Great win, and one we really earned with intensity and defensive effort. We stalled out offensively… perhaps partially due to the margin. But we didn’t score a field goal for nearly the final 10 minutes. That’s a deathblow for most leads… but we played defense with the same intensity throughout, and the drought was almost irrelevant. Yeah… we gotta clean that up, but the team can hang it’s hat on that type effort.
Good defense all game, great offense for 2/3rds of the game. We made a lot of unwise fouls that kind of let Awbrin cut the margin. Still, a dominant performance, maybe our best of the season.
It’s virtually impossible to dominate a good opponent in every phase all game long. Yet we darn near did.
P. Young was talking about how tired Auburn looked. That was us against Tx A&M. Folks may not have respected how tough that game was for us schedule wise. Golden is doing a good job handling the development of this team.
This might be a hot take, but I think this really speaks to why getting a 30-point lead is a good thing.
I think it could be the frantic pace that Golden wants Florida to play at in scoring fast and putting up as many shots as possible to get the scoring output up. You have to have point guards willing to play at that speed (i.e Pullin). Florida scored 75 points already by the 9 min mark and Auburn was held to 48 points. This was a 27 point lead at this point. However, Auburn went on a 15-6 run for the final game result of 81-63. That pace could be the main reason why Florida becomes gassed near the end of some games (i.e, Georgia) and also in wearing out our opponents as well. Other times, that could allow the opponent to make a run to close the gap. Golden was probably also trying to have longer possessions to shorten the game. However, the offense stalled. Perhaps Florida should run some kind of motion sets to get the offense back in rthythm and perhaps substitute another ball handler like Aberdeen to try to keep the starting PGs more fresh late in the game. But, it's a tricky thing to have a backup not messing up and giving the other team some momentum in getting back into the game. It was a good thing that the defense overall was physical enough to slow down Auburn and get them out of sync throughout the game.
Some decent thoughts, but you lost me at “ball handler like Aberdeen” He’s so shaky on the dribble, it’s what restricts his pt.
It wasn’t that we were gassed it was that it would have been insane not to use 20 seconds every possession after the 7 minute mark. With a 27 point lead that is just good coaching. They weren’t fouling and the trap wasn’t working so it was almost mathematically impossible to lose with that strategy.
Condon and Haugh are fabulous pick ups. They contest everything and scrap on the boards. Samuel is much better than I thought. ZP and Clayton- wow!!! Both have ice in their veins. Micah was ready for challenge yesterday. Kugel- looked like the old Kugel!!!
Obviously it was a great high energy effort at home, but Auburn was miserable from 3 and that’s not their mo. I was surprised Auburn didn’t mount a charge while our offense sputtered a bit. Not that I’m complaining.
That is definitely the conventional wisdom. Although you still want to execute in the half court offense. Drain the clock then get a bucket to demoralize the other team from making a run is the ultimate way to take care of a big lead. I think I saw we didn’t score a FG for like 10 minutes? Fortunately Auburn never had a run in them and it never got interesting late so it stayed as a convincing win.
In my mind fouls were becoming a bit of a concern, as I believe we had at least 3-4 starters with 4 fouls, so it could have been another reason to slow the game down?
When our bigs come to play and be physical we will be hard to beat. Kudo's to CTG for putting together this team, this is what improvement looks like.
