In the long run, Angel Rodriguez may be one of the better things to happen to the Gators this season.
He told coach Jim Larrananga he wanted the ball in the final timeout called by the Hurricanes, a 30-second reprieve with his team down two points in a hostile environment. Teams often expend all their energy coming back that they don’t often have enough to get over the hump, but that was not the case Monday.
Miami ripped off a torrid 18-1 run in the second half to help overcome a 15-point deficit. The lead changed five times in the last 1:55 as the Hurricanes tried to wrestle the game away, and in the end, they did.
Florida starts strong, but trails off in games this season.
Billy Donovan isn’t sure why, but he did say that his team needed to learn how to win and how to deal with losing.
Including its exhibition victory over Barry, Florida’s offense scores 1.21 points in three first halves played. In second halves? Only .869.
As the Gators fell off, Rodriguez heated up.
This isn’t the first time Rodriguez has played on a team that has beaten Florida.
The Kansas State transfer was a member of the 2012 Wildcats team that defeated the Gators in Sunrise. In that game, he scored four points, tonight was a much different story.
He had two points at halftime on 1-of-5 shooting, but thanks to the faith of his teammates, he kept letting it fly, and scored 22 of his game-high 24 in the second period. Nineteen of them coming in the final 17 minutes.
But his final three were the most impactful.
As fatigue wilted Florida, Rodriguez caught fire, Donovan hoped this game could teach his team how to win, like Shabazz Napier’s basket at the buzzer last season for Connecticut, Donovan hopes another dagger shot at the end of the game will serve as a similar teaching point. Only time will tell if that is the case though.
There is so much unproven about this team, so much newness to them. Can Eli Carter continue to be the alpha-male offensively, at this point he seems to be the only player that can consistently create his own shot. What happens when Chris Walker comes back? Will chemistry be broken, and how much less raw will he be than when we last saw him on the court?
What can Alex Murphy contribute? That’s a question we won’t have an answer to until January, and even then it will take him some time to gel as well. Can Jon Horford be relied upon as a consistent low post presence? How will he gel with Walker? And will we see more three pointers from him? I’d imagine it’s things like that that keep Billy Donovan up at night, just what the hell is this team going to be with so many moving parts, with so few proven commodities.
It’s November, the sky is not falling after a loss in the second official game of the season, but people are impatient and I just listed a whole bunch of questions that will probably be answered later rather than sooner.
Maybe Angel’s dagger three pointer doesn’t lead to answers or profound soul searching that leads a group of talented Gators to find what out what it takes to win like their head coach so desperately wants. Maybe they’ll go through more heartbreaking performances in the Bahamas next week and in Kansas at the beginning of next month. Maybe they’ll get beat up and bruised down low by a physical front court in conference play and get outclassed by a Kentucky squad that’s all the rage yet again.
Or maybe they won’t.
Follow Richard Johnson on Twitter @RagjUF
Miami's Angel Rodriguez attempts a shot during the Hurricanes' win against the Gators on Monday in the O'Connell Center.
