You’d always prefer to learn your lessons in wins as opposed to losses but the Florida Gators will be looking to bounce back from a difficult performance at Georgia when they take on a fiery Texas A&M team in Gainesville.
With the loss to Georgia the Gators fell to 11-4 in the SEC (24-4 on the season) which puts them in third place in the standings. Losing to the Bulldogs all but eliminated Florida’s chance at winning the SEC regular season (which would have been a long shot even with a win) but now puts them in a much more interesting seeding position. According to modeling tool Playoff Status, here is Florida’s percentage chance of finishing at each spot in the standings:
1st: 1%
2nd: 26%
3rd: 29%
4th: 18%
5th: 14%
6th: 9%
7th: 2%
8th: <1%
Given that Florida has been near the top of the SEC standings for much of the season the thought of them falling as low as 7th feels absurd, and while it’s extremely unlikely these numbers show just how much things can move in a talented 16-team league. Currently Florida at 11-4 is being chased by Tennessee and Missouri at 10-5, with the Aggies just behind at 9-5 with a game in hand. Naturally the Gators would love to be at that second spot, but now they are staring down a quality Texas A&M team that’s going to be hungry.
Currently the Aggies are 20-7 on the season and 9-5 in the SEC at the time of this article publishing (they will play Vanderbilt at home on the evening of February 26th) and hold the #12 spot in the AP Poll.
It’s been an excellent season for head coach Buzz Williams’ squad as they played one of the most challenging non-conference schedules in the country and came out with some strong resume wins. Check out the amount of high-major opponents the Aggies faced:
UCF
Ohio State
Oregon
Creighton
Rutgers
Wake Forest
Texas Tech
Purdue
Their losses came on the road to UCF and on a neutral floor to Oregon, but the rest were victories which made for a stellar non-conference resume. It also meant the Aggies were battle-hardened for SEC play and they have been able to stick near the top of the league due to their toughness and physicality.
One of the strengths of the Texas A&M roster is their continuity. Usually, at this time of the preview article we talk about all the new players that you’ll need to learn for the matchup–but that isn’t as much the case for the Aggies who will return a ton of names you are familiar with. Wade Taylor, Manny Obaseki, Henry Coleman, Hayden Hefner, Andersson Garcia, Solomon Washington, and Jace Carter are all players that have been in College Station for multiple seasons and that kind of continuity has been a huge part of their success, particularly playing for a demanding coach with a unique style in Buzz Williams.
Just because they had a ton of returners doesn’t mean that they didn’t bring in reinforcements from the portal as they acquired Zhuric Phelps from SMU and Pharrel Payne from Minnesota, both who have been helpful pieces.
Entering the season it was expected that Wade Taylor would be one of the top scoring guards in not just the SEC, but the country. He’s been filling it up for multiple years now and after averaging 19.1 points per game he was even talked about as a possible All-American. He’s taken a bit of a step back now averaging 15.0 points per game, but he’s still someone at the top of most opponent’s scouting reports. Taylor scored 30 against the Gators in last year’s SEC Tournament matchup so Florida knows firsthand what he can do and they’ll need to try to keep him out of the paint and away from his scoring areas.
SMU transfer Zhuric Phelps has been a much needed offensive boost behind Taylor averaging 14.4 points, and doing it in a way that perfectly works within the Texas A&M system. Phelps has always been someone who could get the ball to the rim as a 6’4” guard, but his limiting factor was the fact that his jumper has never been consistent. Fortunately–that isn’t a problem for Texas A&M who is all about players getting to the paint and putting the ball on the rim and either finishing, or offering up misses for their potent offensive rebounding attack. The Aggies are the number one team in the country in offensive rebounding percentage, grabbing an astonishing 41.8% of their misses. That means that Buzz Williams isn’t all that concerned with players who might struggle to shoot, because as long as they can create movement in the defense and get them in rotation–missed shots turn into easily rebounded balls for his post players. Florida’s height and length has been a huge part of their success season and this is going to be their biggest rebounding test of the season as they try to keep the Aggies off the glass.
Another interesting element of Texas A&M’s game is their unique defense style that really exaggerates stacking the strong side of the floor and packing the paint at all costs. There is a clear ideological consistency with the way that Buzz Williams sees basketball–he sees the paint as the most valuable part of the floor. That means that offensively he only cares about paint touches, and defensively he only cares about keeping the ball as far away from the rim as possible. Because of this it can be nearly impossible to drive the ball against the Aggies who will send multiple players to wall off any opportunities at the rim, but they will give up a ton of threes. The Aggies are currently 358th in the country in three-point attempts against, so the Gators will have no issues getting shots up and most of the time they are going to be wide open. The Gators have been shooting the ball well as of late and this could be a huge breakout game with the opportunity to take as many good looks at three as they could ever hope for.
In addition to this being a big game from a SEC standings standpoint, it will also be a chance at another resume win as the Gators look for a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament. Texas A&M is 17th in the NET meaning this will be a quad-1 opportunity for the Gators and they’ll look to take full advantage.
ESPN’s college gameday will also be set up in Gainesville for this contest making it one of the biggest Florida home games in quite some time.
Florida and Texas A&M will tip off Saturday, March1st at 8:30 PM ET.