Sunday afternoon’s game served as yet another notch in Florida’s continually expanding belt.
UF (9-1) handed the visiting Robert Morris Colonials (4-5) a 79-52 loss, with the score pretty much summing up the tone of the game.
Nothing about the afternoon matchup was particularly exciting — Florida maintained a fairly comfortable lead throughout. Sophomore forward Haley Lorenzen and freshman guard Eleanna Christinaki led the team with 13 points apiece, with no other stats really jumping off the page.
However, it’s another example of how this year’s team appears to be one of the better ones to come out of Gainesville in a while.
“I’m not surprised at all,” coach Amanda Butler said of her team’s hot start.
“I had the benefit of the summer workouts and the preseason and the preseason practice, and I think that this team, from the beginning, had a very strong sense of who they were and, more importantly, who they could become if every single day they would commit to one another first and make our purpose much more important than individual purposes.”
With a 9-1 record, this edition of the Florida women’s basketball team is only four wins away from matching last year’s season total. If the Gators manage to win out in their remaining non-conference games — which is probably more likely to happen than it is to not at this point — they’ll be one game away from that mark and, barring a complete implosion during SEC play, the Gators would be positioned favorably for a spot in the NCAA tournament down the road.
In typical Butler fashion, though, she’s only concerned with the next game. That game happens to be game one of the Gator Holiday Classic against Saint Francis on Dec. 20.
While the Gators could end up playing either North Carolina State or Eastern Kentucky in the second round of the tournament, Butler said she’s not worried about scouting anybody out right now.
“We don’t even worry about the second game until it’s time, after the first game has ended,” she said.
“One-hundred percent of our energy right now is on academics and exam week and making sure they’re focused on dominating that part of their life. (We’ll) give their bodies a little bit of rest, give them a couple days off and then we really get a chance to practice and just worry about us for a couple days, which is unique.”
In taking lessons from Sunday afternoon’s win, Butler raved about the quality leadership in the team’s locker room, specifically as it relates to the conversations team members have at halftime not just in this game, but in most games.
“One of the things that’s great about this team and why I love coaching them is that I come in the locker room and of course, we have the coaches agenda and things we want to talk about, but they’ve already had a player’s meeting about what they want to look different in the second half,” she said.
“And very rarely is there a difference in what the coaches agenda is and what the players have met about before we get in the locker room.”
Such unit cohesion could be the result of having five seniors on the team, or perhaps it comes from the quality of the players on the team right now. But whatever the reason, this team seems to have totally bought into the message that Butler has been preaching, and so far, it seems to be working.
Follow Ethan Bauer on Twitter @ebaueri
Amanda Butler calls out a play during Florida's 64-56 loss to No. 6 Tennessee on Feb. 8 in the O'Connell Center.
