Gators have a New York State of Mind
Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 6:36 am
TEMPE, AZ --- The wake-up call was a three-pointer by Jamelle McMillan from just left of the key with 11:02 remaining in the game. That put Arizona State up 50-48 on the Florida Gators and the rowdy crowd of 12,306 at Wells Fargo Arena must have felt like schooling sharks, ready to join in on a feeding frenzy that would bring Florida’s basketball season to an end. While the crowd was ready to blow the roof off the joint, the Gators were simply regaining their poise. Earlier in the year, this might have signaled the beginning of a run that would leave the Gators trailing by double figures. Wednesday night it was just the slap in the face the Gators needed.
“Yeah it was a wake-up call for us,” said Marreese Speights, who scored seven points down the stretch as part of a 22-7 closing run by the Gators. “We’ve been down before and we knew how to come back. We said let’s play our game hard and get good shots and we’ll be okay.”
Throughout the final 11 minutes of the game, the Gators showed the kind of poise that was unthinkable perhaps even just a couple of weeks ago when they were making an embarrassing first-round exit in the Southeastern Conference Tournament in Atlanta. There was no panic. They just went about doing their job and doing it well.
“This was a good team we were playing and we had to do all the little things to beat them, especially when they got the lead on us,” said Nick Calathes, who turned in 11 points, six rebounds and nine assists in the Gators’ 70-57 win over the Sun Devils in the quarter-finals of the National Invitation Tournament. “We got some big buckets when we had to, we played pretty good defense and we hustled for every loose ball. We knew what we had to do to win the game and we did it.”
Because they did all the little things, the Gators (24-11) are in a New York state of mind today. They’re heading to Madison Square Garden for a National Invitation Tournament semifinal date with Syracuse, riding the momentum of a third straight game of better than 50 percent shooting and solid defense that has held three straight opponents below 60 points.
“How long has it been since we did that?” asked Dan Werner in the locker room.
It hasn’t happened this year, so consider this impressive three-game run sort of a breakthrough for a team that coach Billy Donovan says is still trying to find its way.
“We’re still learning,” said Donovan after spending a few minutes in the hallways after the game speaking with a pair of scouts from the Denver Nuggets. “We’ve still got so much we have to learn but these are great kids and they want to get better. They really do want to be the best team that they can be and I’m proud of the way they’re responding. They’ve beaten a couple of good teams at home and now they’ve come on the road to beat a very good, well coached team in a tough environment.”
Translation: we’re not where we want to be but we’re a whole lot closer to it than we were a couple of weeks ago.
After that loss to Alabama in the SEC Tournament, the Gators got a couple of slaps in the face. The first one came on Selection Sunday when they heard 65 names called that weren’t the Florida Gators. That meant no NCAA Tournament for the first time in 10 years.
“I think that probably when the first day practice started these guys thought that no way that we wouldn’t make the NCAA Tournament,” said Donovan. “It’s not their fault they walked into it. We went to nine straight tournaments and these guys were probably seven, eight, nine years old so a lot of these guys that followed our program grew up seeing our program in the tournament all the time.”
The second slap was delivered when Donovan locked the Gators out of their state of the art practice facility when they got back to Gainesville from Atlanta. That was Donovan’s way of jolting them with a very hard dose of reality.
“It was a shock to us all,” said Jai Lucas, a freshman who has started all 35 games at the point this season. “Not making the tournament and then getting kicked out of our facility was a big wake up call.
“It kind of taught us the respect we have for the University of Florida and how far the basketball program has come. It’s got us in a better frame of mind. We’ve worked hard the last couple of weeks and we’ve practiced hard and it’s got us in a good position.”
Since the wake-up call, the Gators have responded with great practices where the emphasis is defense and hustle. They have always known how to share the basketball and play unselfishly on the offensive end. That showed with 60.5 percent shooting (26-43) from the field, 48 percent shooting (12-25) from the three-point line and 23 assists on their 26 made baskets against Arizona State, just like it showed in the previous NIT wins over San Diego State and Creighton.
So perhaps it was no accident that the Gators responded well to a second-half barrage of three-point shooting from the Sun Devils that put them in the lead and in position to be the team to make it to New York. The crowd was certainly ready for it when McMillan knocked down that three, the fifth straight long distance bomb by the Sun Devils in the second half.
