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Florida basketball preview: 10 things to know (and a prediction) about the 2022-23 season
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Florida begins a new era of basketball next week when the season begins on Monday.
New head coach Todd Golden will lead the Gators for the first time on Monday night, when Stony Brook visits the Gators in Gainesville.
Golden, a charismatic, energetic guy who at 37 will be by far the SEC’s youngest head coach, took the Florida job shortly after the departure of Mike White, who took the head coaching job at rival Georgia.
White left after 7 seasons Gainesville, where he led the Gators to 4 NCAA Tournament appearances and an Elite 8. The program had turned stale though, and fan sentiments toward White regrettably toxic, during the 2021-22 season, which saw Florida’s SEC-leading NCAA Tournament streak end as the team advanced only to the NIT.
White parachuted out of Gainesville to Georgia, opening the door for the Gators to hire Golden, who went 57-36 with an NCAA Tournament appearance (and a KenPom ranking in the top 25 in 2021-22) at San Francisco, a perennial West Coast Conference doormat prior to a program revival under Golden and his mentor, Kyle Smith.
Highly thought of in basketball circles for his defensive mind and ahead-of-his-time use of analytics, Golden is a breath of fresh air and energy for a Florida program that seemed stuck in neutral under White, despite consistently winning 20 games per season and winning at least 1 NCAA Tournament game in each of its 4 tournament appearances under White.
As a program, Florida is still a top 20 job in the sport, with the Gators collecting more wins than any SEC program outside of Kentucky since 1990 and winning more NCAA Tournament games than any SEC program other than Kentucky this century.
Can Golden return Florida to the halcyon days of the Billy Donovan Era or the Final Four heights of the Lon Kruger Era that preceded Donovan? Time will tell. But basketball insiders consider Golden one of the best young minds in the sport, and that’s reason enough for excitement to surround hoops again in Gainesville this season.
Here are 10 things to know about the 2022-23 Gators, followed by a prediction for how the season will play out:
1. Kyle Lofton will stabilize the point guard position
Golden’s transfer portal haul was one of the best in the sport, as the Gators brought in multiple all-conference talents from across the country as well as Alex Fudge, a former top 100 talent in the 247 Composite. More on the rest of these guys in a moment.
For now, we’ll focus on the biggest, most important pickup — Lofton. The super senior comes to Gainesville by way of St. Bonaventure, where he was a 4-year starter who led the Bonnies to the NCAA Tournament and earned All-Atlantic 10 honors on 2 occasions, including 1st-team honors in the 2020-21 campaign.
Lofton won’t wow you with numbers, and he won’t be asked to play the absurd 38.1 minutes per game he played for Mark Schmidt at St. Bonaventure. What he will do is make really intelligent decisions with the basketball and limit turnovers, a bugaboo for the Gators under White in his final 2 seasons in Gainesville. Lofton is also a dominant perimeter defender, with a high steal rate and a low points-per-possession-against mark defensively, which is also an upgrade for the Gators. He also has a knack for hitting big shots, like this one to beat Richmond in 2021.
KYLE LOFTON WINS IT FOR ST. BONAVENTURE (+162) ? pic.twitter.com/uOvhtVOlYT
— Action Network Colleges (@ActionColleges) January 3, 2021
There’s nothing like experience at point guard, and Lofton gives the Gators as reliable a floor general as anyone in the SEC.
2. UF has more depth on the wing than it has had in ages
Modern basketball requires depth at the wing, with guys who are switchable defensively and have the length to disrupt you on the perimeter and guard you 1-4. Florida won’t necessarily play “position less” basketball 2-4 or 1-4, but the Gators have a plethora of options on the wing, a nice luxury for a team who just 3 years ago had Keyontae Johnson and, well, Keyontae Johnson, as wing options. While none of Florida’s wings are pre-collapse Keyontae Johnson good, 4 (Kowacie Reeves, Niels Lane, Will Richard and Fudge) have NBA upside. That number jumps to 5 if you consider combo guard Riley Kugel, a top-50 freshman who has dazzled throughout fall camp, to be more “wing” than “guard only,” which is a legitimate claim given his legitimate 6-5, 210-pound frame. Florida’s wing depth should allow Golden to play his preferred 9–10-man rotation and keep Florida’s legs fresh in league play.
3. Don’t be surprised if Kowacie Reeves breaks out
Reeves, a 6-6 sophomore wing from Macon, Georgia, is all you’d want from a basketball IQ standpoint. A coach’s son and a gym rat, Reeves is the first to open the gym in the morning and among the last watching film at night. Reeves struggled to adjust defensively to the jump from Georgia high school ball to the SEC as a freshman, but he started to figure things out late in the season, playing much better defense and scoring at a high clip.
Reeves scored in double figures in Florida’s last 3 games, including a marvelous 21-point, 6-rebound effort in Florida’s overtime loss to Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament. Reeves spent the summer becoming more multiple — learning to better attack closeouts and use his frame to attack the rim, not just settle for jump shots.
His clinical shooting stroke suggests an uptick in shooting percentage is possible — but even if he shoots an identical 33% from deep on high volume in 2022-23, he should be a double-digit scorer for the Gators, and he’s a guy who will be very hard to guard once he starts attacking the bucket more as well. Of all the players on Florida’s roster, Reeves is the guy who has “breakout” written all over his skillset.
4. Florida will return to the top 40 in KenPom defense for the first time since 2019
White’s early Florida teams could really guard — the Gators finished no worse than 24th in White’s first 4 seasons on campus. They dropped off thereafter, hitting a rock bottom of 77th in KenPom defensive efficiency last year. Golden, a defense-first coach whose San Francisco teams hounded you on the ball, will fix that, largely thanks to the roster he’s constructed, which has at least one outstanding defender at every spot on the floor. Expect the Gators to be a top 40 defense this season for the 1st time since 2019.
