It was only a preseason exhibition matchup, but Florida basketball got off to a disappointing start on Sunday with an 82-76 overtime loss to Baylor in Jacksonville.
Todd Golden's team was unable to take control of the game — one that featured 11 lead changes and ties throughout regulation and overtime — despite striking first. The Gators floundered from the floor, finishing with a 25-for-72 (34.7%) overall effort — including an abysmal 4-for-29 (13.8%) mark from 3-point range — while also struggling to the tune of a 22-for-35 (62.9%) showing from the free-throw line.
However, Florida did finish with a 46-41 rebounding edge overall after doubling the Bears up in the first half, 20-10, and dominated on the offensive glass by a 26-12 margin. But
it was not enough to overcome poor shooting and lack of bench scoring.
On Wednesday, Golden spoke with the press about the loss, as well as the status of some of his players and the upcoming matchup against Stetson. Here is a look at what he said to the media.
Todd Golden's biggest takeaways from the Baylor game
A lot of different things. Surface-level stuff, we know we got to shoot the ball better. That was something that really affected us in a lot of different ways. But the positive of having a result like that is you tend to look at it from more of a pessimistic lens and you kind of evaluate and grade what you’re doing a little bit harder. There were some things that we have to clean up and get better before the first game.
But I think the main takeaway — and what I talked to the guys about — is that this group is going to play hard. That’s not something that I ever worry about in terms of our effort level. We played hard on Sunday, but we didn’t play that smart. I think that’s kind of the fine line for us.
We’re always going to be a team that plays hard, but I want us to compete and compete the right way. And I consider competing when you play hard and use your brain better, and that was a good kind of lesson that we can’t get away with just playing hard. We got to compete smarter, and if we do that, I think we’ll be all right.
On getting tested with preseason matchups
Yeah, absolutely. I think you got to put yourself in a situation where some adversity might arise to kind of figure out what you’re about and how you look. Not taking anything away from our other opponents, but Baylor is a better example of what we’re going to see at really important times of the year.
To their credit, I thought they gave us a different look than what we’ve seen in practice and what we’ve seen all fall. So, took us a little bit to kind of get our legs and feel comfortable. But as I said, I think we’ve already been able to teach quite a bit from the tape, and we’ll continue to do that you know over the next couple weeks.
On whether Florida took too many bad 3s
No. Well, yes, but I don’t think that was our biggest issue. We took 30 — I think it said 29 in the box score, but we took 30. I would say probably seven or eight of those were shots that we would probably want to work for something a little bit better.
Add also the non-analytical part of the game. When momentum is there or not. Like some shots when you’re rolling might be a little better than some shots when you’re needing a possession, to come away with a possession with something to show for it. So, I thought we probably took a few too many. But we got a lot of great ones, too — got a lot of great ones.
So, balance that way. I thought we did a really bad job making decisions, plain and simple. We have a really bright team. I think, generally speaking, that’s one of our strengths. And for whatever reason, advantage, disadvantage situations, four-on-threes or things of that nature, I thought we did not make the right play enough – and I think that affected us.
We took 17 more shots than Baylor in the game. We took three more free throws. By the math, that’s pretty good. But we also could have got better shots, too. So we had the volume, but I want the quality to be a little better as well.
On relying heavily on Florida’s starting five
I’m going to rely on those five a lot.
On them playing 30-plus minutes
But yeah, but high 30s and things like that. There were 45 minutes in that game, so usually there’s only 40, so it would have been lower 30s. I’m going to play them a lot. Yeah. But do I want to play the bench more? Yes. Do we need to play the bench more? Probably yes.
Was playing the starters a byproduct of facing Baylor in front of fans?
It’s one of the downsides of playing an exhibition. You go into the exhibition game being like, "Hey, who cares if we win or lose? It doesn’t matter. We’re going to play rotations and do all these things." And then I’m staring down there at Scott Drew, who’s a Hall of Fame, national championship head coach, and we’re going to compete. It just kind of happens.
So yeah, that’s the challenge. Like, we go into it with a very unemotional approach in how we want to do it. But games are a little different. So you get in there, crowds in there, you want to put a good product on the floor. It’s easy to say, "Oh, just play all the guys. Who cares what happens?" Easier to say that than reality. That’s why in transparency, we’ve been a bigger proponent of closed-door scrimmages in the past, just because you don’t feel as much responsibility or pressure to win the game.