McMillan’s three was the wake-up call the Gators needed. They responded with a five-pass possession that ended when Calathes found Chandler Parsons snaking into the paint from the corner. Parsons took the crisp pass from Calathes and dunked to tie the game at 50-50 with 10:41 remaining. The Gators regained the lead on the fourth three-pointer of the game by Walter Hodge, which came with 9:35 remaining on a pass from Werner after the Gators once again moved the ball around the perimeter with precision and purpose.
“When we have gotten down our guys have fought back,” said Donovan. “We were up six at the half and you know they were going to make a run at you. You know they were going to come out and make a run at us in the second half and they did and midway through the game they took the lead but you have to answer those runs.”
As the Gators finished up the under eight media time out with 7:57 left in the game, they huddled together a few steps away from Donovan.
“We just got together and I told these guys we have to get some good looks and the guys did a great job, found the open guy and we hit the shots,” said Hodge, who finished with a game-high 18 points to go with seven assists.
They expanded the lead to 56-50 on a free throw and a layup by Speights, who followed his own miss with 7:05 left. Arizona State got a three by Derek Glasser but Florida followed with five straight points, a three by Parsons from the top of the key off a nice pass from down in the low blocks by Speights and a nice feed into the low blocks by Lucas to Speights, who converted it into a lefty layup over James Pedergraph with 6:47 left to give the Gators a more comfortable 61-53 lead.
“Playing against their zone, we just had to keep moving the ball and keep playing unselfishly and that’s what we did,” said Parsons, who scored 15 points off the bench. Parsons hit 3-5 on three-point shots.
It was methodical destruction the rest of the way by a team in total control. The Gators found the open man, hit the shots, made all the hustle plays and made sure there was always a hand in the face of a potential shooter or a body in the way of a dribbler.
“I think we’re playing a lot better defense now,” said Calathes. “We still have a way to go before we can say we’re a good defensive team, but we’re getting better and we’re working at it.”
Arizona State finished the game 7-24 from the three-point line, which means that other than the 5-5 barrage that gave them the 50-48 lead, the Sun Devils were 2-19 on three-point shots.
“They missed some good, open looks,” said Donovan, “but I think we continued to improve on our three-point defense. Our kids are trying hard and they’re making the effort to get better and that’s encouraging for us.”
In three NIT games, the Gators have forced their opponents into 15-56 shooting from beyond the arc. Contrast that to the final two regular season games and the Alabama game in the SEC Tournament where the Gators gave up a combined 27-52 from the three-point stripe.
“Defense has been what we’ve emphasized in practice,” said Werner, who finished the night with 10 points, six rebounds, three assists and a blocked shot. “We can improve a lot on what we’re doing, but I think we’re definitely making improvement.”
Early defense and hot shooting got the Gators off to a 17-3 start in the first 6:06 of the game. The Gators did a nice job of recognizing the openings in the Arizona State zone and getting the ball to the right spot, which resulted in an opening salvo of four three-pointers. Back-to-back threes by Hodge, one from each corner, made it 17-3 with 13:54 left.
“All they play is that zone and we had to attack it the right way with spacing,” said Donovan. “We hit some shots early in the game to make them extend it and we made six shots in the first half and that gave us some driving opportunities.”
Arizona State slowly but surely worked its way back into the game, largely because James Harden was pretty much unstoppable. Because of Harden, the Gators had somewhat of a dilemma. Too quick to handle one-on-one, the Gators had to play more zone than they’ve played in the two previous NIT games. Too much zone left Florida vulnerable to Arizona State’s many capable three-point shooters, although they didn’t find the range (1-8) in the first half.
“I knew when we got out to a big lead --- whatever it was, 13-14 points --- that Arizona State was going to come back,” said Donovan.
