He’s supposed to be a defensive minded coach. He’s benched players who many thought would be contributing. Are those players not buying into what he’s trying to do? It looks to me like the guys on the court are the ones not buying into whatever the coaches are teaching. We look like a team full of players who haven’t bought into the team concept at all.
Yeah I hate losing to mid majors who are not that good. But you are partly right, we will get better. I like the pieces we have we just need to learn to play together and gel. I see a lot of good things, and I still have high hopes for this team, but we have to clamp down on defense.
There were a couple good defensive possessions mixed into a bunch of awful defensive possessions. There are way too many breakdowns on defense for this team to win consistently. Hopefully they figure it out quickly.
We should be able to dominate athletically but we are a step slow, except Bonham. We are letting other teams take it to us. It will be that way until leaders emerge and refuse to accept that. I see 3 guys who are SEC ready: Bonham Richard Castleton
Lots of hysterical over-reaction going on here. Xavier has a good team and is better than us right now. That was obvious. But I like our upside. Work out a few bonehead plays and we win this one. And this with a starter benched all night. I would bet on us to beat Xavier come January.
I thought Xavier looked like a pretty damn good team. Miller is a good coach. They shot the 3 ball well, run some nice plays for easy buckets and have three good bigs, one that is a freaky good 3 point shooter. Unless we just made them look good. But yes, I agree that Florida should not be losing to mid majors. I suspect by the end of the season we will be much improved, though. We have a team full of great athletes, they just need to gel and get better connected defensively.
I do too, but I ain’t wetting my panties if we lose. We are slightly above average from what I’m seeing. We have some decent pieces, but to think this is a final 4 team is to set yourself up for disappointment. What are you seeing?
I wonder if NIL and the portal has motivated a lot of mid major players to up their game even more in hopes of transferring to a big name school and getting an NIL payday they will never get at a smaller school.
At this point, I see a solid bubble team which is status quo for the Gators. New coach and new players, so can definitely grow and develop as the season progresses. Hopefully that's what happens.
Xavier is a well coached solid team. Can’t give them that many open looks from 3 on defense and miss as many layups on offense and pull out a win. The 8 point run by Xavier at the end of the first half was a result of the Gators losing focus and composure.
Kugel and Richards looked good. Jones letting the defender pick the ball from and lay it up before half, told me something. Felder went to war, CC got it going in the second half. Lofton couldn’t hit any layups or shots, sad. We need him to score with as many minutes as he is getting. Overall we were a load for them, but timely breakdowns hindered us clawing ahead. the refs seemed to me to favor Xavier on most of the out of bounds calls and pushing our players around under the basket. When Lofton loss the ball out of bounds late, he was pushed, a foul, no call, CTG should have called a timeout and gave the refs part of his mind. I was disappointed in Todd being too controlled and passive on all calls, you have to make a difference. Miller looked mean, maybe the refs were scared of him or he was discussing and posing that we were fouling his guys every time down the court, it worked. Overall, we played with heart, kugel is starting to get the feel with this team. Maybe Bonham, Kugel, Richards, Felder and CC starting. as much firepower as we have. Kowacie should come in and play tougher defense, learn to finish with the ball and shoot threes when he is open. If he can’t, Lane should get a chance early because of his defense. He is talented but forces bad shots too often. Maybe, give spot minutes so he doesn’t have to force his game. Fudge is so thin their bigs were good and pushed him around. He has to continue to play tough defense and rebound off the glass and loose balls, no shooting until his defense has allowed him an open shot. JJ has trouble on switch offs but played with toughness, which we need. Maybe even let the new big a chance at forward or center to allow for his outside shot, I thought he was going to get a chance with their bigs. I hope he saw what bigs can do when they play aggressive defense and hit their shots both inside and out. we lost this game to their bigs running their game to perfection and hitting, get this, contested shots. I only remember one FT missed by Xavier. winning basketball. We are getting better even though we lost. We still haven’t figured out out starting lineup. Let’s get our best five out front and let them get better. We are getting better but need better shooting and more control on offense, learn from this! Go Gators!
