GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The odds do not favor Kowacie Reeves Jr. this season. As a freshman competing for playing time at Florida's most loaded position, Reeves is reminded on a daily basis how the numbers are stacked against him.
Those reminders wear 0, 22, 23, 24 and 44.
"I know exactly what you're taking about, believe me," Reeves said.
It's one thing to know, it's another to accept. But that is the place Reeves claims to be as the Gators, three weeks into full-scale preseason workouts, edge closer to the start of the 2021-22 regular season. Reeves says he's there and totally cool with his current predicament, despite arriving at UF as a top 40-caliber prospect out of Macon, Ga.. His situation could be much different (i.e. favorable) had he chosen to play elsewhere, relative to playing time.
Instead, the 6-foot-6, 182-pound Reeves is embracing the daily challenges of closing out on senior sharp-shooter Myreon Jones (No. 0), staying in front of fifth-year senior Tyree Appleby (22), bodying up against the brick house build of five-year veteran transfer Brandon McKissic (23), boxing out and trying to break down do-everything fifth-year transfer Phlandrous Fleming Jr. (24), and matching the work ethic of lengthy and improving sophomore Niels Lane (44). Each represent road blocks, significant ones, to Reeves seeing the floor as a UF rookie.
"I get along with all of them. There's nothing personal about it," Reeves said. "We all want to succeed and we all want to win this year. They're pushing me. They know my strengths and my weaknesses and they're all trying to teach me. I want that. I mean, they're all older than me. They've all seen more college basketball than I can even imagine."
Reeves' outlook is one that's equally difficult to imagine, given the I-Want-It-Now landscape of college basketball these days.
How many top-50 types are willing to wait their turn?
"Yes, it's a little a crazy to see that kind of perspective, but here's the thing: it's genuine," UF assistant coach Erik Pastrada said. "I kind of him tested him. I told him, 'Yeah, all that sounds good, but how are you going to react when you play eight minutes, maybe 12 minutes, one game? He was like, 'I'll just keep working, Coach.' "
Reeves went on to explain that in high school he took 20 or 25 shots per game and no one cared how many he was making he was the best player on the floor. Now, Reeves said, his focus needed to be on efficiency. If he gets four or five shots, he has to make a couple or won't be out there long.
Pastrada shrugged.
"You know what? I 100-percent believe him," Pastrada said. "This is a kid who's just very comfortable in his own skin."
It's just how Reeves is wired. Actually, it's how he was raised.
"He's been in this position before," said Reeves father, who also goes by Kowacie. "Whatever happens, he's going to keep his head down and work. He's not going to feel any sense of entitlement. He's going to work for everything he gets."
Young Kowacie played football (wide receiver), basketball and baseball (pitcher) while growing up in Macon and was really good at all three. Father coached son through the youth sports phase, but went hands-off once the middle-school years arrived. After the final football game of Kowacie's eighth-grade year, he climbed into his father's car for the ride home and announced he was done with football and baseball.
"I didn't want to hear that at first, but I told him I would support him with whatever he wanted to do," dad recalled. "Turns out he knew more than I knew."
Kowacie made the Macon Westside High varsity team as a smallish freshman guard. State state rules allowed him to play on both the junior varsity and varsity, but only two quarters of each. That was fine. That allowed him to get some go-to guy minutes on JV, while also contributing backup, role-playing minutes on a varsity team that featured standout 6-7 wing Khavon Moore, a top-40 prospect who was being recruited by some of the best programs in the South, including Florida.
In fact, former UF assistant coaches Darris Nichols and Jordan Mincy went to Westside to watch Moore, but couldn't help but notice Reeves. He was just 5-10 at the time, but with a wiry frame and bounciness on the floor that had the Gators thinking down the line. UF stayed hard after Moore, who eventually chose Texas Tech, but also made Reeves a priority.
"Everything they told me came true. Those guys, Coach White and them, they literally predicted my future," Reeves said. "They told me I was going to be like 6-6 and long. Florida was first to offer me [a scholarship] out of everyone. As I started to get recruited more and more, I kept going back to, 'Well, they were first.' I had to decipher if they really were serious and if they really wanted me — and they really did. They were pragmatic with me and kept it real. They said nothing was going to be given to me, but if I just kept competing and coming to play every day that I could be the player I wanted to be … that they thought I could be."
Like the time he came off the bench to score 10 points as a freshman against RJ Barrett, Andrew Nembhard and Montverde (Fla.) Academy. Or when he played Brandon Boston (Kentucky) to a standoff on the circuit. And Sharife Cooper (Auburn). Or the first time he got the ball on the wing, drove downhill into the lane and used his blossoming athleticism to power-slam over a couple 6-10 dudes.
His parents were in the bleachers for the latter.
"I remember telling my wife, 'I think he's got a chance,' " the elder Kowacie said. "He didn't win a lot of games with that team, but he showed he belonged."
[Note: Moore's career was sidetracked by injury and included transfers from Texas Tech to Clemson to South Carolina-Upstate, leaving Reeves as the area's new big college dog]
Reeves arrived at UF for Summer "B" semester in July. The conditioning grind (the lifting and running) is a transition he admittedly has struggled with, but Reeves immediately became the team's No. 1 workout warrior when it came to shooting on his own. It's not unusual to hear about players taking a thousand shots a day. Reeves modified that routine to a thousand makes a day, oftentimes rolling into the gym late at night for his shooting sessions.
Now, deep into fall practice, he's still getting up extra shots, though Reeves has scaled back the required makes — "Only like 300 to 500, depending on time." — because his daily schedule is fuller. And his basketball focus is more well rounded. Where he was a volume shooter and scorer back in Macon, Reeves is trying to find his role on a veteran-laden team that potentially could roll out four starters who will turn 23 before the first regular-season game. The fifth starter will be 22.
Reeves won't turn 19 until halfway through the Southeastern Conference season.
To that, Reeves has used his time during practice to watch his elder teammates, especially the 6-5 Fleming, who was a 1,500-point scorer and two-time Big South Conference Defensive Player of the year. Reeves sees the most similarities in Fleming's game to his. Reeves also sees a defensive intensity, a passion on that end of the floor, he covets.
He's not there yet and knows it. That's a good thing for a young player, but also an rare one these days.
"If I'm sitting on the bench during the game thinking, 'Man, I haven't gotten in the whole first half,' I'm already missing out on the game. I won't be ready if I do get in," Reeves said. "I won't be able to just jump up when my name's called and be locked into the game. I need to be focused on the sidelines and encouraging my teammates. That way, when my opportunity comes, I'm already tuned in and ready to jump in."
Sort of sounds like he's there already.
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