Nine of Billy Donovan’s 13 players this season are holdovers from last year’s squad, but he might as well be coaching a new team.
Nick Calathes, Florida’s leader on the court and most productive player the last two years, is gone. So is Walter Hodge, the last remaining player on both of the Gators’ back-to-back national championship teams.
What’s left is a mix of new names and familiar faces — a team with a chance to establish its own identity and a desire to leave the unmet expectations and disappointing finishes behind them.
With an outlook as new as their talented transfer center and heralded freshman guard, the Gators are a far cry from the team that took the floor in the O’Connell Center the past two seasons.
“It’s interesting because I feel like in a lot of respects we do have somewhat of a new team, although the players are somewhat similar.” Donovan said. “I feel different being around this team and these guys right now than I did last year.”
Between the prominent additions of Vernon Macklin and Kenny Boynton, and the benefits they will provide UF’s veterans, the Gators have transformed their lineup of out-of-position players to a traditional, stereotypical starting five.
No longer carrying expectations of instant success or an undeserved sense of entitlement, this year’s team has something to prove.
A new identity might be just what the Gators need to get back on track — and back in the NCAA Tournament — after dropping a combined 23 games and missing consecutive NCAA Tournaments for the first time since Donovan’s first two years at UF.
“I think the core of our guys have been through it. We’ve been through the rough times,” junior forward Chandler Parsons said. “We’ve been to the NIT two years in a row, and obviously we don’t want to go back to that.”
It remains to be seen whether the new-look Florida basketball team will reach Donovan’s 10th NCAA Tournament at UF or make its third-straight NIT appearance. Regardless of the destination, this year won’t be the same as the last two.
The Big Man
The ideal solution to the Gators’ well-documented frontcourt issues may have been sitting on the bench last year.
The 6-foot-10, 240-pound Macklin, who transferred to Florida after two years at Georgetown, has been hailed as the inside presence the team has missed since Marreese Speights left UF early for the NBA. As a sophomore in 2007-08, Macklin averaged 3.4 points and 2.1 rebounds while playing only 12.8 minutes per game in a crowded Hoyas frontcourt.
Caught between the departure of one natural center and the arrival of another, the Gators struggled down low throughout the 2008-09 season. Alex Tyus, better suited to play power forward at 6-foot-8 and 220 pounds, was forced to start at center and match up with bigger, stronger opponents.
Tyus held his own in the post last year, averaging 12.5 points and 6.2 rebounds per game, but the physical play of the Southeastern Conference was too much for the out-of-position forward to handle, as he averaged fewer rebounds in conference games (5.5) than Calathes (5.9) or Parsons (5.6). Donovan was also forced to start the 6-foot-8, 230-pound Dan Werner, a more natural small forward, at the power forward spot.
With Macklin, Donovan can keep Tyus and Werner fresh, return some of his players to their natural positions and count on a new physical presence on defense.
“Vernon Macklin is just a monster down there. He’s something I have never played with before in my life,” Parsons said. “Never played with a guy like him who can change the game on the defensive end so much by getting every rebound, by blocking every shot, dunking everything. He’s just an animal.”
Macklin practiced with the team last year but could not play due to NCAA rules. He admitted he would not have been much help last year given his unfamiliarity with the system and physical conditioning, but that didn’t make it easier to sit on the sidelines.
“There was a time at practice last year when I didn’t have everything figured out,” Macklin said. “I was thinking about like, ‘What am I doing? This is tough. I’m sitting out a whole year. I’m working for nothing.’
“But then when coach Donovan called me out, I started working toward that, and I started seeing improvement from a lot of guys. So I said, ‘If I keep this up, we’ll make a big improvement.’”
Given the way opponents dominated UF in the post last year, the hype built up Macklin to be more than just an incoming big man who could fill a need. He became the light at the end of the tunnel — the Gators’ eventual savior, a title he undeservedly received and is still looking to shed.
“Coach Donovan helped me out a lot on that. The media has put a lot as me being this savior,” Macklin said. “It has nothing to do with me. … It’s the whole team.”
But Macklin wasn’t the only one who had to deal with extreme expectations before taking the floor for Florida.
The Scorer
While Macklin was sitting on the Gators’ bench last year, the team’s second supposed savior was dominating defenses and breaking high school scoring records in South Florida.
