During a trying season, Jaterra Bonds helped the Gators hold it together.
Florida added six players to the fold last year, leading to a season filled with growing pains.
Turnovers and blown leads proved costly as the Gators spent the season adjusting to their new teammates’ playing styles and in-game tendencies.
Luckily for Florida, Bonds contributed from the get-go.
“She really has … a toughness about her,” coach Amanda Butler said. “(She has) a presence that, as a coach, you better go and find it in recruiting, because it’s something that I don’t think we can put in them.”
Bonds ranked second on the team with 27.1 minutes, 9.9 points and 2.5 assists per game last season, and she set a freshman school record by appearing in 34 games.
Perhaps her finest stretch came during Florida’s 6-2 run to end the season.
In those eight games, Bonds averaged 14.9 points per contest, including a then-career-high 22 in a 74-71 upset victory at home against then-No. 22 Georgia.
She surpassed that mark nearly one month later, leading Florida with 23 points in a season-ending 81-77 overtime loss to Charlotte in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament.
Bonds’ play earned her a spot on the 2011 Southeastern Conference All-Freshman squad.
“That made her hungrier for more,” Butler said. “She’s definitely the type of competitor — especially at the point guard position — that you have to have if you’re going to have a team that’s going to do some special things.”
Bonds echoed her coach’s sentiments, admitting she wants “bigger and better things” this season.
One aspect of her game that Bonds has worked on is the precision of her passing, which she believes will improve now that she is more familiar with her teammates.
Bonds also said she has placed an increased focus on defensive intensity, a skill the entire team worked on during the summer.
“We’re (like-minded) when we start talking about things like toughness and how we want to be perceived,” Butler said.
With 10 players returning from last season’s squad, the Gators expect to be a team worthy of an NCAA Tournament bid come March.
Butler’s plan to get Florida back to that level, put simply, is to “win more games.”
The Gators won five more games last season than they did during the 2009-10 campaign, a feat that, if repeated, should get them back to the Big Dance.
Florida has the experience to get there. But as the point guard, Bonds will have to set the tone.
“We kind of panicked and didn’t expect certain things to happen (last year),” she said. “You don’t ever want to forget (a mistake) because you don’t want it to happen again.”
Guard Jaterra Bonds was a spark for Florida last season, averaging nearly 15 points per game as the Gators finished the season on a 6-2 run.
