Yogi Berra Would Say This Is Déjà Vu All Over Again

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Photos by Chris Spears

For half a game Wednesday night at the O-Dome, the Florida Gators had 15th-ranked Alabama, conquerors of mighty Gonzaga and Tennessee already this season, on the ropes. The Gators were playing great defense, getting a lot of productivity off the bench and they had all of Bama’s big guys in foul trouble. It was 39-36. The O-Dome crowd, excited because Billy Napier would be speaking at halftime, sensed an upset.

In the halftime locker room, the Gators must have pinched themselves back into reality because in the second half, Alabama played like a team that is better than its No. 15 ranking. The Gators? Well, they played like the Gators that have become so much like the Florida football team of the fall – so capable of playing up to the competition only to confound everyone by sinking back into a funk that causes them to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

For all their talent, for all the play calling genius of one Dan Mullen, the football Gators just never could find it within themselves to play a complete game. They came close a few times, but as the old adage goes, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Dan Mullen lost enough close encounters with victory that he will have to squeeze by on $12 million of unemployment courtesy of the University of Florida. He gets all that money whether he works again or decides to caddy for son Canon, a rather brilliant pre-teen golfer who hits it long and straight.

And here we are 13 games into the basketball season and the Gators are eerily mimicking their football brethren. Yes, they stomped Florida State, beating the Seminoles for the first time since the Obama administration, and yes, they found a way to beat an Ohio State team that is ranked just outside the top ten and has a Duke notch in its victory belt. But, even in those wins there was something missing for the Gators. They’ve played well at times, well enough to beat some very good teams and yet now they’re slumping.

The 6-0 start to the season had the Gators ranked just outside the top ten nationally. Perhaps they couldn’t handle prosperity because they haven’t beaten a decent team since. A 3-4 record since the perfect start has the experts wondering if the Gators can avoid playing a Wednesday first round game in the SEC Tournament.

The first loss of the season by 15 points at the hands of previously winless Texas Southern set off alarm bells that haven’t stopped ringing. Inexcusable is a kind way of putting what happened that night at the O-Dome. Wednesday night’s 83-70 loss to Alabama left the O-Dome crowd and ESPN2 viewers wondering if this was an omen of a rather forgettable traverse through a Southeastern Conference that is as strong top to bottom as it has ever been. No. 9 Auburn is next followed by No. 21 LSU, which just whacked No. 16 Kentucky. They are the kind of teams that almost require a perfect game to beat and so far, the Gators haven’t come anywhere close to perfect.

All signs point to an 0-3 start in league play.

It seems so strange that the Gators have the ability play so well in stretches but can’t seem to play a full 40 minutes with the kind of intensity and energy it takes to hang with the big boys. When the Gators get locked in on defense, they’re really good. When they’re scoring baskets in transition, they can light it up. When the energy vaporizes in the locker room at the half, you have what happened against Alabama.

Asked how the Gators lost all their momentum when the second half began Wednesday, UF coach Mike White said, “Off the top of my head, early second half, our energy level coming out of the locker room was not correct and theirs was. They threw the first few punches the second half.”

Not only did Alabama throw the first punches – the Tide put up 22 points before the Gators hit their first shot from the field – but they forced one bad shot after another. Florida hit 13-26 from the field in the first half, just 9-26 in the second.

And of course, there was the age-old problem that has plagued the Gators ever since Andrew Nembhard took his boringly efficient point guard game to Gonzaga – more turnovers than assists. The Gators went 15-10 during last year’s COVID season largely because they turned it over more times than they made good passes that led to baskets. Against Alabama, the Gators had 12 assists and 20 turnovers.

Ideally, you want a 2-to-1 positive ratio, but for the season these Gators have 169 assists and 176 turnovers. Last year it was 293 assists and 375 turnovers.

You lose a lot of games, especially against good teams, when you have so many empty possessions. Twenty turnovers. That helps explain why Alabama had 20 more shots from the field (72) than the Gators (52).

The Gators run three guys at the point – Tyree Appleby, Brandon McKissic and Myreon Jones. Appleby has 42 assists and 32 turnovers. McKissic has 22 assists and 20 turnovers. Jones has 24 assists and 20 turnovers.

Contrast that to Nembhard in the 2019-20 season when he had 173 assists and 80 turnovers in 31 games. Oh, what the Gators would do to have Andrew Nembhard running the point for them this year.

Nembhard isn’t here, however, and the passing needs to get better in a hurry. Nice, catchable passes, not these lazy lobs that are easy pickings for defenders. Catching the ball when it’s passed would also help. Too many go through the wickets. How about boxing out when a shot goes up, whether on the offensive end or the defensive end? White calls boxing out “hits” as in putting a body on an opponent for rebounding position. The Gators gave up 20 offensive rebounds to Alabama which means a lot of “hits” were missed.

