With a great shot at landing a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and an outside shot at an SEC regular season title still a possibility the Florida Gators (23-3, 10-3 SEC) will need to avoid tripping and falling on the road against the LSU Tigers (14-12, 3-10 SEC).
At the completion of Tuesday’s games across the league LSU sits at 15th out of 16 teams in the SEC and things are once again looking bleak in Baton Rouge. This is the third year of the Matt McMahon era (a coach the Gators were rumored to have interest in at the time they hired Todd Golden) and he has struggled to get things off the ground. In his first season the Tigers finished dead last in the SEC and saw a big improvement last year to finish 8th, but with a poor non-conference showing they weren’t even close to sniffing the NCAA Tournament. This year has seen a step back, and while they were able to put up some wins in the non-conference due to scheduling an extremely easy slate, the SEC has seemingly exposed some warts.
There aren’t many easy games in the SEC but the Tigers did get somewhat of a break with back to back games against Oklahoma and South Carolina (the two teams that sit in the basement of the SEC with them) and were able to come away victorious in both, meaning that the Tigers are arguably playing their best basketball of the season and will enter the game with Florida on a two-game winning streak. You could look at this as somewhat of a fluke, or point out that these were coin flip games between teams at the bottom of the SEC, but McMahon did make some notable changes that seemed to have some good results. After going through the bulk of the SEC season struggling he chose to finally make a change to the starting lineup inserting freshmen Vyctorius Miller and Curtis Givens, and the change seemingly worked with the starters holding up much better in recent games while also giving a veteran boost to the bench.
Leading the way in scoring is Cam Carter, a physical off guard that came to LSU from Kansas State after starting his career at Mississippi State. Carter was a productive scorer for two years at Kansas State and was the biggest piece in LSU’s transfer haul and despite the Tigers having a poor season overall the returns on Carter have been good. Averaging 17.3 points and 2.7 rebounds per game he is wired to score from the shooting guard position and can fill up the statsheet in a hurry with the variety of ways in which he can score. Throughout his career Carter has been known more as a driver and midrange player using his powerful 6’3”, 195 pound frame to get near the rim and finish, but this year he has finally found the jump shot after struggling from range his first three seasons. He’s shooting the three at heavy volume and hitting 41% making him one of the most dangerous shooters in the SEC and the Gators will look to run him off the line and meet him with length on the interior.
Another guard that can bring the scoring punch is 5’11” Jordan Sears who was one of the top scorers in college basketball at UT Martin last year averaging 21.6 points per game which earned him the chance to compete in high-major basketball. Naturally his point total was going to go down against a higher quality of competition but he’s still been able to average 12.5 points per game. One of the big steps back for Sears has been the jumper, as he is shooting just 32% from three after shooting 41% a year ago and it has limited his game and the Tigers’ offense. Sears also has some defensive limitations due to his size, and it’s part of the reason that McMahon made the tough choice to move him to the bench in their last game despite him being the team’s second leading scorer. It’s unknown what they’ll do against the Gators, but he might be a spark plug off the bench Florida will need to account for.
When you look at what has been at all successful for LSU this season it’s their defense that has been competitive at times. The Tigers have good length and athleticism up and down their lineup with some veteran savvy at key positions, and while they are young at a number of other spots many of those players, like the previously mentioned Miller and Givens, are rangy athletes. At this point it seems like McMahon is going to lean fully into this as he signaled by moving Sears to the bench in order to get more defense with the starters, so you can expect them to really try to grind out a game with the Gators and make it a lower possession game.
LSU’s big issue this year has come on the offensive side of the ball where they are 197th in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency. This is particularly surprising given their backcourt of Cam Carter and Jordan Sears who bring scoring punch and should be able to lead a capable offense, but the Tigers simply haven’t been able to get production from anyone else. Former Florida commit Jalen Reed started the season strong and brought some skill and shooting to the frontcourt but he was injured after just 8 games which left the Tigers with very little scoring outside of the backcourt and it can be a major challenge for them to create good looks. Florida has been swallowing up teams that aren’t confident or capable on the offensive end due to their length and intensity and LSU could see themselves very challenged to score.
Florida is rolling right now and hasn’t seen any drop off in focus even when playing the bottom of the league so there shouldn’t be much concern from that end when they take on LSU. Unlike some of the other teams at the bottom of the SEC, LSU has a couple of guards that can really heat up and put up points in a hurry and slowing them down will be at the center of Florida’s scouting report.
It is expected that Alex Condon and Sam Alexis will remain out for this game as they look to get to full health for the final stretch of the season.
Florida and LSU will tip off Saturday, February 22nd at 6 PM ET and it will be televised on SEC Network.