Tough game tonight. Haven’t won at Florida in over 20+ years. Florida has a very athletic team.
That said, if there is a year to finally break the streak, it’s this year. We have just as many athletes and we are a deeper team. Because of injuries, Florida doesn’t really have a true big man either. This is a game where our 4’s and 5’s, especially Gafford, should really shine. So hopefully, we feed our big men a lot tonight and try to get Florida in foul trouble.
The two things that worry me the most are our free throw shooting and our bench production. Free throws win games, especially on the road and I was disturbed to read that since we started SEC play, we are last in the league. This is unacceptable. I realize that a lot of if is our big men aren’t good FT shooters, but even some of our clutch guys are struggling. We’ve got to clean that up and I have faith we will. Beard claimed some of the stagnation of our offense was due to players being tired. We go at least 9 deep into our bench and you would think this wouldn’t be an issue. But that goes again into our bench production. It’s slipped in SEC play and we’re having to rely on our starters to play more minutes just to stay in games. Some guys on our bench have stepped it up(Thompson, Bailey, and Hall), but who we really need is Jones to get out of his slump. It’s going to happen, I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.
We need this win very badly. We have a stretch of 4 road games out of next 6 games. We can’t afford to drop more road games and dig ourselves into a major hole. Our men can do it, I know they can, and I have faith tonight the streak at Florida ends.
Regarding Beard’s comment, I’ve often wondered if Anderson wears his team out each week during practice. I’ve never seen one of his practices, but I wonder if the amount of running that takes place is similar to what he might do in the offseason.
With a 30 or so game season, I would think they would need some consistent downtime during the course of the season for physical recovery purposes. If they’re not getting that, I can almost understand their tendency to come out flat, tired-looking and disinterested.
At any rate, as much as I’d like to get a win tonight, I just don’t see that happening.
Haven’t been to any of MA practices but if he patterns his by CNR then yes they can be brutal. Went to several of Nolan’s practices and you had to set at least 30 rows up from the court side if I remember correctly, at that time if the team was focused and energized then it wasn’t to bad, but if you came out and just went through the motions then things got intense quickly. There’s no doubt in my mind that we have a chance to win if we take care of business and play “TEAM” ball, we have to much talent not to be in the hunt. If these guys come together and gel as a team we could be tough by end of season, if we don’t gel it will be more of what we have already seen,peaks and valleys. WPS
For a coach that is suppose to be a defensive coach, CMA has missed the boat with this team. They need to play zone or just straight up man and quit the trapping D they are trying to play. They are making all their opponents look like the best shooting teams in the country. Allen had been shooting 37% for the year but is shooting lights out tonight. The team is shooting about 20+% better than their average this year. Hogs are so out of sink it will take a complete coach change to correct this mess.
New players and same old coaches will not change anything. We have been hearing wait until next year too long now. CMA needs to prove he can coach and correct all these problems being mentioned. I doubt his ability or desire to do it.
That’s been the problem during this entire downtrend. Barford, Macon or Beard end up with the ball and everybody else just stops moving so we play one on one. As we’ve seen this doesn’t work the majority of the time. Not sure why we can’t get that corrected??
