SEC: Can Florida Stay On Track?
The Florida Gators started off the 2014-15 season with a 3-4 record.
For some college basketball programs a 3-4 record isn’t the end of the world and can get looked at as decent record, or a good starting point since their only one game worse than .500. For a proud basketball school (yes, Florida is both a basketball and football school) like the Florida Gators, a 3-4 record is not acceptable.
I ask this question: Can the Florida Gators stay on track for the rest of the year? Or are the Gators not a good team? Remember this is the team who blew an 18-point lead to Kansas, and took an early bad home loss to Miami.
Their dismal 3-4 start made it the first time in 16 years that the Gators went below .500 to start a season. The Gators this year were prepared to have a great season because of all of the scorers that surrounded sophomore point guard Kasey Hill such as sharpshooter, Michael Frazier II, and Dorian Finney-Smith.
However, in the beginning of the year neither of the two were playing at a high level.
Now though each of the two have recently picked up their games and are each averaging career highs in points, and steals. The Gators are rolling because of their efforts and in their latest contest against Jacksonville, their two stars showed up in a big way.
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Frazier went off from behind the arc shooting 6-for-11 from the three-point line for an incredible 54 percent. Frazier II’s shooting led him to scoring 22 points and finishing the game shooting 8-for-14 from the field for 57 percent. He also had six rebounds, one assist, and two steals.
As for Dorian Finney-Smith, he had a career high in points scoring 25 on 10-for-15 shooting from the field for 66 percent. Finney-Smith also did something that he’s not normally accusomted to doing, killing opponents from the three-point line.
Finney-Smith, like Frazier II, went on a shooting barrage against Jacksonville, shooting 5-for-7 from the three-point line for 71 percent. Finney-Smith’s final stat line against Jacksonville was 25 points, six rebounds, two assists, one steal and one block.
Because of their magnificent play the Gators have now won three straight games and look like they are back on track to compete with the rest of college basketball.
But before we declare that the season has already been saved, we need to note that the teams that they went on a winning streak against will most likely not make the 2015 NCAA tournament, but a winning streak is a winning streak.
The Gators’ next biggest test is going to come against their last three out of conference basketball games against Wake Forest, Florida State on the road, and Connecticut at home.
All of those teams can physically match up with Florida and in the case of UConn, they arguably will have the best player on the court playing for their team in point guard Ryan Boatright.
However the success of the team isn’t going to come from their defense. The Gators are ranked as the 15th-best team in college basketball when it comes to points allowed. Their opponents only score 56 points a game.
In addition the Gators are also ranked 67th in the nation when it comes to steals per game, averaging eight steals per contest. If the Gators want to enter into the SEC portion of their schedule on a roll, then they will need to get Hill pushing the basketball offensively.
The Gators are a better team when they run and gun. On the year they are only averaging 68.5 points a game which isn’t a lot of points for a Billy Donovan coached team. In addition the Gators are averaging 14.3 assist a game which is decent but they need to pick it up offensively if they want to have a strong season.
This week and the next up coming week Gators fans should get excited because we will finally get to find out if this team is for real or if they are a pretender. Currently the Gators find themselves as the fifth worst team in the SEC which is a complete rarity for their program.
So I ask it again, can the Gators stay on track or is this team just not talented enough?