After grabbing a huge win at home over Mississippi State the Florida Gators (13-6, 3-3 SEC) will look to make it three wins in a row when they take on Mike White and the Georgia Bulldogs (14-5, 4-2 SEC) on January 27.
As it currently stands, it’s a bit difficult to nail down just how good the Bulldogs are. They have been able to pack on wins, but they’ve done it with one of the easier non-conference schedules in the country. At one point they were riding one of the NCAA’s longest winning streaks at 10 wins in a row, but their best win came against Florida State who is prone to some stretches of pretty poor play. They’re even 4-2 in the SEC but that number doesn’t tell the whole story as they’ve even had a relatively easy league slate with their wins coming over Missouri, Arkansas, LSU, and, in fairness–a South Carolina team that has been a tough out.
If the tournament was tomorrow the Bulldogs would not be in the field, but they’ve avoided bad losses and piled up wins against sub-par opponents and that’s something Georgia had struggled to do before Mike White got to town. However, if they want to get in the NCAA Tournament mix they’ll need to start taking down teams like Florida so this is a huge game for both the Gators and Bulldogs.
When it comes to how Georgia has been winning games–you guessed it, it’s with defense. Mike White has always been a defensive-minded head coach and coming to a program like Georgia that needed a personality change it made sense for him to go after defensive stoppers and try to win games ugly. One of the biggest differences between how White has built defensive rosters at Georgia as opposed to how he did at Florida is instead of getting small, stocky, physical point of attack players like he did in Gainesville–in Athens it has been all about length. White has filled the roster with long wings like 6’8” Jabri Abdur-Rahim, 6’7” RJ Melendez, 6’5” Silas Demary, and 6’4” Blue Cain, and he even got creative with a pickup going to division-2 powerhouse Nova Southeastern to grab 6’7” RJ Sunahara. This kind of length on the wing allows the Bulldogs to play passing lanes and be difficult to play against and when they win games it’s usually because of their overwhelming defensive efforts.
While it might be thinner, longer players on the wings–at center it’s all about bulk. To fill his starting center spot White went to South Florida to grab 7’0”, 275 pound Russell Tchewa, and with his size, physicality, and start at South Florida it’s hard not to make some comparisons to John Egbunu who was an excellent big man for the Gators. Tchewa isn’t as athletic as Egbunu so don’t look for him to block shots in the same way, but he’s even bigger than Egbunu was and his force in the paint can be problematic for teams that aren’t super muscular in the frontcourt like, say–Florida.
Overall it’s been a solid season for Georgia but it has not been without some level of frustration–largely because of struggles on the offensive end. Georgia currently ranks 91st in the country in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency and not only have they not been good overall–they have gone particularly cold in huge moments. It looked for much of the game like Georgia was going to pull a massive upset over Tennessee when they were up 9 with under 6 and a half minutes left, but a lengthy drought saw them score only 4 points in those 6 and a half minutes and they instead suffered a crushing loss. White knows how he wants to play and built a roster around it and that means defense is a strength–but offensively there are going to be rough moments.
Leading the way in scoring has been Jabri Abdur-Rahim averaging 13.7 points per game, but you wouldn’t necessarily call him the most important player offensively. He’s an excellent catch and shoot player hitting 41% of his threes–particularly helpful for a power forward to stretch out the defense–but he hardly goes inside of the paint and when he does he’s reluctant to try and finish. As an excellent play finisher he’s someone the Gators need to be aware of, but in terms of who stirs the drink in SEC play it’s been the freshman Silas Demary. Demary has been starting for much of the season though in non-conference play there was a definite feeling out process as he learned the college game. Now that SEC play has come around the 6’5” guard has hit his stride and has been leading the Bulldogs in scoring with his biggest game coming against Kentucky when he had 22 points. An attacking ball handler with great length, he is particularly skilled in transition getting to the middle of the floor and making plays and that’s going to be a concern for the Gators.
For the Gators, this game needs to be about playing a consistent 40 minutes and not going through scoring droughts. Georgia has a history of having dry spells offensively so if the Gators simply stay chugging along at the same efficiency all game they should be in great shape. Transition defense is also going to be huge as Georgia’s most efficient offense by a mile is on the fast break. They have multiple players that thrive in transition and aren’t as comfortable in the halfcourt so if the Gators can take away early offense and make the Bulldogs get into sets–the advantage will go to Florida.
Florida and Georgia will tip off on January 27 at 12 PM ET and it will be televised on ESPN 2.