Boynton’s reputation and list of accomplishments precedes him: a McDonald’s All-American, Rivals.com’s No. 12 overall recruit in the class of 2009, a Class 6A state champion, a back-to-back AAU junior national champion and the third-leading scorer in Florida high school history.
Boynton’s reputation as a score-first guard led to the belief he would single-handedly make up for the departure of Calathes and Hodge. Those two comprised UF’s starting backcourt and accounted for a third of the team’s scoring last season.
Like Macklin, Boynton won’t be able to save the program on his own no matter how many points he scores or how well he adapts to all the roles he foresees himself playing.
“He’s not a savior. He’s one guy, and he’s a freshman,” Donovan said. “He’s going to be a good player here — and I have no doubts about that — but I think the expectation that he’s going to be this total impact player would be totally unfair to him.”
The hype only became more intense as Boynton’s Florida debut drew closer. He averaged 33 points per game during his senior season to cap off his career at Plantation American Heritage High, and his new teammates have said he can get off any shot he wants one-on-one.
But the expectations don’t bother Boynton. Far from it, actually.
“I want to live up to them, so I just keep working so more people talk about me,” Boynton said.
The 6-foot-2, 183-pound Boynton brings a newfound confidence and swagger to a program in need of both after two disappointing seasons. But Donovan has been most impressed by Boynton’s ability to put aside the numerous accolades he received in high school and focus on making himself and his new team better.
“Kenny’s got unbelievable belief in himself, which is great, but there is a level of humility,” Donovan said. “For a kid as highly profiled as him, he’s really done a pretty good job of helping create even more chemistry on our team.”
Boynton knows his strength is putting points on the board, but he hopes to immediately establish himself at Florida as being more than just a scorer. He said he also wants to be recognized as a defensive specialist, leader and true point guard.
This year, Donovan may ask his new do-everything guard to take on all of the above assignments.
“If one day he wants me to go out and just be a defensive guy, then that’s what I’m gonna do,” Boynton said. “If he wants me to be a point guard this day, I’ll do that. And if he wants me to shoot the next day, that’s what I’ll do.”
The Attitude
Even with a more traditional roster and a crop of talented new players, it’s not entirely personnel that makes this year’s Florida team different. It’s also a top-down shift in philosophy and mentality.
From Donovan to each of his players, the Gators have taken into account what held them back the last two years and focused on rectifying those problems.
It started with a move Donovan and his staff made before practice even started: creating a tougher nonconference schedule. With matchups against Michigan State and Syracuse before SEC play begins, Donovan will test his new team early on.
The last two years, he attempted to ease into the season — a move that resulted in a 3-14 record against top-50 RPI teams and an overconfident group of young players who would face a rude awakening during the conference slate.
The schedule also includes a game against Xavier in the middle of SEC play.
With their coach’s commitment to turning around the program made clear by his offseason statement, the burden of improvement then fell to his veteran players. They had to make strides in terms of leadership and commitment to do their part.
“The last couple years, we were real immature, and that’s the bottom line,” Werner said. “Being more mature is going to make it feel like a new group.”
Their developing maturity, along with the threat of losing their jobs to new players, created a competitive atmosphere that had been absent the last two years, affecting the team’s younger players — even as early as offseason scrimmages.
“Even in the pick-ups, you see people are more competitive,” sophomore center Kenny Kadji said. “People don’t want to get punked and stuff like that.”
But the newfound effort wouldn’t mean quite as much had the Gators not gotten in better shape during the offseason. Eight of UF’s 11 losses last year came by six points or fewer, and six were by four or fewer — something that motivated the team to improve its conditioning and endurance.
“We’ve got a different feeling in the whole gym. Everyone’s working so hard,” Parsons said. “We’ve got conditioning tests. Everyone’s passing those when more than half our team wasn’t last year. We’re coming in here at 4 or 5 in the morning just working our tails off.”
Donovan said he struggled to get his team to put forth enough effort in practice last season. Now that his players are at least physically capable of keeping up with what’s asked of them, he can finally focus on preparing his team for each game — and for a potential return to the national prominence the program reached earlier under his watch.
“There are a lot of people who have a lot of questions about this team and what they can do and what they can become,” Donovan said. “The exciting and challenging part is dealing with those things.
“There are some things I’m seeing that at least make me feel like as a team we are moving in the right direction.”
Whether the right direction leads the Gators to another NIT or back to the NCAA Tournament, this year — at the very least — things will be different.