Harden got most of his points when the Gators were in the man-to-man, carefully picking his spots to get into the paint. He scored an efficient 14 first half points on 5-7 shooting from the floor (1-2 on three-pointers) and 3-4 from the foul line. It was his ability to draw contact and get the ball in the hole that got the Sun Devils back into the game. He had consecutive possessions in which he scored three points the old fashioned way to draw the Sun Devils back to within six points, 31-25, with 3:33 left in the half. Although the Gators held a 35-29 lead at the intermission, the way Harden led Arizona State back left the crowd energized and the Sun Devils feeling like this was a game they could win.
When the Gators started out in a zone in the second half, Arizona State got hot and lit them up. It was Harden that got the Sun Devils warmed up with a three on the wing with 16:43 remaining when he backed Calathes off with a couple of dribbles then used the space he created to launch a three that found the bottom of the net to bring the Sun Devils within four, 40-36.
Chandler Parsons answered for the Gators with a three from the right corner but Arizona State’s Ty Abbott got his first three-point shot of the game to go down with 15:55 and Derek Glasser followed with another at 15:30 to get the Sun Devils back to within a single point at 43-42. After an exchange of two-pointers, Jerren Shipp knocked down an open three from the wing with 13:31 remaining to give the Sun Devils their first lead of the game at 47-45. Calathes answered with a three but then McMillan launched his three-ball to give Arizona State its final lead of the night at 50-48.
From that point on, the Gators took control of the game.
“We knew we had to play great defense and move the ball the last ten minutes and we did,” said Hodge. “I think we did a good job to finish the game.”
So it’s on to New York for the Gators and a chance to bring home a championship. Only two Division I basketball teams can finish the 2008 season with a win and a championship and the Gators are one of the teams in the hunt. It isn’t the NCAA, but Donovan knew all along that this team was going to have to forge a new path.
“It’s a different road that our team has to take,” said Donovan. “People want to compare what we did the last two years in the NCAA Tournament but there is no correlation at all. We’re starting over with a new group of guys that are trying to get better and improve. These guys have had a very good year considering we lost five NBA players and the top three-point field goal maker in NCAA Tournament history. You’re not going to pick up where you left off. It’s these guys turn to go through a process.”
GAME NOTES: The Gators out-rebounded Arizona State, 29-18, led by Speights, who grabbed 10. Speights scored 14 points, on 6-9 shooting from the field and 2-3 shooting from the foul line … The Gators were 6-13 from the three-point line in the first half, 6-12 in the second … Neither team scored off a fast break … In three NIT games the Gators have combined to shoot 54.3 percent (87-161) while holding three opponents to 42.8 percent (63-147) … The Gators have a 29-rebound advantage in three NIT games
“Yeah it was a wake-up call for us,” said Marreese Speights, who scored seven points down the stretch as part of a 22-7 closing run by the Gators. “We’ve been down before and we knew how to come back. We said let’s play our game hard and get good shots and we’ll be okay.”
Throughout the final 11 minutes of the game, the Gators showed the kind of poise that was unthinkable perhaps even just a couple of weeks ago when they were making an embarrassing first-round exit in the Southeastern Conference Tournament in Atlanta. There was no panic. They just went about doing their job and doing it well.
“This was a good team we were playing and we had to do all the little things to beat them, especially when they got the lead on us,” said Nick Calathes, who turned in 11 points, six rebounds and nine assists in the Gators’ 70-57 win over the Sun Devils in the quarter-finals of the National Invitation Tournament. “We got some big buckets when we had to, we played pretty good defense and we hustled for every loose ball. We knew what we had to do to win the game and we did it.”
Because they did all the little things, the Gators (24-11) are in a New York state of mind today. They’re heading to Madison Square Garden for a National Invitation Tournament semifinal date with Syracuse, riding the momentum of a third straight game of better than 50 percent shooting and solid defense that has held three straight opponents below 60 points.
“How long has it been since we did that?” asked Dan Werner in the locker room.
It hasn’t happened this year, so consider this impressive three-game run sort of a breakthrough for a team that coach Billy Donovan says is still trying to find its way.
“We’re still learning,” said Donovan after spending a few minutes in the hallways after the game speaking with a pair of scouts from the Denver Nuggets. “We’ve still got so much we have to learn but these are great kids and they want to get better. They really do want to be the best team that they can be and I’m proud of the way they’re responding. They’ve beaten a couple of good teams at home and now they’ve come on the road to beat a very good, well coached team in a tough environment.”
