up the Trojans for 49 points, hitting 9-21 from the 3-point line. Jones hit his first three shots from beyond the 3-point line and scored all 12 of his points in the first half. It was part of balanced scoring that saw six Gators score in double figures with Jones and Appleby leading the way with 12 each.

There will be nights when the Gators shoot lights out and there will be nights like they had against Ohio State when scoring was a grind, but White and the Gators know that if you play defense with intensity from start to finish you’re always in the ball game. White likes what he has seen of the Gators so far this season, but he is the first to tell you that it is a long season and they have to get better, especially once SEC play begins.

“We’ve got good players, we’ve got good individual defenders, we’re tough, we’re older,” White said. “We’ve got good experience and we’ve got guys who are committed to defending. We’ve got a ways to go, too. I don’t know where we’re going to finish when it comes to the computer numbers but there is a lot to clean up and get better at. It gets tougher. You get in our league you better guard night in and night out against high level offenses.”

The late, great Al McGuire, considered one of the great teachers of defense, once remarked that a team that wants to play defense can be very good, but a team that truly enjoys playing defense can be great. Mike White and the Gators might have one of those teams that truly enjoys getting after people on the defensive end.

“You have good defenders who are committed to it, who enjoy it and embrace it you’ll have a good defense,” White said.

Through their first six games, the Gators look like they’re having a lot of fun harassing opponents. Florida opponents? Let’s just say they don’t look quite so happy.