Wednesday night saw the Gators (7-4) have arguably their best performance of the season against Ohio in Tampa and they’ll look to keep that energy going on Tuesday when they take on the Oklahoma Sooners (7-3). This game will take place in Charlotte, North Carolina as part of the Jumpman Invitational–an event putting Jordan Brand schools together.
This will be a familiar opponent for the Gators who saw the Sooners last season on the road. It was a frustrating contest for Florida who was largely stifled offensively and the Sooners, a team largely made up of transfers that weren’t looked at by other high major programs, came away with a 74-67 win.
A lot of the credit for that Sooners win goes to their head coach Porter Moser who is known for being one of the best X’s and O’s minds in the country, something that the Gators are all too familiar with. Before going to Oklahoma, Moser was at Loyola-Chicago and brought the team from relative irrelevance nationally to a Final Four. During the year where they made their run it was a convincing win over the Gators in Gainesville that started conversation that this Loyola-Chicago team was for real, Moser showed once again he had Florida’s number last season by taking a team that would be considered to have a lot less talent by most people and handling the Gators.
Their game plan defensively was to send delayed double teams on Colin Castleton–waiting to send the double team until he took his first dribble. He was largely surprised by the double teams when they came and without much off-ball movement from his teammates there wasn’t a pressure release valve when he realized he was in trouble. He ended up finishing the game with 6 turnovers.
Moser is an excellent schematic mind, but in his second year at Oklahoma he is still yet to bring in top level talent and the Sooners roster is mostly transfers. Yes, a lot of programs at the high-major level, including Florida, are largely made up of transfers–but Moser has largely been getting the second level of transfers after other teams have hand picked who they like.
That is with the exception of one player who has been one of the most successful mid-major to high-major transfers in college basketball this season–Grant Sherfield.
Sherfield started his career at Wichita State before transferring to Nevada and now ending up at Oklahoma. He was a stat sheet stuffer at Nevada averaging 19 points and 6 assists per game, and despite most mid-major to high-major transfers having their production drop off significantly, that hasn’t been the case for Sherfield. The jump in level hasn’t bothered him and he is averaging 18 points and 4 assists per game, quietly playing as one of the best point guards in the country. One of the big reasons for his success is that he has gone from being an average to even below-average three-point shooter to having a scorching start this year, shooting 55% on threes. For a Florida team that has struggled to guard the three-point line this year they’ll certainly need to be aware of Sherfield and do what they can to limit his attempts.
Two other shooters to be aware of are the frontcourt combination of The Brothers’ Groves, Tanner Groves and Jacob Groves who are in their second year at Oklahoma after both transferring from Eastern Washington.
Tanner is the bigger of the two players at 6’10” and 240 pounds and he’s a career 37% shooter, though he’s had a bit of a cooler start to the season shooting only 30%. He’s best in the high post dribbling down defenders before getting to a hook shot, something the Gators will know first hand from last year when he scored 20 points on efficient 8-11 shooting, getting whatever he wanted against Florida’s defense. Tanner is a threat in the pick and roll game since he can both roll and seal to get deep position or pop to the three-point line and get a catch and shoot attempt.
His brother Jacob, standing at 6’9” and 210 pounds, isn’t quite the same shooter as Tanner historically but he’s hitting 40% of his threes to start the season. Throughout their years playing together Tanner has been a starter and Jacob has come off the bench, though now as veterans they are starting together and it makes for a frontcourt of significant size and also one that provides excellent shooting.
During his time at Loyola-Chicago and last year at Oklahoma Porter Moser has been a five-out, Princeton inspired offensive coach but this year they have started playing continuity ball screen, something the Gators also play. This will make for an interesting matchup as both teams are going to be familiar with this offense, and the team that makes the better adjustments could have an advantage. Oklahoma plays a bit more traditional of a continuity ball screen offense while Florida’s is a bit more complex, but the meat and potatoes of the offense will be very familiar to both teams.
Defensively, Oklahoma is a pure man to man team who will often sit in gaps one pass away to protect against the dribble drive. Florida doesn’t have a lot of electric scorers off the dribble, so look for the Sooners to give a bit less gap support and instead focus more on trying to keep the ball out of Colin Castleton’s hands.
The Sooners haven’t played a terribly difficult schedule but they have wins over Ole Miss, Seton Hall, and Nebraska–all of which are better wins than anything Florida has. Their losses have come to Arkansas, Villanova, and perhaps most notably–Sam Houston State. Sam Houston State is actually one of the better mid-majors in the country, currently 84th in KenPom. However, it’s worth noting that the Sam Houston loss would be worse than any loss that Florida has taken.
The Gators are yet to have a quality win and they’d love to get one on the board with this Oklahoma game.
The Gators and Sooners will have quite a late tip in Charlotte, 9:30 PM ET on Tuesday, December 20th. It will be televised on ESPN 2.