Lineup changes

He just got too trigger happy for a point guard after that game winner vs OSU.

 

To the guard position, if no one is going to be a quality shooter then whoever plays the better defense and rebounds should get the most minutes. If Appleby gets in with some pent up attitude and it helps him then just keep it the way it is. If we need to nurture McKissic's shooting then that may come in time when the team realizes we need a shooter. Is Kennedy ready to take over more minutes?

And to the front court, all I can hope for is that Duruji isn't going to fall into old habits and wants to jack up 3s willy nilly. To me scoring is THE issue for others not playing more minutes. It is the CC show. But we HAVE to give him a fairly hard limit on time out there and so the others have to get in the game early. I don't think we can burn him out and expect him to hold up coming down the stretch. And if a player or two shows up in the game then give them even more minutes.

 

Looks like you think that Mitchell is the key. Is that his first name or his last name?

 

Locke has been terrible for Louisville this year. The shot is gone.

 

I keep saying Mitchell instead of Kennedy! Lol. It’s because of that football player Eli Mitchell.

 

Make BB fun again

 

weird? I thought he was their leading scorer? (I have not seen him play)

 

When Apple let it go I thought it was going in.

 

Killing me about Jones. He had so many that just rolled all around the rim without dropping. If he hits anything against the turtles we win going away.

 

He’s shooting 31% from 2 and 33.9% from 3. Maybe his old hip injury has kicked up, but he has been terrible in the last several games after a solid start to the season.

 

Omar is doing fine at Illinois. There actually is a rotation there, and he is a part of it. As for Locke, he is getting what he wanted, but he is not playing well.

 

Respectfully, you don’t know what you’re talking about in either case. I will fill in the details later today.

 

There are seven decent teams in the SEC and Florida has a very favorable schedule with playing most of them at home.

 

This doesn’t have anything to do with stats. It has everything to do with having a role on the team that makes the kid understand that he is an important part of the team. Payne had practically zero growth as a player at UF. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t get minutes. He did get them, but there was no rhyme or reason to when he got them. I have been recording the Illinois games that are on channels that I get and I am watching the portions of the games when he is on the floor. As I have previously reported, Payne is in a rotation that gets him into the game at about the 4 minute mark of the 1st half, again at the 9 or 10 minute mark of the 1st half, and again in the 2nd half once or twice if he played well in the 1st half. Against Arizona on Saturday, he played really well and got into the game 4 times. It doesn’t matter whether Illinois is ahead or behind, Payne is getting into the game. He is not scoring at all, but he is busting his butt setting screens on and off the ball on offense and playing fierce defense. He played very well against Arizona. His defense was really good. He did the same thing against Rutgers, ending up with 7 rebounds and a blocked shot in 11 minutes. Against Iowa, he played 1 minute, committed 2 quick fouls and sat for the rest of the game. IMO, he has learned way more about the game of basketball in his short time at Illinois than he did in his 2 years at UF. Unfortunately, this is typical of Florida under Mike White. Way too many young players don’t have a clue if and when they are going to play. It’s really hard to build a team this way. From personal experience, it’s hard to sit on the bench and root for your team when you believe that you are as good as the guys playing ahead of you, but you are not getting the playing time. In my situation, when I told the Binghamton coach that I would not be playing my senior year, he couldn’t understand why. On the opposite side of the coin, when I was on teams in which I would play most of the game, I didn’t focus much on the guys not getting into the game. It’s up to the coach to deal with rotations and playing time, and it’s one of his most important tasks.
As for Noah Locke, he’s not playing the point at Louisville, but he’s getting the ball on top quite a bit. He has handled the ball well and he passes the ball well, but he is not dribble driving. At UF, in his last year, he often was on the floor with 3 ball-dominant players, which is a polite way of saying that they were ball hogs. I’m not blaming the ball hogs because White encourages them to play that way. It’s pretty obvious that Locke and Lewis couldn’t stand playing in that type of offense. Locke, unfortunately, has been shooting poorly lately, but he is in a system that is somewhat better for him.

I don’t understand why White coaches the way he does. My impression is that he is a micromanager who doesn’t trust his assistants and many of his young players. He doesn’t seem to be willing to get away from the dribble drive offense which flat out has been a disaster at Florida. Interestingly, as Eric has pointed out on several occasions, White has instituted other elements of offense, including Princeton concepts, but when the rubber meets the road, it’s Nembhard or Mann or Appleby or the next guy to come down the road pounding the ball into the ground while guys like Locke, Glover, Ruzhnetsev and, maybe, Reeves might be thinking that they need to get out of Dodge.
One final thought - White should be treating Jitoboh in the exact same way that Payne is being treated at Illinois. You get to the 4 or 5 minute mark of the 1st half, in goes Jitoboh. If he’s not in foul trouble or playing terribly, back he goes in at the 10 minute mark. Rinse and repeat in the second half, and do the same thing with Reeves. Also find an actual role for Kennedy and Lane.