Translation: we’re not where we want to be but we’re a whole lot closer to it than we were a couple of weeks ago.
After that loss to Alabama in the SEC Tournament, the Gators got a couple of slaps in the face. The first one came on Selection Sunday when they heard 65 names called that weren’t the Florida Gators. That meant no NCAA Tournament for the first time in 10 years.
“I think that probably when the first day practice started these guys thought that no way that we wouldn’t make the NCAA Tournament,” said Donovan. “It’s not their fault they walked into it. We went to nine straight tournaments and these guys were probably seven, eight, nine years old so a lot of these guys that followed our program grew up seeing our program in the tournament all the time.”
The second slap was delivered when Donovan locked the Gators out of their state of the art practice facility when they got back to Gainesville from Atlanta. That was Donovan’s way of jolting them with a very hard dose of reality.
“It was a shock to us all,” said Jai Lucas, a freshman who has started all 35 games at the point this season. “Not making the tournament and then getting kicked out of our facility was a big wake up call.
“It kind of taught us the respect we have for the University of Florida and how far the basketball program has come. It’s got us in a better frame of mind. We’ve worked hard the last couple of weeks and we’ve practiced hard and it’s got us in a good position.”
Since the wake-up call, the Gators have responded with great practices where the emphasis is defense and hustle. They have always known how to share the basketball and play unselfishly on the offensive end. That showed with 60.5 percent shooting (26-43) from the field, 48 percent shooting (12-25) from the three-point line and 23 assists on their 26 made baskets against Arizona State, just like it showed in the previous NIT wins over San Diego State and Creighton.
So perhaps it was no accident that the Gators responded well to a second-half barrage of three-point shooting from the Sun Devils that put them in the lead and in position to be the team to make it to New York. The crowd was certainly ready for it when McMillan knocked down that three, the fifth straight long distance bomb by the Sun Devils in the second half.
McMillan’s three was the wake-up call the Gators needed. They responded with a five-pass possession that ended when Calathes found Chandler Parsons snaking into the paint from the corner. Parsons took the crisp pass from Calathes and dunked to tie the game at 50-50 with 10:41 remaining. The Gators regained the lead on the fourth three-pointer of the game by Walter Hodge, which came with 9:35 remaining on a pass from Werner after the Gators once again moved the ball around the perimeter with precision and purpose.
“When we have gotten down our guys have fought back,” said Donovan. “We were up six at the half and you know they were going to make a run at you. You know they were going to come out and make a run at us in the second half and they did and midway through the game they took the lead but you have to answer those runs.”
As the Gators finished up the under eight media time out with 7:57 left in the game, they huddled together a few steps away from Donovan.
“We just got together and I told these guys we have to get some good looks and the guys did a great job, found the open guy and we hit the shots,” said Hodge, who finished with a game-high 18 points to go with seven assists.
They expanded the lead to 56-50 on a free throw and a layup by Speights, who followed his own miss with 7:05 left. Arizona State got a three by Derek Glasser but Florida followed with five straight points, a three by Parsons from the top of the key off a nice pass from down in the low blocks by Speights and a nice feed into the low blocks by Lucas to Speights, who converted it into a lefty layup over James Pedergraph with 6:47 left to give the Gators a more comfortable 61-53 lead.
“Playing against their zone, we just had to keep moving the ball and keep playing unselfishly and that’s what we did,” said Parsons, who scored 15 points off the bench. Parsons hit 3-5 on three-point shots.
It was methodical destruction the rest of the way by a team in total control. The Gators found the open man, hit the shots, made all the hustle plays and made sure there was always a hand in the face of a potential shooter or a body in the way of a dribbler.
“I think we’re playing a lot better defense now,” said Calathes. “We still have a way to go before we can say we’re a good defensive team, but we’re getting better and we’re working at it.”
Arizona State finished the game 7-24 from the three-point line, which means that other than the 5-5 barrage that gave them the 50-48 lead, the Sun Devils were 2-19 on three-point shots.
“They missed some good, open looks,” said Donovan, “but I think we continued to improve on our three-point defense. Our kids are trying hard and they’re making the effort to get better and that’s encouraging for us.”
