With nearly a week off to reflect on its latest loss, UF is ready to get back out on the court and under the lights.
Those bulbs won’t be brighter than on tonight’s national stage when Florida plays Rutgers (5-4) at 7 in Piscataway, N.J., in a game being televised on ESPN2.
Coming off a compressed week that saw Florida play four games in an eight-day span, UF has had the luxury of a near-full week of practice.
“The good thing about this week was we just got to focus on us and Rutgers,” guard Jordan Jones said. “There were no other factors coming into play or any other games we had to worry about.”
That week also provided the Gators (3-4) some time to digest their poor start to the season.
“There hasn’t been one game this year that we executed outside, inside, just all aspects of what we’re capable of,” Jones said.
Following UF’s fourth loss of the season on Tuesday, Florida had a team meeting where teammates held nothing back, calling each other out and getting everything out into the open.
Azania Stewart, who scored a career-high 17 points against FAMU on Tuesday, said she took away from that game a need for accountability.
“We’re 3-4, and that’s not a good look right now,” Stewart said.
She said she has been surprised by the team’s inconsistency this season, pointing out shades of potential in the opening 12-0 run against FAMU and the 11-0 run in the closing 48 seconds of that same contest. The pair of runs wasn’t enough.
“If we can do that for the first four minutes, why can’t we keep it consistent throughout? That’s what really this week has been about,” Stewart said.
With more free time this week, there has been more attention paid to the Scarlet Knights, and the Gators will have to play lockdown defense against a team that’s full of one-on-one offensive threats that can penetrate at any time.
UF will likely counter with depth — boasting a larger roster than Rutgers’ 10-woman squad — and help defense.
If there has been one surprising problem for the Gators this season, it hasn’t necessarily been the defense as much as their inconsistent shooting.
Splitting its last four games, Florida has shot a combined 50.8 percent from the field in the two wins while shooting a pedestrian 34.6 field-goal percentage in the two losses.
That has meant more reliance on the post game as a means of generating offense.
“It’s kind of been a deflating thing when we’re out there and we have a wide-open shot and the shots just aren’t falling,” Jones said.
“It’s definitely a game, especially being on national TV, that we want to show what team we really can be and not the team we’ve been these past couple of games.”
