After unloading three big bodies to graduation and the NBA Draft, the Gators are trying to pick up some speed.
With an enviable amount of depth at the guard position compared to past years, coach Billy Donovan feels Florida has the athleticism to press more on defense and become a more dangerous team in transition.
“I think because we have speed and quickness in our backcourt, that we really need to try and get up the floor and be more of a full-court defensive team,” he said.
While Donovan doesn’t expect the Gators to hold a pressing defense for a full 40 minutes, he has the man power this year to entertain the notion.
UF returns its top two defensive guards in junior Kenny Boynton and sophomore Scottie Wilbekin, to go with senior Erving Walker, who led the Gators in scoring last season.
Junior Mike Rosario, a 6-foot-3 combo guard, is also eligible to play after sitting out a year following his transfer from Rutgers, and highly touted freshman Bradley Beal is being welcomed into the fold.
“Certainly the last few years, I think with our depth in the backcourt, really Erving and Kenny Boynton logging so many minutes, it made it very, very difficult for us to extend the floor like we need to,” Donovan said.
Walker said he doesn’t quite know how the Gators’ on-court product will take shape until practice starts, but he anticipates they will be able to force more turnovers.
Last year, Florida was in the bottom half of the Southeastern Conference in both steals and turnover margin.
“Knowing that we have a lot more depth, and knowing in the past that coach Donovan liked to press a lot, so I think we’ll be a much more fast-paced team and try to get up and down the court a lot,” Walker said.
With the departures of 6-foot-10 senior starters Vernon Macklin and Chandler Parsons, as well as 6-foot-8 Alex Tyus, Donovan said the current down-low combination of three sophomores, a junior and a redshirt freshman will also have to play an aggressive role in running the court.
“Any time that you get into a situation where you’re pressing like that, you’ve got to have depth in your frontcourt,” he said. “And right now, that’s probably one area that we don’t know what kind of depth we’re going to have.”
Though some of the team’s post players will have to fill new roles, no one has a bigger chance to take a step forward than 6-foot-9 sophomore Patric Young.
As a consensus five-star recruit coming out of high school, Young faced high expectations last season, with some billing him a favorite to become the SEC’s Freshman of the Year — an award that went to Kentucky forward Terrence Jones.
Young averaged 3.4 points per game in 2010, but Donovan said it’s not the center’s offensive game that must progress in his second year.
“He’s got a great motor, and he’s got great energy,” Donovan said. “He needs to utilize those things. Patric doesn’t need to be a guy that’s totally consumed with his offense around the basket as much as he needs to be consumed with the fact that we lost about nine-and-a-half, 10 rebounds a game from last year.”
Between Summer B and the beginning of the fall, Young said he worked out three times a day on his finishing skills, running the floor and conditioning.
“We’re going to be a lot of run-and-gun and pass the ball and swing the ball around a lot,” Young said. “We’re a really heavy guard team this year. It’ll be really important for those guys to be able to get open and get their shots off. It definitely helps me as well, because I want to be one of the best rebounders in the country.”
Contact John Boothe at jboothe@alligator.org.
Returning center Patric Young has big shoes to fill in the wake of the departures of Vernon Macklin, Chandler Parsons and Alex Tyus.
