Florida Finishing Non-Conference Slate Against Stony Brook

Florida’s final game before the holiday season takes place Wednesday, December 22nd where they’ll take on the Stony Brook Seawolves from the America East Conference, a league known for producing some plucky underdogs who have made some noise in march. Recently it has been the Vermont Catamounts that have controlled that league and they’re once again expected to win, though Stony Brook is considered to be the second best team in that league and one that will compete for the conference title and the bid to the NCAA Tournament.

 

Stony Brook is coached by Geno Ford who has spent time as the head coach at Bradley and Kent State before taking the job at Stony Brook. This is year three in his tenure and the Seawolves have consistently gotten better, now in a position where they feel they have a chance at making the NCAA Tournament.

 

So far the season has gone pretty well for Coach Ford and the Seawolves as they take a 7-4 record into Gainesville. Their losses are to Kansas, George Mason, Fairfield, and Wagner, while their two best wins are over Hofstra and Yale. 

 

If there is one overarching theme of this Stony Brook roster it’s their incredible amount of age and experience. Their 12-man rotation consists of 9 seniors, 2 juniors, and a freshman, and when you look at the players who play nearly all the minutes it’s all seniors and one of the juniors. That wealth of experience is one of the reasons they’re picked to finish at the top of the America East, and it’s a reason they’ll have some buzz as a team who could complete an upset.

 

That’s also a concern for the Gators who don’t want to be on the wrong side of another low-major beating a high-major. This game is a bit of a weird setting as it’s at 2 PM on a Wednesday, on a University Of Florida campus that will be largely empty with most people headed home for the holidays. There is some definite trap potential for the Gators in a matinee game in front of what is probably going to be a quieter crowd than normal against a veteran team, so they can’t afford to take the Seawolves lightly. 

 

The strength of Stony Brook is on the offensive end where they run beautiful systems and score in a number of ways. Like the Gators they play largely five-out offense, spacing out opponents and creating driving lanes to the rim. That offense is made even more deadly by the fact that the Seawolves have a number of threats from beyond the arc that punish teams for over helping. As a team they shoot 35.2% from three (Florida shoots 30.9%, for reference) and they achieve that number while shooting a high number of attempts, so they are extremely flammable from deep and it should be an area of concern for the Gators. Tyler Stephenson-Moore (46%), Jahlil Jenkins (38%), and Frankie Policelli (38%) are the biggest weapons from deep, and with all three of them on the floor for most minutes there will be a lot of floor spacers the Gators need to be aware of. 

 

Many of the three-points shots are generated off drives created with the five-out offense, and leading scorer Anthony Roberts (15 points per game) is the biggest driver of those opportunities. The senior guard is incredibly smooth offensively, a perfect fit for the offense where he bides his time on the perimeter until a driving lane is created that he can attack. Stony Brook will create a lot of these situations offensively and then when teams collapse the drivers find one of the many shooters and they can devastate a defense.

 

Florida has done a great job of limiting three-point shots against them so far this season and they will be tested again on Wednesday. Stony Brook might be the best three-point generating team the Gators have faced this season, so we’ll see what happens when a team that is really good at creating threes goes against a team that is really good at taking them away. 

 

There is a lot to like about Stony Brook’s experienced roster and polished offensive game, but they do have a few serious deficiencies–much of which are related to their small stature across the board.

 

Stony Brook is 331st in the country in average height. Their best lineup consists of Jahlil Jenkins (6’0”, 160), Juan Felix Rodriguez (6’0”, 190), Anthony Roberts (6’4”, 200), Tykei Greene (6’4”, 205), and Frankie Policelli (6’7”, 215) so as you can see, they are very short, and very small. This lineup allows them to be fast and skilled offensively but it hurts them defensively and on the glass where they struggle.

 

This gave the Seawolves huge problems against a large Kansas team, and looking at Florida’s front line there are going to be issues as well. Florida is definitely going to look to get deep post touches for Colin Castleton who will almost always have a mismatch.

 

Stony Brook does have a 7-footer on their roster, 280 pound Alex Christie, but he’s a seldom-used player. While he doesn’t fit the general profile of how Stony Brook wants to play, he may see more burn than usual to try to bang with Colin Castleton and Jason Jitoboh. In a number of Florida’s games this season we have seen teams use their biggest players that normally don’t see much playing time to try to bother Castleton, so we could see the strategy used once again on Wednesday.

 

The biggest question for the Gators is how their offense is going to look. They have been largely frustrated on the offensive end the last couple of weeks and dropped to 48th in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency metric after getting slowed down by South Florida on Saturday. This is Florida’s last non-conference game before entering SEC play, where they have a difficult schedule right off the bat, so if their offense doesn’t improve they could be in trouble.

 

This game takes place Wednesday, December 22nd, at 2 PM ET and will be broadcast on SEC Network+.

 

Eric Fawcett
Eric is a basketball coach and writer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His work has been found at NBA international properties, ESPN, Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, Lindy's and others. He loves zone defenses, the extra pass, and a 30 second shot clock. Growing up in Canada, an American channel showing SEC basketball games was his first exposure to Gator hoops, and he has been hooked ever since. You can follow him on Twitter at @ericfawcett_.