Now, the Gators do have some good pieces to the winning puzzle. Colin Castleton, for example, leads the Gators in scoring (15.9), rebounding (9.2) and he ranks second in the SEC in blocked shots (3.1 per game). Anthony Duruji is quietly putting together a season that makes you wish he were a bit more selfish because a lot of good things happen when he has the ball in his hands or at the defensive end. He is scoring 8.8 per game but he’s hitting 45.5 percent of his 3-point attempts and 57.5 percent of his shots from the field. He rebounds (4.3). He hustles. He blocks shots. He plays the point on Florida’s full court press. Charleston Southern grad transfer Phlandrous Fleming Jr., who played against Alabama despite not practicing since before Christmas, scores (10.9), rebounds (3.5), defends four positions well and blocks shots. McKissic has 22 steals. CJ Felder is an emerging presence off the bench (5.2 points, 3.3 rebounds, 10 blocked shots) and the giant within Jason Jitoboh is rising (38 points off the bench in the last four games).

But, to make it all work, White has to punch whatever buttons are necessary to get this team to play with intensity bell-to-bell. He gave a laundry list of things the Gators need in abundance to improve on after the Bama loss.

“Mental and physical toughness,” White said. “Connectivity. Guys wanting to fight for one another. Sometimes it’s as simple as execution, both offensively and defensively. I think this team is emotional at times. It’s something that’s a hurdle and we’ve got to overcome. It’s a positive for us at times and it’s a negative at times. I think this team is very competitive, and when things are going well for us, we tend to play better and execute better, but when we face some adversity, we’ve got to be better with how we address that adversity, whether that’s a call, whether it’s a late clock score by the opponent, a missed hit, or, ‘Oh, coach is about to get on me.’ You know, stuff like that. We’ve got to be better. We’ve got to play with emotion, but we’ve got to be a little bit less emotional.”

Too many times we see the Gators frustrated with calls – or lack of – from the zebra crew. Alabama got physical with the Gators and for some reason, the Gators chose to let their emotions get the best of them too many times. No, there weren’t any technical fouls called by the crew headed by Mike Nance, but the frustration was clear.

The frustration wasn’t there earlier in the season when the Gators put such a physical beating on Florida State that veteran FSU coach Leonard Hamilton remarked, “They out-Florida Stated Florida State.” Nor was it there in the win over Ohio State when Buckeye coach Chris Holtman remarked that the Gators were every bit as physical if not more so than any team they would face in the Big Ten.

Certainly, the Gators have to be aware of foul troubles since Castleton (6-11) and Jitoboh (6-11) are the only players on the roster taller than 6-7, but they got physical early in the season and it gave hope to the notion that this was a Florida team capable of earning a bye until Friday in the SEC Tournament. Now, we’re left to wonder where the physicality and toughness have disappeared to. Now, we’re left to wonder if this is just a phase the Gators are going through or a foretelling of things to come. If the Gators have to play opening day of the SEC Tournament you can bet the farm that if they’re playing in the postseason it will be in the Nobody’s Interested Tournament (NIT).

The problem is the SEC schedule is unrelenting and there is a Big 12/SEC Challenge game with a physically tough Oklahoma State team later this month. Currently, there are four SEC teams ranked in the Associated Press top 25 and the Gators will play all of four of them including Auburn and No. 16 twice each. ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi projects six SEC teams make the NCAA Tournament field. Surprisingly, he has Florida among the last four teams that avoid the dreaded play-in games to fill out the field of 64.

That is a razor thin margin that White and the Gators have to work with.

How do they put themselves solidly in the NCAA field? The best place to start is with the turnover-to-assist ratio. You don’t beat good teams when you have so many empty possessions. Better passing equals better shots and better shots mean more assists. Maybe a 2-to-1 margin is too much to ask of this team but how about 3-to-2? That would be an improvement over the negative ratio the Gators currently have.

And how about better intensity? It was there for 20 minutes Wednesday night, then it went on vacation.

“For whatever reason, in the first minutes of the second half, we just looked a little flat,” White said.

Do that Saturday against Auburn and again next Wednesday against LSU and the Gators will be 9-7, struggling to keep their heads above the water.

The season isn’t over. Yet. It can be salvaged, but not with a second half effort the likes of which we saw against Alabama, and not without figuring out how to avoid mirroring the Florida football team.

We know how it all ended for the football Gators in 2021. We can’t help but wonder if the basketball team can do what the football team couldn’t which is to figure out how to play a game bell-to-bell with intensity and consistency.

Just once, wouldn’t it be great to see a Florida team play a game that we could say was complete in every phase? It didn’t happen in football. It hasn’t happened in basketball, but we can wish, can’t we?

It’s 2022. The 2021 year is behind us, so maybe, just maybe, this is a year when wishes come true.