So, it’s just something that we’ll continue to think about as we kind of build our preseason out moving forward. But yeah, you get in those moments … saw some other teams compete the week before and saw coaches going nuts. I’m like, I’m not going to do that in this game. I’m going to keep my cool. We’ll save it. So a lot of different things about exhibition games.
What gives Golden confidence that UF can solve the 3-point shooting woes?
As simple as Denzel and Urb combined to take 15 3s in that game. They probably took three or four that probably could have gotten better shots — maybe a little quick on those. But those two guys have a long track record of being good shooters. Urby, I think, shot over 40 from three in league play — Sixth Man of the Year. So he has the track record.
Denzel, obviously, the same. Shot it well with us. Shot it well with Kentucky last year. When we get those two guys that volume of 3s up like that, if we do that and we lose, we got to live with it. It’s not like we’re getting unproven or non-shooting guys those attempts.
So again, I’m going to trust those guys to step up and make shots. I think they will. They’ve proven to do it before. So that’s really it.
On the response from the players since the loss to Baylor
Similar to what I was saying before: we didn’t go into that game taking Baylor for granted. Like not respecting them or anything like that. The thing that we took away from it, as I said earlier, I think our guys realized, like, "Crap, we are a pretty good team," but like we still need to execute really well if we want to be the best we can be.
We still need to make good decisions. We need to play unselfishly for 40 minutes. All those little things that sometimes might slip away when you think talent can take care of it. We played hard. We fought. We were on the floor for loose balls. All those things I was good with, but we’ve got to compete smarter.
And a lot of that, as I said earlier, goes back to the decisions we made when we go into situations where we had advantages and disadvantages. If Baylor had two on the ball, right? That means when we get it out we have four on three. Like we have to make the right decision to take advantage of that, and we didn’t do it. It wasn’t like one, or two or three time. It was a big issue after watching the tape.
Now, it hasn’t been a big issue for us in the preseason. I don’t feel that’s an issue for us. My hope is that it’s just going up against another team, you know with that, length, size and quickness for the first time. We’re just trying to — ran through a little bit. I think we’ll calm ourselves down and play a little bit better moving forward.
On how to keep the offense from being stagnant
Open looks, I thought we were fine. So, the way I like to think about is that we want to win the shot quality battle against our opponent. What I mean by that is there’s really three types of shots you can take. You can take a rim-2. A non-rim-2, which would be considered like a mid-range jump shot or a 3-pointer right?
So when we go back and we look at the box score, whether it’s in halftime or at the end of a game. We want to make sure that we are taking more rim-2s than our opponents. We want to be taking less non-rim-2s than our opponents. We generally speaking we want to be taking more threes than our opponents.
So, measured in that out in the Baylor game, I think we had 28 rim-2s compared to their 15 rim-2s so we were able to get to the rim almost twice as much as they were. We took 13 mid-range jump shots. They took 17. So we won that battle in terms of taking less. Then we took 13 more threes than they did and three more free throws. We were a little stagnant against the switching.
The things that I want to see is that when we drive and they help on penetration, like making the simple pass a little more instead of trying to drive through it. Those were the things that I wasn’t happy with. Like our ball movement I thought was okay. We didn’t get the ball to the other side of the floor a lot.
Like if we were playing in the ball screen on the right side and we get to the middle floor. I want us to go play over there where there’s no help defense. We just kept coming back there, which again goes back to the decision-making I was talking about earlier. Looking at the shot quality battle. Even though there is no doubt we have to do a lot better offensively, we still did okay process-wise that way.
On Florida’s bench combining for just 3 points against Baylor
We need more from them, to be honest. The two we know will be there for us are Zay and Urb (Isaiah Brown and Urban Klavzar). Those two were elite for us and helped us win the league by 3 games. We know we can count on those guys. We want one or two of these other guys to step up and take advantage of the opportunity in front of them.
Everybody who has followed our program knows we’d like to play eight or nine guys. We have a solid seven. I need a couple more to step up and make us feel comfortable about putting them in the game.
On whether CJ Ingram is the 8th man
CJ’s not healthy.
Would Ingram be the 8th man once healthy?
He definitely can be. We’ve got to get him on the floor. I feel bad for him. It’s been a tough injury, one we didn’t anticipate being this long, but it’s kept him out. CJ wants to be out there- I don’t want to say more than me– we’re pretty equal in terms of how much we want him to be out on the floor, but your best availability is availability.
