Kentucky vs. Florida

I’ve been lookin’ forward to this game for a while now.

Thoughts on the first half

Most remarkable moment of the half? Roberson’s 26-foot 3-pointer at the end of the half. Of course, if he’d missed it, I would say it was a horrible shot, but I’m swayed by the scoreboard.

As for the rest of the half, I think we’re doing a good job with our transition defense. In fact, our defense in general is pretty solid except for our problems around the basket. Our help defense is still slow, especially against all the athletes on Kentucky’s squad. We’re doing a decent job of closing out on the perimeter and I think we’ve done a good job defending 3-pointers, although Kentucky seems to be finding a way to knock down well-defended shots. Our offense is sputtering, but I sort of expected that given two things: 1) Our offense seems to sputter at the beginning of every game and 2) Kentucky is known for defense. I think it’s obvious that our offense is stronger when we’re threatening to score transition buckets. We have to run Kentucky into the ground, even if we’re not scoring, so that they are spread out more on defense.

For the second half, I expect the tempo of the game to pick up a bit. I think as the tempo picks up in transition, our inside-out game will pick up and we’ll get more good looks on the perimeter. As that happens, I think the double-team on our big guys will subside and I expect Kentucky will eventually drop into some sort of zone defense. Then, I think our passing game will start to come into play and we’ll get more open looks. Of course, this is all speculation and I could be totally wrong… We’re down by 4 right now and I think we’ll win by 5 because we’re a second-half team and Kentucky has a knack for losing leads in the second half.

Thoughts on the second half

Everything went about as I expected except Kentucky never dropped into a zone defense. Of course then I got to see a classic Gator choke during the last couple minutes of the game. I don’t really have much to say since the second half went exactly as I hoped it would… until we went home a few minutes early. The end of the game was reminiscent of the Florida vs. Creighton game in the first round of the NCAA Tourney in 2002.

I couldn’t be more sick of seeing Gator chokes: 2 years ago against Creighton, the last three home games against Kentucky, this year’s Maryland game. That’s basketball. How ’bout football? I don’t even know where to begin. What about Alabama at home in ‘99? First home loss in 30 games; lost by a series of bungled plays at the end of the game and even in overtime. Three seasons ago at Mississippi State, two seasons ago at Ole Miss, this season at Miami, at home against Ole Miss, at home against FSU. And those are just the highlights.

But maybe I’m just looking at the dark spots. What about wins we’ve eeked out at the last second? Well, there’s the home basketball game against Georgia last year where Roberson drained a 3-pointer on Hayes with only seconds left. There’s the football game at Tennessee in 2000 where we won by a controversial touchdown pass by Jabar Gaffney in his breakout game. The infamous Mike Miller coast-to-coast game winner against Butler in the 2000 NCAA Basketball Tourney. And that’s about all I can think of. Of course, I’m probably missing one or two, but I know I’m missing several tough losses, so I’m sure it all evens out… or at least my point is made.

I’m tired of ranting. I hope the Gators can start putting together some fantastic wins because I’m getting tired of seeing fantastic losses.

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Florida Basketball

I’ve been a huge Gator Basketball fan since I enrolled at Florida in ‘98. Thanks to my extended stay as an engineer, I got to see 5.5 basketball seasons as a student (I’m finishing the 6th right now).

This basketball season has been up and down and I’m confident it can go up again before the end of the tournament in March. As a whole, our team plays well together and has a lot of talent. When our shooters get hot, I think we’re capable of smoking any other team in Divsion 1-A: one of our Point Gaurds, Anthony Roberson, shot 46% from 3-point land over a 10-game stretch and one of our Centers, David Lee, made 16 straight jumpers over a couple game stretch. We have other shooters–Lee Humphry, Matt Walsh (when he’s on), Christian Drejer–who can light it up, too. Our transition offense is solid and, if our defense is pullin’ its weight, we can run up serious numbers on points scored off turnovers.

Those are the positives. There are a few negatives, but I think all of them are correctable by Tourney time: our transition defense still needs work, our defense down low seems beaten easily, especially off the dribble, and we sometimes depend too much on our 3-point shooting. The good news is that our transition defense has been steadily improving since the beginning of the season (I think that was the one thing that really lost the Maryland game earlier this season) and our dependency on the 3-point shot isn’t all bad since we have Lee, Moss, Richard and Colas inside. Lee is a phenomenal offensive player and Moss and Richard will be, eventually. Colas has bulked up a little and he holds his own, but he needs to work on his strength when gathering in rebounds.