In three NIT games, the Gators have forced their opponents into 15-56 shooting from beyond the arc. Contrast that to the final two regular season games and the Alabama game in the SEC Tournament where the Gators gave up a combined 27-52 from the three-point stripe.
“Defense has been what we’ve emphasized in practice,” said Werner, who finished the night with 10 points, six rebounds, three assists and a blocked shot. “We can improve a lot on what we’re doing, but I think we’re definitely making improvement.”
Early defense and hot shooting got the Gators off to a 17-3 start in the first 6:06 of the game. The Gators did a nice job of recognizing the openings in the Arizona State zone and getting the ball to the right spot, which resulted in an opening salvo of four three-pointers. Back-to-back threes by Hodge, one from each corner, made it 17-3 with 13:54 left.
“All they play is that zone and we had to attack it the right way with spacing,” said Donovan. “We hit some shots early in the game to make them extend it and we made six shots in the first half and that gave us some driving opportunities.”
Arizona State slowly but surely worked its way back into the game, largely because James Harden was pretty much unstoppable. Because of Harden, the Gators had somewhat of a dilemma. Too quick to handle one-on-one, the Gators had to play more zone than they’ve played in the two previous NIT games. Too much zone left Florida vulnerable to Arizona State’s many capable three-point shooters, although they didn’t find the range (1-8) in the first half.
“I knew when we got out to a big lead --- whatever it was, 13-14 points --- that Arizona State was going to come back,” said Donovan.
Harden got most of his points when the Gators were in the man-to-man, carefully picking his spots to get into the paint. He scored an efficient 14 first half points on 5-7 shooting from the floor (1-2 on three-pointers) and 3-4 from the foul line. It was his ability to draw contact and get the ball in the hole that got the Sun Devils back into the game. He had consecutive possessions in which he scored three points the old fashioned way to draw the Sun Devils back to within six points, 31-25, with 3:33 left in the half. Although the Gators held a 35-29 lead at the intermission, the way Harden led Arizona State back left the crowd energized and the Sun Devils feeling like this was a game they could win.
When the Gators started out in a zone in the second half, Arizona State got hot and lit them up. It was Harden that got the Sun Devils warmed up with a three on the wing with 16:43 remaining when he backed Calathes off with a couple of dribbles then used the space he created to launch a three that found the bottom of the net to bring the Sun Devils within four, 40-36.
Chandler Parsons answered for the Gators with a three from the right corner but Arizona State’s Ty Abbott got his first three-point shot of the game to go down with 15:55 and Derek Glasser followed with another at 15:30 to get the Sun Devils back to within a single point at 43-42. After an exchange of two-pointers, Jerren Shipp knocked down an open three from the wing with 13:31 remaining to give the Sun Devils their first lead of the game at 47-45. Calathes answered with a three but then McMillan launched his three-ball to give Arizona State its final lead of the night at 50-48.
From that point on, the Gators took control of the game.
“We knew we had to play great defense and move the ball the last ten minutes and we did,” said Hodge. “I think we did a good job to finish the game.”
So it’s on to New York for the Gators and a chance to bring home a championship. Only two Division I basketball teams can finish the 2008 season with a win and a championship and the Gators are one of the teams in the hunt. It isn’t the NCAA, but Donovan knew all along that this team was going to have to forge a new path.
“It’s a different road that our team has to take,” said Donovan. “People want to compare what we did the last two years in the NCAA Tournament but there is no correlation at all. We’re starting over with a new group of guys that are trying to get better and improve. These guys have had a very good year considering we lost five NBA players and the top three-point field goal maker in NCAA Tournament history. You’re not going to pick up where you left off. It’s these guys turn to go through a process.”
GAME NOTES: The Gators out-rebounded Arizona State, 29-18, led by Speights, who grabbed 10. Speights scored 14 points, on 6-9 shooting from the field and 2-3 shooting from the foul line … The Gators were 6-13 from the three-point line in the first half, 6-12 in the second … Neither team scored off a fast break … In three NIT games the Gators have combined to shoot 54.3 percent (87-161) while holding three opponents to 42.8 percent (63-147) … The Gators have a 29-rebound advantage in three NIT games