{"id":201130,"date":"2026-03-22T06:13:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T06:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/201130\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T06:13:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T06:13:06","slug":"rebounding-culture-drives-florida-from-5-4-to-no-1-seed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/201130\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebounding culture drives Florida from 5-4 to No. 1 seed"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA<\/p>\n

In early January, Florida led the country in offensive and defensive rebounding. It would have been the first time that a team accomplished that feat of utter board dominance. So had Florida not decided to tweak its offense to emphasize paint touches, dwindling the bricks its guards had regularly tossed through the first two disastrous months, this could have been a historic season.<\/p>\n

Instead, it will have to settle for a fear-inducing one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re giant,\u201d Iowa forward Cam Manyawu said. \u201cThey can out-physical people, and they\u2019re super tall. I expect some elbows and bruises.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be a war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the past months, scouts, coaches and opposing players have provided similar analysis of No. 1 seed Florida\u2019s frontcourt. The Gators are only second and seventh in offensive and defensive rebounding percentage in the country nowadays, but their work on the boards \u2014 and their suffocation of foes via second-chance points \u2014 is the reason Florida\u2019s rolled from 5-4 to 27-7, with only three losses since Dec. 9.<\/p>\n

Well acquainted with that spiel, No. 9 Iowa, which is 69th in the country in defensive rebounding and even worse on the other end, may very well be stepping in front of a buzzsaw Sunday night in the Round of 32. The play?<\/p>\n

\u201cJust be as physical as possible with them,\u201d Manyawu said. \u201cYou can\u2019t let them push you around.\u201d<\/p>\n

That plan is probably as realistic as No. 16 Prairie View A&M coach Byron Smith\u2019s cry for the Lord\u2019s help against the Gators in the first round on Friday. The Gators can have that effect, simply sucking the will out of opponents with two, three, four shots in a possession, but the making of this machine is significantly more complex.<\/p>\n

The unacquinated friend, just watching college basketball for the first time in March, can swiftly identify part of this formula. The Gators have a frontcourt with four 6-foot-9 or taller rebound gobblers. The Gators spend hours practicing how players should locate themselves relative to the basket and the opponent when the ball is in the air. At its core, that\u2019s a science, and it produces a seemingly definite result these days. All four average at least six boards, including Micah Handlogten, who comes off the bench for only 15 minutes each game. Center Rueben Chinyelu is distinctly top of class, ranking just behind first in the country with 11.5 boards per game. \u201cEvery shot, I\u2019m thinking about where the miss will be, getting the ball,\u201d he said. Maybe faulty, given a top seed probably shouldn\u2019t be missing so many attempts that it becomes a habit to wonder where the miss will land. But it\u2019s the thought, literally, that counts: \u201cYou have to want it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When dancing among the trees, the tallest don\u2019t always win, unless those trees also happen to be the most interested in the job that comes with height. In the Gators\u2019 locker room Saturday afternoon, a debate broke out about the staple principles the men of that room live by: Is rebounding, in its most distilled form, more of a mental or physical skill? Height is the easiest attribute to quantify, yet the Gators think it matters more to want the rebound than to be physically more likely to grab it.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, you need height,\u201d said associate head coach Carlin Hartman, who coaches Florida\u2019s bigs. \u201cBut we need guys who think that way. \u2026 It\u2019s hard to make someone want to care, and if they don\u2019t, it\u2019s the guys that do that will grab more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if it\u2019s hard to cultivate interest, Florida has designed a bootcamp of a program with that purpose. In conjunction with Hartman, assistant coach Jonathan Safir \u2014 Florida\u2019s quintessential numbers guy in a building of numbers guys \u2014 leads the charge on teaching rebounding. The Gators have specific periods in practice when that\u2019s the sole purpose, in which scoring doesn\u2019t matter. You win if you get the second chance. The belief is that intense, focused segments help ingrain the principles the Gators live by on the court. They also spend time during every film session reviewing offensive and defensive rebounding techniques, breaking down the last game or practice\u2019s film. \u201cThose are intense. You never want them to call you out,\u201d wing Isaiah Brown said. He\u2019s a member of the group that gets caught the most: the smaller guys, relatively. But they\u2019re trying.<\/p>\n