One thing I think we really need to work on is our defense down low. On the surface, the problem might seem related to our centers not holding their own, but that’s not the case. The real problem is that our help defense is slow. In fact, I think our whole defense could be quite a bit more aggressive, both on the perimeter and in the paint. The problem down low is that our guys don’t help quick enough when the other team penetrates from the perimeter off the dribble. I think our centers do a great job fronting on defense, but they don’t seem to help out quick enough when the ball is moving around and they’re defending a spot instead of a person. This allows a lot of baskets by the other teams guards and small forwards who are quick and can get within 10 feet or so for a good look.

I think our problem on the perimeter is that we aren’t aggressive enough with attacking the gaurds. We allow them to bring the ball too far in before we start defending them. I think our defense needs to compensate for lack of speed helping by being more aggressive outside the 3-point line. We need to create turnovers before the other team even gets set up in their half-court offense. Our full-court trap is good, but I’m afraid it causes more trouble than its worth since teams seem to score easily if they get past the press.

I guess this is a lot of rambling, but these are my thoughts. I hope we get past the first weekend in the Tourney this year and I know we’re capable of playing with any other team if we get things rolling. I can’t wait to see what we’re capable of over the next few weeks.

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We lost. Unbe-freakin’-lievable. Florida dropped to Creighton today, 82-83. The frustrating thing is that we beat ourselves. Creighton didn’t play a good game at all, but our team seemed to have forgetten some fundamentals about the game of basketball and it cost us. We messed up everything we could from turnovers to free-throws. I’m not really convinced that Creighton earned their win, but I am convinced that we earned our loss. What a let down.

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March Madness has begun. There are a lot of great ideas out there, but the whole �bracket� idea is one of the best ever. There are sixty-four teams in the tournament each year (I guess maybe some would argue there are 65 now with the wild-card spot) and if it weren�t for the brackets, I�d probably not give a rip for any except Florida. But, thanks to the bracket idea, I�m suddenly either rooting for or against each of the sixty-four teams. I was pretty excited today because UNC-Wilmington won. Did I even know that there was such a school as UNC-Wilmington a week ago? Nope. But all of a sudden, I�m rooting for them and I get a point for a first-round upset. And to think I didn�t care a lick about college hoops till I got to college.

Some say that each day brings something new. Today brought a pretty cool new thing for me�I was MC tonight at our Crusade meeting. I�ve always sort of wondered if it would be as fun as it looks or if I could pull it off and I�ve decided that the answer to each is �yes�: It is definitely as fun as it looks and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it (which qualifies as me �pulling it off� in my mind). I think one thing I enjoyed tonight was the pressure. It isn�t often that I�m actually in a pressure situation and, as long as I don�t have a guitar in my hands, I totally thrive on pressure. I can almost physically feel my brain kicking into a different gear, backup power supplies firing up, little mice-reserves being brought in, the whole deal. I sort of remembered back to last year when I was leading the Weekly Meeting Planning Team�for about an hour before each meeting, I was constantly being bombarded with last-minute requests, ideas, lack of punctuality, almost any hitch that could be thrown into the system was at some point or another. I loved every minute of it.

Anyway, I have another guitar lesson bright and early tomorrow morning (that translates to 10 am in slacker time), so I need to get some rest. Eight hours is out of the question now, so I�ll have to salvage what I can tonight and make up for missed time via napping tomorrow. I love naps.

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Unbelievable. I spent 5 hours today, waiting in line to see the Kentucky vs. UF game. That is really out of character for me–I usually wouldn’t be able to justify spending 5 hours sitting around waiting to watch a basketball game–but, I thought, “What the heck. I’ll give it a shot. We have to win anyway, because we’ve lost the last two and we’re one of the best teams in the country.” Turns out we lost by 2 lousy points. So, I spent about 8 hours today, waiting to see our guys lose by 2. Ouch.

Anyway, I just finished watching Pretty Woman for the first time. It’ll probably be the last. Honestly, I don’t get it; everyone always says, “You haven’t seen Pretty Woman?! Man, you gotta’ see that movie.” I just don’t see what all the hype is about. Julia is a good actress and Richard did a good job in the movie, but I never really caught what was so special about this particular prostitute that she changed his life. She seemed like a nice enough girl, but when it comes down to it, I just don’t see what set her apart from the rest. Yeah, she knew a little about cars and she was kind of feisty, but there are lots of feisty, car-knowledgeable women that aren’t prostitutes. Why didn’t he just go find one of those?

I better get some sleep. I have a dilemma tomorrow in that I have 4 consecutive classes, but the third one is cancelled. So, I’m wondering if I should go to the first 2, then leave and skip the last one, or if I should stick around and kill an hour before attending my last one. Why does life have to be full of so many tough decisions? Ah, the life of a college student…

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