Hoops Report – Florida

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Hoops Report – Florida

Marcus Thornton (2) drives towards the net. (Photo by Sean Taylor)

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Welcome to the Bulldawg Illustrated Hoops report. It’s like going to Six Flags half drunk. You just got the hope the fun outweighs the nauseaAnd the Dawgs sure played a roller coaster of a game on Wednesday. It could have been as brutal a loss as we had in Baton Rouge last Saturday, but amazingly the free throw line saved us this time. Now we’re 1-2 in the SEC with the Gators coming to town. While they struggled out of the gates, they’re 3-0 in the SEC now. I can assure you this team will be well coached and play solid defense. But before we discuss how to beat the Gators, let’s talk about Vandy. 

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We went up to Vandy with shorthanded. Kenny Paul Geno has a broken wrist, Juwan Parker tweaked a hamstring or achilles against LSU, and Yante Maten was unluckily struck by a car traveling at a high rate of speed Monday night. Fortunately he’s a leaper and landed on the windshield or it could’ve been much worse. So with a short bench and little room for error, obviously Taylor Echols took over. The walk-on turned scholarhipper hit two huge threes in the first half. Kenny Gaines shot well very early as well and lead all Dawgs with 17 for the game. However, he got in foul trouble mdway through the first and spent a large portion of the half on the bench.

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Luckily, the Dawgs played exceptional defense for 18 minutes and built a 13 point lead. Then the Dawgs learned the half is actually 20 minutes long as Vandy closed the half on a 6-0 and barely missed a three pointer with the buzzer sounding as well. When the second half started, Kenny Gaines scored the first five points and the Dawgs were looking good. The ball was moving and the offense was clicking. When Gaines hit his last three of the night at the 5:54 mark the Dawgs were up 11. However, that was our last field goal of the night. We would end up playing mediocre defense and making some bone-headed offensive plays down the stretch. That allowed Vandy to close to 63-61. But the Dawgs hit 9-10 from the FT line in the last five minutes and somehow held on to win by three. We only committed 11 turnovers. That is close to where we need to be. And while we only shot 66% from the FT line, we did seal the game at the stripe. So a road win is a road win. Now, what’s next for this undermanned team? Oh, the only SEC team that’s been to the last three Elite Eights.

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I can tell you this. There’s two ways I know to beat Florida. You need a guy like Terence Woodbury to pour in 32 points on 13 total shots like he did in Athens in 2009. If you can get 32 from one guy and 50 from the rest of the team, you can win. Unfortunately, that’s the easiest way. The second way is turn the ball over less than five times and shoot over 90% from the FT line. The reason? Billy Donovan relies on defense for offense. If you don’t turn it over, you take points off the board for them. Second, they play fierce defense. You’re going to get fouled. Many times the foul is non-shooting. So once you’re in the bonus, you may have two one-and-one attempts at the stripe. If you miss the first then you’ve wasted two points, not one. They have held us below 50 a number of times recently because of the lack of ball handling by our team. If it happens again, we’re 0-2 at home in the SEC. We only lost one SEC game at home all year last season and we didn’t have Kenny Gaines that night. It would really put us behind the eight ball to lose the first two this year with Kentucky still planning to show up in Athens as well.

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Ok, the Dawgs have to be all in for this one. While the Repulsive Reptiles started out struglling, they’ve put it together. They’re looking to run their record to 4-0. This is must win, but it’s very, very important. We need a large, loud crowd. Tipoff is a 2 pm. Run grab some bloody marys and brunch at your favorite established and get a little vocal when you hit the Steg! We’re understaffed. Hopefully, we’ll be underfed as well. There’s nothing more dangerous than a hungry Dawg. Let’s turn the Coliseum into a scream machine. Go Dawgs!!

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