NCAA Basketball: Florida’s struggles, Oregon’s dominance & more weekly takeaways

1) What’s wrong with Florida?

The Gators were a popular national championship pick in the preseason – including for yours truly – but they have been perhaps the biggest disappointment of anyone through the first few weeks.

They limped to a 15-point win over North Florida in the opener before suffering an ugly 12-point loss to Florida State, all of which led up to an even uglier six-point win over Towson in their last outing.

There is a myriad of adjustments the Gators have to make, the biggest and most important of which come on the offensive end.

Despite having a number of great athletes, Florida plays at one of the slowest paces in the country (343rd), eliminating or minimizing one of their biggest assets. Their shooting struggles make getting easy baskets in transition even more important, too. The Gators rank outside the top 300 in effective shooting percentage and have made just 23.7 percent of their threes through three games.

Some of the reason has been just plain old cold shooting, but a large part of it is also the poor offensive sets UF is running that haven’t created open looks. They’re running a majority of their half-court offense through the post, which is fine given Kerry Blackshear’s ability, but they’re almost shunning their backcourt – and star point guard Andrew Nembhard – in order to do so. Nembhard, Tre Mann, and Scottie Lewis are three of Florida’s best players, and their roles have been minimized.

Now, the Gators do have a ton of new pieces and there is a learning curve that has to occur, both from head coach Mike White learning how to best work with this roster and for the players to get more comfortable playing with each other. After that win over Towson, White said improvements will come over time.

"“I liked the connectivity we had on both ends of the floor the last few minutes, [but] we just have to get better. “Offensively, we have to settle in. We have to find some more identity — Who are we exactly offensively? — and put it together. And I don’t anticipate it happening the next few days, either. It’s a work in progress.”"

Florida has until March to reach their full potential but, if they want to return to the top 10 and win the SEC, they need to improve drastically on that end of the court sooner rather than later.