Gators face test in Michigan
DES MOINES, Iowa — Florida coach Mike White was blunt assessing his squad’s shortcomings ahead of its NCAA Tournament second-round matchup.
After almost blowing an 18-point second-half lead in Thursday’s opener against Nevada and getting comfortable with gutting out win-or-go-home games, the No. 10 seed Gators won’t be scoring at will against No. 2 seed Michigan at Wells Fargo Arena. Tipoff is at 5:15 p.m. and the game will air on CBS.
The game that will determine whether UF earns its sixth Sweet 16 berth in the past nine seasons will be determined by defense.
“You know, we have been really good defensively all year,” White said after Thursday’s 70-61 firstround win. “Looking at [Nevada’s] offensive numbers, we have had a lot of performances like that. But this team, we have definitely struggled to score at times.
“I think slowing the tempo helps us a lot.”
Michigan’s plan is no secret,
The nation’s No. 2 scoring defense wants to force Florida (20-15) into bad shots and roll through the West Region on the way back to the title game. The second-seeded Wolverines limited Montana to 33 percent shooting and led by as many as 27 points during Thursday night’s 74-55 win.
It sets up two defenses slugging out possessions in Des Moines to advance to Anaheim, Calif., next weekend.
“We’ve had, just guessing, 15 games like that where late in the game, it’s a one- or two-possession game, couple of minutes left, whether you’re up or down,” White said. “We had a stretch earlier in the season where we lost those games. Guys continued to play really hard, lost some composure at times, but then we won some of those games.
“We’ve been here and are used to these situations.”
Michigan (29-6) may not be as familiar with nail-biting finishes as Florida, but its talented roster has bolted back after recent losses and a Big Ten title-game defeat to rival Michigan State. Saturday’s strong favorites have avoided back-to-back losses all season.
“I was a little worried,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “We had a logistics meeting on Monday and faces were way down. Tuesday’s either. practice was just OK.
“We had a really good practice [Wednesday] where I think everybody was focused. We realized we got another chance.”
Michigan has front-court and back-court threats for the Gators to worry about, led in points (15.0 per game) and on-court personality by freshman post Ignas Brazdeikis. Lanky guards Jordan Poole and Charles Matthews both average 12 points per game, and 7-foot-1 center Jon Teske adds almost 10 points and seven rebounds per outing.
“This weekend always seems to be the toughest, for all the teams, just working out the nerves of the tournament,” Michigan senior guard Charles Matthews said.
Matthews missed three games earlier this month with an ankle injury, which was the only interruption in the same starting five for Beilein’s squad all season.
Florida’s season has been the opposite experience: Freshman guard Andrew Nembhard has been the only player to start all 35 games as White worked out the kinks in an inconsistent lineup.
“It’s been a really odd year,” White said Wednesday in Des Moines. “This team was 12-11. Went through losing streaks, winning streaks, different guys starting. We’ve had seniors going off, seniors having slumps. Freshmen trying to figure it out, freshmen leading us to victory.
“It’s been unique least.”
Nembhard will likely share duties with senior guards Jalen Hudson and KeVaughn Allen in defending Michigan spark-plug point guard Zavier Simpson. The junior from Ohio averages 9.1 points, 6.7 assists and 5.0 rebounds per game as Beilein’s conduit to the court. The active hands and physical defense that held highscoring Nevada under 35 percent to say the shooting on Thursday will need to slow Simpson from dicing up his second SEC defense of the season.
Florida has the SEC’s best scoring defense, allowing just 63.6 points per game.
“We just found out he set the school record as the first guard to have eight 10-assist games in a season,” Matthews said of Simpson. “That’s a huge testament to what he does. So many times he gets, I don’t want to say undervalued, but people look past if he’s not having a big offensive game. He means so much to us and we understand on these big nights that people wouldn’t be this good without him.”
Michigan marched past Florida during its only official NCAA Tournament matchup, a 79-59 regional final victory in 2013. The Wolverines were national runnerup in that season, too. The squads previously played during Florida’s vacated 1988 tournament run.
Both programs have won their first-round NCAA Tournament games for three straight years. Florida’s win Thursday came on the shoulders of four double-digit scorers, led by senior center Kervarrius Hayes’ 16 points and three blocked shots.
White appears comfortable in his return to Iowa — he lived in the state when his father, Kevin, was athletic director at Loras College in Dubuque — and his team ended its winless tournament history as a No. 10 seed here. The fourth-year coach knows how far they’ve come this season.
“We’ve had several opportunities, having lost very close games, to lose interest and lose a little bit of fight,” White said. “Instead, it was about the next practice, the next play, the next timeout, the next film session. We obviously won our share down the stretch and are playing our best basketball of the year.”