Back in the friendly confines of the O’Dome the Gators hoops squad looked much more like a Donovan-coached bunch Wednesday night, winning handily 89-64 over visiting Charleston Southern.   Unlike Saturday in Jacksonville, which proved to be the team’s worst shooting performance of the season by far, the Gators started the game on an 18-0 run and were never threatened for the remainder of the evening.

It was a completely different looking team last night, and although there were still the freshman mistakes (mainly turnovers), it looked like some of the coaching is taking effect.    The defensive intensity was obvious, and there was much more of a structure to the offense, with some of the old familiar plays working fairly well.

I still have some real concerns with our team’s lack of speed, and although we were the bigger team last night, we will be smaller than many of the conference teams we face in the upcoming months.    Point guard play will be the other deciding factor this year.  Jai Lucas is playing with good energy but turns the ball over too much, and seems to try to create on his own more often than running the play called from the bench.    Nick Calathes is a decent but not phenomenal ball-handler, who hopefully will improve that and his crossover and first step.

Marreese Speights looked more confident last night than on Saturday, but still needs to be more physical inside and work on his shot-blocking.   Walter Hodge looked pretty darn good last night, showing some flashes of what we saw last year when he was a dangerous bench player for the National Title squad.