Following a comfortable start to the season in which they played three mid-major opponents the Florida Gators (3-0) will try to keep their record spotless when they play their first high-major opponent of the season–rival Florida State (3-0).
Whenever the Gators and Seminoles face off it’s always going to be a rivalry match, but truthfully this has been one of the stranger rivalries that college basketball has seen over the last decade plus. In the late 2000’s this was somewhat of a competitive series until the Gators started to get an edge. Then, in 2015–everything flipped. Florida State won a remarkable seven straight matchups, causing a regular tradition of frustration for the Gators under Mike White. However, after the Florida State stranglehold from 2015-2021 Florida finally punched back, winning in Mike White’s final season and following it up with wins in 2022 and 2023 under Todd Golden giving the Gators a three-game streak going into 2024.
Because of these wild swings the rivalry hasn’t had as much juice as it once did when every year was a toss up, though it has largely been due to where both programs have been over the last decade. Florida State was a tremendous story during the time when they were bullying the Gators as they dominated the ACC despite it having traditional powers like Duke, North Carolina, and Louisville, and they had three top-15 KenPom finishes during that time. However, in 2022–things took a sharp nosedive. The Seminoles had a season that saw them finish 105th in KenPom which was a number that seemed unimaginable until, well–things got even worse. In 2023 a team that was already struggling also got hit with injuries, resulting in a 9-23 season where they finished 205th in KenPom. There was somewhat of an improvement last year, but they simply finished 17-16 and 79th nationally in KenPom, leading a lot of people to wonder if time might be starting to run out for the once-immortal Leonard Hamilton.
This year things weren’t expected to be much better for Florida State who was picked to finish 15th in the ACC (a league that due to expansion now has 18 teams). Florida will be favored to extend their winning streak in the rivalry to four games, but an FSU team desperate to turn things around should offer quite a fight.
So far the Seminoles are 3-0 on the season though like the Gators they are yet to play a high-major opponent. Their wins over Northern Kentucky (74-62) and Rice (73-65) were a little too close for comfort, though they bounced back with a better showing against Tarleton State winning 72-52.
In a lot of ways, Florida State is back to the style of play that coach Leonard Hamilton has always wanted to play now that he’s got a few more of the suitable pieces on the roster–they want to play physical, they want to be aggressive defensively, and they want to play extremely fast. Through three games they are 12th in the country in steal percentage, and anyone who remembers how Florida State played when they were one of the top teams in the country will remember just how Hamilton wants them to play. They are high in the gaps and aggressive in passing lanes trying to limit their opponent’s ability to even pass the ball making it extremely difficult to run offense against them. If you do get some kind of dribble penetration they have length all over the floor to recover and contest at the rim, as evidenced by their block rate that is 4th nationally right now. Since the Gators haven’t played a high-major opponent yet this kind of length and speed is something they haven’t seen so far, but they’ll be ready for the challenge after the early season tune ups.
Impactful defensively are 6’10” Taylor Bol Bowen, 6’11” Malique Ewin, and 6’7” Jamir Watkins (more on him later), though their rotation is filled with players who take pride on that end.
Offensively, things are much more of a challenge for the Seminoles and this has been an issue around their program that has led to the issues they’ve had recently. In prioritizing defensive talent and length the Florida State staff is willing to take guys that aren’t as talented on the offensive end and when you start to fill your roster with primarily those types of guys–scoring is going to become an issue. The Seminoles are not a team that runs anything complex or has a lot of talented individual scorers, but they will move the ball and make the defense work if they get in a half court scenario. Of course, they’d prefer not to be in those scenarios at all as they’d much rather play in transition and score before the defense is set and the Gators will have to be aware of that. If they can keep the Seminoles out of transition and slow them down to a half court game, scoring will be an issue for them. Shooting has been a particular struggle as through three games the Seminoles are shooting 21%, ranking 340th in the country.
After a few frustrating seasons it was thought that Florida State was almost certainly going to use star wing Jamir Watkins to the transfer portal. He had been the clear bright spot for a team that had few, and he proved himself in the ACC by averaging 15.6 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 2.8 assists per game despite the struggles of his team. Watkins did enter the transfer portal, and when he did he got contacted by just about every top team in the program as there are very few elite wings available, and he would have been able to hand pick wherever he’d want to play. Shockingly, he chose to return to the Seminoles for his final season, giving them a fighting chance to have the best player on the floor in most matchups this season. So far Watkins is averaging 18.3 points and 4.7 rebounds per game while none of his teammates average double digits, and he’s doing it without much shooting around him to provide space. Florida doesn’t have a lot of wings with size so Watkins could be a difficult matchup, though the Gators are likely to throw multiple bodies at him as they try to make other less offensively-minded players beat them.
This will be an important game for the Gators as they try to keep momentum in the rivalry. Additionally, these are the types of games the Gators will need to win if they want to not just make the NCAA Tournament but have a quality seed. It’s expected that Florida State will finish outside of the top-75 of the NET Ratings meaning it will be a quad-2 game for the Gators, and while losing a quad-2 isn’t a black mark on the resume by any means, they’re the type of losses they’ll need to avoid if they want to reach their ceiling.
Florida and Florida State will tip off at 6 PM ET on November 15, and please note that the game will be televised on ACC Network.