Taking on water after losing three of their last four games, the 7-3 Gators will try to get back on track Saturday when they take on the 4-4 South Florida Bulls.
Things have not gone according to plan for the Gators over the last few weeks who would desperately like to have the Oklahoma, Maryland, and especially Texas Southern games back, and now they’re forced to climb their way out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves.
Some people will roll their eyes at this, but approximately one third into the season bracketologists are already hard at work projecting what the NCAA Tournament field will look like in March. Bracket Matrix, a composite of the top bracketologists, currently has the Gators well on the outside of the bubble, largely due to the Texas Southern and Maryland losses.
In the NET Ratings, the official NCAA sorting tool, the Gators are currently 60th. That’s one spot ahead of Oakland, currently the favorite to win the Horizon League.
If bracketology this early into the season isn’t your thing, I completely get that, but it’s at least some indication of where the Gators sit in the college basketball hierarchy at the moment.
Wherever the Gators currently stand, they’ve got some serious work to do and it starts Saturday against South Florida.
South Florida is in a bit of a tough stretch for the program, following an offseason where accusations regarding some inappropriate comments from coach Brian Gregory towards players had a number of athletes leave. Their start to the season has been rocky, and they take a 4-4 record into Gainesville.
Their wins have come over Bethune-Cookman, North Carolina A&T, Hampton, and Austin Peay, so nothing of great substance yet. Their best loss was a 58-52 loss to Auburn, one that shows they can hang with high major competition, particularly with their defense. Their worst loss was without question a one-point loss to South Carolina State who is currently 345th in KenPom.
The biggest struggle for South Carolina right now is their ability to score. In KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency metric they’re currently 329th in the country, something that really speaks to the struggles they have on that end. Many of their issues are related to their inability to shoot the ball at a high level as they’re currently 353rd in the country in three-point percentage at a dismal 24%. Because of their inability to shoot, much of their offense is related to trying to pound the ball inside, and opposing defenses have been content to pack the paint against them and let them shoot jumpers.
One player to watch offensively who can make things happen is guard Caleb Murphy, a former top-100 recruit that actually had a bit of Florida interest at one point. Pretty much all of South Florida’s pick and roll game consists of the ball in Murphy’s hands as he tries to attack off the screen with pace and get to the rim. Murphy isn’t a shooter, at all (0-6 on the season from three), so the Gators can defend him knowing he isn’t a threat to pull up behind the screen and shoot. Florida’s low hedge ball screen defense is all about keeping pick and roll ball handlers from driving towards the paint, so there shouldn’t be any big problems there.
Where Murphy is tougher to contain is in transition where teams don’t have the chance to load up the paint to take away his drives. South Florida on a whole isn’t a team that plays fast, in fact they are very slow, but the one player with a green light to try and go make something happen is Murphy. He can handle the ball with ease even at full speed and for a team that struggles so mightily with half court offense, any shot he can take in transition before the defense sets up is probably a good one for the Bulls.
Defensively, things are a different story for the Bulls. They’re quite stout on that end with a number of long, athletic bruisers who take pride in getting stops.
Everything is anchored by 7’0”, 280 pound center Russel Tchewa. Now, he’s listed at 280 pounds which might make you think he’d be a bit rotund, but that isn’t the case at all. He’s just a massive human being, built like a monster for a college basketball center. In fact, watching him finish dunks around the rim and rebound, he physically reminds you a lot of former South Florida Bull and Florida Gator John Egbunu. Now, Egbunu was a top-60 recruit who was on his way to the NBA before his knee injury and I’m not suggesting Tchewa is that level of player, but in terms of stature and style, Tchewa is Egbunu-lite.
That size on the back end gives the Bulls someone more than capable of banging with Colin Castleton as he’ll have quite the bulk advantage, and for a Florida team that went to Castleton post ups a lot in their last game against a mid-major (North Florida) they may have to reconsider the strategy for this game.
South Florida is one of the best shot blocking teams in the country, but get this–the 7-foot Tchewa is 6th on the team in blocks. The Bulls have some savvy wings in Jamir Chaplin, Jake Boggs, and Sam Hines who are all between 6’5” and 6’7” and while they’re not super long, they have a great knack for timing and anticipation to turn shots away. Between these shot blocking wings and Tchewa’s presence on the inside it’s hard to get shots around the rim, and for a Florida team that already struggles to score around the rim, this could be a problem.
Florida has shot a lot of threes this year, and South Florida’s defense is geared towards running shooters off the line and funnelling them into their army of shot blockers. Exactly how Florida will handle these attacking closeout opportunities will define just exactly how efficient their offense will be Saturday.
The defense hasn’t been great for Florida this season, but it’s still been ahead of their offense, so the Gators’ offense is certainly the key to this game. Texas Southern stunned the Gators because they were able to negate all of Florida’s offensive schemes and that film is available to everyone so the Bulls will almost certainly come in with a good defensive scheme. If Florida is able to get good shots against a stout South Florida team they should win with ease given the Bulls’ struggles to score, but as we have seen in college basketball this year, you just never know what you’re going to see.
This game takes place Saturday, December 18th, at 1 PM ET. It will be broadcast by Bally Sports Sun.