Coach Todd Golden has an analogy he giggles at. For the football folks, he doesn\u2019t want receivers who don\u2019t block. His guards \u2014 they\u2019re going to find themselves crashing the boards, especially defensively. The Gators also happen to be one of the most potent high-speed teams in the country, with an adjusted tempo in the top 40 nationally, per Bark Torvik. How do the Gators get moving so quickly? \u201cOur guards are down in there,\u201d Hartman said. And where does that come from? He smiled with this one: \u201cThey care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a good process,\u201d Golden said. \u201cWe\u2019re constantly talking to our guys about their responsibilities whether it\u2019s crashing the offensive glass or trying to protect the defensive glass. \u2026 The emphasis in which we put on it and the way we coach it is what allow us to be as good as we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gators have only been outrebounded twice this season. Their average margin against ranked foes during their massive turnaround is plus-14.4. In the first round against Prairie View, the Gators grabbed 34 more boards than their No. 16-seeded opponent. They even outrebounded Vanderbilt by 15 in their loss to the Commodores in the SEC tournament. For Iowa, here lies hope. For Golden, it\u2019s a point of consternation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we get 20 offensive rebounds, in theory, we should be scoring 25 or even a bucket more on that. We only had 14 second-chance points,\u201d he said. As standard in this iteration of Florida, the analytics are the reason it stresses the glass in the way it does. So when the numbers don\u2019t align, it can feel like the world is crashing down. But the numbers almost always align.<\/p>\n

The Gators have spurred rebounding margins of more than 20 in a whopping 13 games this season, the most of any team this century. On those nights, Florida\u2019s unsurprisingly 13-0, and only two of those wins were by fewer than 15 points. Against foes as average on the glass as Iowa \u2014 like Florida State and Vanderbilt, which each grab within a percentage point of the same number of offensive rebounds as Iowa does (30.6%) \u2014 the Gators have controlled the glass to a combined +51.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery possession, we\u2019re going to have to be ready to throw ourselves in there,\u201d Iowa\u2019s star guard, Bennett Stirtz, said. At the SEC tournament, an opposing coach scouting the Gators put things more simply. \u201cThey want to send you to the ER. And you might have to oblige them to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

A pair of Hawkeyes average 4.7 rebounds per game; the rest average the same or fewer than Florida guard Xaivian Lee. Of note: he\u2019s 6-foot-4, per the media guide, which his teammates, amid that hearing about rebounding, began to debate as well. \u201cWe just want to get in there,\u201d the Princeton transfer said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a competition. You feel like you win something when you grab one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never been anywhere like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is exactly what Golden wants to hear. When he arrived at Florida, it had been nearly a decade since its last Final Four appearance, and even more discouraging, the school didn\u2019t seem to care. Times change \u2014 a packed Benchmark International Arena at midnight for a first-round game can be the litmus test for that one. But it came with Florida transforming into an SEC juggernaut overnight, which came with a culture shift toward caring about the controllables. On the technical end of the spectrum, that includes rebounding. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of become our DNA,\u201d Golden said.<\/p>\n

And if Florida can make another run, it will be why.<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

John Devine has worked with the Miami Herald since 1996. He has worked as a Broward sports editor, Broward news editor, assistant sports editor and deputy sports editor before he became executive sports editor in 2021.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA In early January, Florida led the country in offensive and defensive rebounding. It would have been the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[92854,28,92853,30,29,92855,11474,23468],"class_list":["post-201130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-college-basketball-rebounding","tag-florida","tag-florida-gators-rebounding","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-frontcourt-defense","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-sec-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}