Still in search of quality wins for an NCAA Tournament resume the Gators (12-6, 2-3 SEC) will get an opportunity to grab one on January 24th when they welcome the Mississippi State Bulldogs (13-5, 2-3 SEC) to Gainesville. Currently Florida has zero quadrant-1 wins, the highest quality win in the eyes of the NCAA Tournament committee, and while Mississippi State has been a quality team they are 40th in the NET meaning that this will be a quadrant-2 game for the Gators. Even though this game might not have the highest value it is still one of quality and the Gators can’t get enough of those wins right now.
Mississippi State finds themselves in somewhat of a similar position to the Gators from a resume standpoint right now. The Bulldogs don’t have a quality non-conference win with their biggest victory coming over Washington State–though they find themselves in that position for a different reason than Florida. Head coach Chris Jans decided to play a rather soft non-conference schedule to build confidence with his team and not take on losses while they’d be missing star big man Tolu Smith to injury, so they played a number of “buy” games and came out out with a number of wins–though they also took bad losses to Georgia Tech and Southern. In league play the Bulldogs do have a monster resume win–a 77-72 win over a Tennessee team that recently blasted the Gators.
This is year two for the Bulldogs under Chris Jans who is off to a tremendous start. Last year there were no expectations for Mississippi State to be good with the coaching transition but Jans, who has shown the ability to win wherever he goes, was able to get enough victories to make it into the NCAA Tournament as an 11-seed. This year as they’re currently 40th in the NET with a huge win over Tennessee but a bad loss against Southern the Bulldogs are still in the mix for an NCAA Tournament berth which makes this matchup against a Florida team in a similar position extremely important.
As mentioned earlier, Mississippi State started the season without Tolu Smith who suffered a foot injury that had him out for half a year. Foot injuries are always a major concern with big men and while the timeline was for him to miss non-conference play and come back for SEC action there were still questions about whether he’d be 100% or whether he’d be a shell of himself. Well, those questions were answered quickly as he had 23 points against Tennessee, 15 against Alabama, and 26 against Kentucky as he hit the ground running. This is Smith’s 5th season of college basketball and 4th at Mississippi State and he is known for being dominant against the Gators. Back in 2021, Smith famously had 27 points and 14 rebounds to upset the Gators–and back then he was a young player not yet known for his offense. In 2022, he had 17 points and 6 assists, but that was nothing compared to what he did last year in the SEC Tournament where he had 28 points and 12 rebounds to end Florida’s season. Smith has proven to be one of the best players in the SEC for multiple years and he’ll be at the top of Florida’s scouting report as they try to slow him down.
Smith gets everything done around the rim and with a 6’11” frame with skill and power he’s a load for opposing frontcourts to try to handle. What makes Smith so special is that there is an element of deception you don’t see with a lot of the other great bigs in college basketball. Smith can bait defenders into biting at his first move, only to jump into a counter he had planned all along. Not only is he able to get buckets this way but he’s able to draw a remarkable amount of fouls–namely 9.5 fouls drawn per 40 minutes. That’s best in the country, just ahead of a 7’4” monster named Zach Edey that you may have heard of. The Tolu Smith matchup has to be incredibly concerning for Florida as they have been getting dominated inside by physical big men and Smith is the most talented big they have seen this year. Luckily for the Gators they have a lot of different bodies to throw at him and use fouls but they don’t have one guy they’re going to feel great about in the matchup.
Last season the Bulldogs struggled offensively and were dead last in the country in three-point percentage and they tried to address that issue by bringing in a 5’10” freshman named Josh Hubbard who is a rocket launcher from deep. In 18 games this season he has already shot 130 threes hitting 37% of them, and while he can run hot and cold the fact that he’s shooting about 8 per game means that if he is hitting the points can pile up in a hurry. At 14.2 points per game he was the Bulldogs’ offensive leader before Smith returned and now that he doesn’t have to be the primary initiator he is actually getting a lot better looks from three and the Gators will have to be aware of him. Besides Smith and Hubbard there aren’t a lot of particularly talented scorers on the Bulldogs and they will rely on running a lot of structured sets to try and find cracks in Florida’s defense.
Offense might not be a strength for the Bulldogs but they are absolutely built to defend. Tolu Smith and 6’10”, 280 pound behemoth Jimmy Bell (a transfer from West Virginia) lock down the paint, and they’re also extremely aggressive in ball screen defense, hedging out and making things uncomfortable for the guards. Veteran 6’7” stopper DJ Jeffries has always been a monster on the defensive end and continues to be one, as is senior Cam Matthews who also takes immense pride in the defensive end. Mississippi State’s backcourt of Josh Hubbard, Shakeel Moore, and Dashawn Davis is undersized but those players all have great speed and play aggressively knowing that there is help behind them if they get beat off the dribble or when they miss poking the ball away in the passing lane. If there is one thing to know about Mississippi State it’s that they know exactly who they are and they play within their identity–they’re a tough, defense-minded team that wants to win games by grinding them out.
For Florida the defensive focus needs to be slowing down Tolu Smith. The Gators just had one of their best defensive games of the season against Missouri but the Tigers are a very different team without a physical big man–the style of play that has given the Gators issues, and the kind of big that Tolu Smith is. Offensively the Gators will also have to take down a very stout Bulldogs defense, but Florida’s explosive backcourt will have a length and athleticism advantage that they will hopefully leverage.
Florida and Mississippi State takes place January 24th at 8:30 PM ET and it will be televised on SEC Network.