If you can’t play, you can’t be the eighth. We need him to get back on the floor. We need him to get back in shape. He’s got some time before he can get back. If anyone can do it, it can be him. He’s one of the better athletes you are going to see. He’s a hard worker. He’s very coachable. He’s just not available right now.
On what Ingram’s outlook looks like
We think he’s very close to being able to get back out there. But until he does, it’s hard to think of him as someone who can help.
On whether his issue is muscular or structural
It is not structural, nothing that requires surgery. Just kind of a back deal, for lack of a better term.
Is Isaiah Brown pressing? What does Golden need from him?
You know what, Isaiah’s had an incredible fall. Like, he’s given us more confidence from the end of last season. He came back in incredible shape; he had really worked on his body. When we come back for school, you kind of see, like, "All right, what were they doing in August? Were they hanging out or were they working out?" And Isaiah was working out. He looked great.
His approach, like Isaiah, is an awesome young man. He’s a little goofy, but like, fun. And he came back very serious and focused. And I would say outside of the usual suspects, he had about as good of a fall as anybody. So I’m not worried about him not performing well in the Baylor game. I do think he probably was putting a little too much pressure on himself, or worried about impacting the game instead of just letting the game come to him.
But I don’t mind that as much. You know, I think that’s coming from a good place. He wants to help the team. Isaiah, part of why he’s such a special dude is he’s a very unselfish and egoless guy. He loves Florida, he wants to be here, wants to help the team win. And I think he’ll use that Baylor effort to kind of drive and motivate him to keep getting better before the season starts.
But as I said, I don’t have any long-term concern about him being able to help us. I think he’s gonna have a great year. Him and Urban, I would put both of them in that same bucket.
On defending without fouling
That was an issue for us — the tough ones, they don’t feel like they hurt you that much. The ones that come at the beginning of the half that are not good plays. And so, we talked to Boog(ie Fland) about he had two in the first, I think, eight minutes of the game on the perimeter, just trying to make a play. And we want him (to). He’s one of the best ball stealers in the country, so I want him to be thinking that way.
But when he tries to make a play on the ball with 17 minutes to go and then tries to rip the big with 12 minutes to go, and now he’s got two. We’re not in the bonus yet, but now the seventh foul that puts them in the bonus would have been the fifth foul otherwise, right? So it adds up, and we talked to our team about that in film.
Just explaining like, "Hey, we can’t give up these fouls early in the half because of the way we play." We play physical, dude. Like, we’re gonna have a moving screen here and there. We’re gonna have a rebounding foul here and there. Like, those are the ones that we’ll accept because that’s part of our DNA. But we can’t have the pointless fouls. And how we’ve been teaching is, like, it’s a point. Any time you have a pointless foul here or there, it’ll end up — if you get into the bonus — being worth a point that you lose in that moment that you don’t really think about, and it all adds up.
I would say my biggest takeaway from the defensive side was that. Like you said, the way we forced midranges, they made some tough ones. Did a really good (job) guarding the line, though they got us in transition a couple times. But our game plan, the way we execute, we just got to keep them off the line. They can’t shoot 32 free throws. Has to be closer to 20.
On what he needs to Stetson to feel like his players are ready for Miami
It’s hard to answer that, just because we’re playing Stetson and they’re a lower level. I expect us to play hard and I expect us to execute. Our Miami game will be a real test to see if we made the strides need to address the issues that we had against Baylor.
I think we will — and I’m not trying to be disrespectful to Stetson, I’m just being honest — we can play with our talent our length and our size and we’ll be OK, but we won’t be able to do that against Miami. Miami is a top 15 or 10 team right now, with Malik Reneau eligible. That will be the first real test, sort to speak.
On Thomas Haugh’s performance against Baylor
I think he did some good things and I also think he needs to do other things a lot better. The great thing about Tommy is he wants to be coached and holds himself to a really high standard. We ask more of Tommy than probably any guy on the team, especially with how we play. He starts at the 3, then we move him to the trail when we’re playing without Rueben or Condo.
So he has to know, play and execute two positions, which is a little different. But I want his decision-making to be a little better. I thought he was one of the guys who was trying maybe a little too hard to make a play instead of letting the right decision come to him. With that being said, I thought he made some great shots, he got five great 3s and did a great job from the line and had some really great defensive moments.
But I’m always going to expect a lot from him, from now until the rest of the year.
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This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Florida's Todd Golden discusses preseason Baylor loss, Stetson matchup
