In Florida’s last meeting with Vanderbilt, Billy Donovan decided to wait before throwing his full-court press at the Commodores, allowing both teams to enjoy nearly three opening minutes of clean, turnover-free basketball.
He then unleashed Will Yeguete.
Vanderbilt’s John Jenkins described what happened next as the difference in the game. So did UF freshman Brad Beal, who referred to the Feb. 4 Southeastern Conference clash as the Gators’ best performance up to that point.
After hitting their second shot, a jumper by Erving Walker, the Gators began to press, led by the 6-foot-7 Yeguete fresh off the bench and hovering at the front. Over the ensuing 37 minutes, UF forced 17 turnovers and scored 19 points off bonus possessions to outpace Vanderbilt in a 73-65 win.
More than three weeks before his season-ending foot injury, Yeguete was able to take credit for three of the Gators’ nine steals that afternoon — a team-high. He also had a block and eight rebounds.
Heading into Memorial Gym tonight at 9, Donovan is unsure if the same result will follow No. 16 Florida (22-7, 10-4 SEC) for its road trip to Vanderbilt (20-9, 9-5 SEC).
“The press was really, really good here, but make no mistake about it, the press started in a lot of ways with Will,” Donovan said. “He had a huge impact in the game in the press. So whether or not we can get the same result out of the press in Nashville that we did here in Gainesville, I don’t know.”
Though the Gators are generally hesitant to press heavily on the road, the turnover-prone Commodores have shown they are susceptible to mistakes even in their own gym. Vanderbilt has endured six home games this season with 15 or more giveaways and is in the bottom half of the league rankings in turnovers per game and percentage.
Without Yeguete, Donovan said if Florida chooses to press it will primarily rely on Beal, who has a team-best 38 steals, and 6-foot-6 sophomore Casey Prather off the bench to help trap ball-handlers in the open court.
“It will be something that we will definitely look at and definitely do, but I would imagine that would be something that Vanderbilt would obviously be working on, focused on, and like I said earlier, most teams do a better job handling the press at home than they do the road,” Donovan said.
Through 14 SEC games, Vanderbilt has built up the SEC’s second-leading scoring offense behind Jenkins’ league-high 20 points per game and senior guard Jeffery Taylor’s average of 17.3 points.
While the Commodores are also shooting a conference-leading 42.3 percent from three, the Gators held them more than 10 percentage points under their league average in February on 8-of-25 shooting.
“That’s going to be one of our biggest challenges since the first game because those guys are so great at scoring,” Beal said. “Their whole team is so good at using screens and creating offense off of those screens, so we basically just have to maintain our composure on defense and then just be mentally ready for everything that comes to us.”
As Beal and the rest of Florida’s guards try to slow down Vanderbilt’s perimeter attack, members of the Gators’ thinned frontcourt like Patric Young will be trying to simply remain on the court.
Due to foul trouble, Young played sparingly in UF’s first meeting with Vanderbilt and had just two points and four rebounds in 14 minutes.
“I’m just going to have to play smart,” Young said. “With Will out, I definitely cannot afford to get into foul trouble. Our team, we lack the depth, and to have to go smaller against one of the teams that’s already big — one of the biggest teams in our conference — we’ll have to play a lot smarter.”
Contact John Boothe at jboothe@alligator.org.
In the first meeting between Florida and Vanderbilt, the Gators forced 17 turnovers with their press defense and scored 19 points off those giveaways in a 73-65 win. But coach Billy Donovan said Florida may change its approach tonight with forward Will Yeguete out of the lineup.