5. Florida’s transfer haul was the best in the SEC
In a year where “The Importer”, Eric Musselman, made more headlines with his freshman class, featuring future NBA star Nick Smith, than his transfer class (which was still good), Golden came out as the SEC’s biggest winner in the portal, hauling in Lofton, former 4-star Fudge of LSU, an All-Ohio Valley player in Will Richard of Belmont and a dynamic scoring guard in Trey Bonham of Virginia Military Institute. Eric Fawcett, a college basketball writer and the co-host of the Florida Basketball Hour podcast, wrote a tremendous piece on Florida’s transfer haul, projecting a huge impact, earlier this week. What impressed Fawcett, and why SDS is so high on Florida’s transfer haul, is the fit. Golden had a vision and purpose for each of these signees, and they should each complement each other in Florida’s system.
6. The Gators play in the best of the “Feast Week” events: the PK 85
Florida, a finalist at the PK 80, the last tournament held by Nike to honor its founder, Phil Knight, was invited back to Portland for Feast Week this year and will be a participant at the PK 85 in the Phil Knight Legacy Invitational.
The Gators open the tournament with a matchup against fellow NCAA hopeful Xavier, which will mark Florida’s 3rd meeting with the Musketeers in 4 seasons. The programs split the prior 2, with the Gators winning the championship game of the 2019 Charleston Classic against the Musketeers but dropping last year’s 2nd-round NIT matchup at Xavier. Should Florida win, it may get a shot at a top 10 Duke team. Purdue, West Virginia and Gonzaga are also in the field, making the Phil Knight Legacy the deepest Feast Week event in college basketball this season.
7. Trey Bonham will turn heads as instant offense
Given Lofton’s credentials and the NBA talent of Fudge and Will Richard, Trey Bonham was a bit of a forgotten man in Florida’s splendid transfer haul. That’s not the case anymore, at least for anyone who saw Florida scrimmage or practice this autumn. Bonham was one of the nation’s best players in the pick and roll at VMI, and while the adjustment from the solid Southern Conference to the elite SEC is a big jump, Bonham is freakishly strong for his size and will hold up well against the more physical athletes he’ll play at Florida. His ability to score in the pick and roll will help make him instant offense for a Florida team that struggled to find easy buckets in 2021-22.
8. Florida’s ceiling will depend on how well it shoots
The Gators are going to defend. As noted above, they have depth on the wing and a dominant defensive point guard in Lofton. Florida also has Colin Castleton (more below), an elite rim protector, and Niels Lane, who ranked in the top 20 nationally as an on-ball defender last season, per Hoops Lens. The Gators should be outstanding in their halfcourt defense, at a minimum.
The big question for Florida will be whether it can shoot the ball better. Florida took a huge volume of triples a season ago but shot just 30.3% from deep. That ranked 317th in the country, which is a problem when you are hoisting the 22nd-most three-point attempts in America. Florida’s staff thinks that Myreon Jones, the senior guard who shot 40% from deep in his career at Penn State before transferring to Florida and promptly shooting a career-worst 32%, will be better in 2022-23.
They also rant and rave about Richard’s stroke and the way freshman Riley Kugel has the potential to be an instant bucket. Bonham is also a 36.9% career 3-point shooter on 141 career bombs, a quality rate of return. But until the Gators make shots consistently, the ceiling for this team will be limited.
9. Colin Castleton is All-American good
Castleton played much of last season with 1 healthy shoulder and still managed to post his 16.2 points, 9 rebounds and 2.2 blocks averages. He also did so playing in a stagnant catch-and-shoot offense that wasn’t very adept at feeding the post. Now healthy after offseason shoulder surgery, Castleton should replicate, if not better, his 2021-22 numbers this season.
In the “year of the big,” where Oscar Tshiebwe, the reigning National Player of the Year, returns, as does Gonzaga’s talented big Drew Timme, Castleton won’t capture a ton of headlines. But most preseason publications have him as a top-25 player in America, and he was a consensus First-Team All-SEC selection at the league’s media days event last month. Convincing Castleton to return for his senior season was a coup for Golden and the Florida staff, and Castleton gives the Gators their first bona fide All-American candidate since Chris Chiozza made a run at it as a senior in 2017-18.
10. The energy will be back in the O’Dome
Florida sold more season tickets for basketball than it has since the 2019-20 campaign, and the Gators drew several thousand to the program’s open scrimmage and skills contest on Tuesday. The Gators program was profiled in nearly every major college basketball publication during the offseason, and Golden’s youth and infectious attitude have helped Florida find its way into the middle of a number of high-profile recruiting battles for the 2023 signing class.
College basketball is better when Florida is really good, and the Gators appear on their way again under Golden. This season might not have a championship ceiling, but Florida will sell out home games and the O’Dome will rock again — something that will be fun to watch after a few years of too many empty seats and too many home defeats under White.
Prediction: Second Round of the NCAA Tournament or Sweet 16
The upside for this Florida team is intriguing. The Gators can play 4 around 1, using the aforementioned depth on the wings and Lofton’s lockdown defense to really disrupt teams while keeping Castleton as the sun around which the offense orbits. If Jones, Bonham, Kugel, and Richard stabilize the offense, and if the staff remembers that Lane is one of the better shutdown defenders in the country, this team will be good.
If Fudge takes the leap that he’s capable of from a talent standpoint, the Gators might be even better than good. That’s a lot of “ifs,” and Florida will ride the bubble again if some of the “ifs” don’t hit. But if a few do happen in sync, this is a squad with a tremendous opportunity to get the Gators back to the Sweet 16.
Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
