Florida’s exhibition loss to Baylor gave Todd Golden exactly the kind of reminder he didn’t need to wait long for.
The Gators walked into Sunday’s matchup treating it like a tune-up. Once the ball was tipped in Jacksonville, though, the temperature changed fast.
The game got tight, the decisions got rushed and Florida started playing like the result mattered. By the end, the Gators had fallen 82-76 in overtime to Scott Drew’s Bears.
Golden said Wednesday that the whole thing exposed the challenge of trying to keep an exhibition in its proper lane.
“You go into the exhibition game being, ‘Hey, who cares if we win or lose? It doesn’t matter.
We’re going to play rotations and do these things,'” Golden said Wednesday. “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.
“That’s the challenge.”
Florida’s effort wasn’t the problem. Its discipline was.
The Gators shot just 4 for 30 from 3-point range, a brutal 13.3% that dragged the offense down and echoed the long-range issues that plagued last season’s team. Senior power forward Alex Condon also left points at the line, going 1 for 6 on free throws. Boogie Fland picked up two early fouls, forcing Florida to adjust, and the Gators’ bench managed only three points while Baylor’s reserves poured in 33.
The result was a heavy workload for the starters. Condon and All-SEC small forward Thomas Haugh each played more than 38 minutes, while Fland and Denzel Aberdeen logged more than 35 apiece. Rueben Chinyelu also carried a bigger load than usual, playing 33 minutes - eight more than his average last season.
“I’m going to play them a lot,” Golden said. ” But do I want to play the bench more?
Yes. Do we need to play the bench more?
Probably yes.”
Even with the loss, Florida still got the preseason respect that came with being named No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll a day later. Golden likes the look of his roster, but he knows the standard rises quickly when that ranking shows up.
“This group is going to play hard,” Golden said. “That’s not something that I ever worry about. We played hard on Sunday, but we didn’t play that smart.
“That’s kind of the fine line for us.”
That line was especially visible from deep. Golden expects Urban Klavzar, last season’s SEC Sixth Man of the Year, to be far better than 0 for 7 from the field and 0 for 5 from 3. Aberdeen had a rough night, too, missing all 10 of his 3-point attempts.
Florida’s shooting profile last season made those numbers sting a little more, since the Gators hit only 31.2% from 3-point range and ranked 317th among 361 Division I teams. Golden isn’t projecting that kind of inconsistency to carry over.
“Those two guys have a long track record of being good shooters.” he said. “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. I’m going to trust those guys to step up and make shots.
“I think they will. “They’ve proven to do it before.”
Haugh was one of the brighter spots against Baylor. He finished with 19 points, five rebounds and two steals, but he also fouled out and left some production on the table. He was good, just not quite enough to tilt the night.
“The great thing about Tommy is he wants to be coached and holds himself to a really high standard, Golden said. “We ask more of Tommy than probably any guy on the team.
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.”
Florida gets another exhibition shot Tuesday at home against Stetson, and Golden wants to see the lessons from Baylor show up quickly. The next real measuring stick arrives Nov. 2, when the Gators open the season against Miami in Tampa.
“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,” Golden said. “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.”
Golden said the bigger fix is simple in theory and harder in practice: sharper decisions, cleaner execution and more selflessness for the full 40 minutes.
“We need to play unselfishly for 40 minutes,” he said. “All those little things that sometimes might slip away when you think talent can take care of it. We’ve got to compete smarter.
“I think we’ll calm ourselves down and play a little bit better moving forward.”
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