Riding an unbeaten streak to start the season the Florida Gators (5-0) will get a challenge at home Friday when they welcome in the Southern Illinois Salukis (2-2), a team expected to do some damage in the Missouri Valley Conference this season.
Southern Illinois is a mid-major program with some proud history, though they had fallen into a state of purgatory over the last decade where they never bottomed out and became uncompetitive, but couldn’t compete at the top of the Missouri Valley which has turned into functionally the toughest single-bid league in the country. Despite head coach Bryan Mullins, who played at Southern Illinois and was a fan favorite, having a decent record in his five years in Carbondale–the program made a difficult decision to fire him this past offseason. Along with the move the athletic department upped their financial commitment to the program and secured a solid NIL chest before moving to hire Scott Nagy away from Wright State.
Nagy is a veteran head coach who spent 11 seasons at South Dakota State before moving to Wright State where he was for 8 seasons. He has made 5 NCAA Tournaments, and he had both teams operating as perennial favorites in their leagues and has proven he can not just elevate a program but maintain that success.
If there is one thing that Nagy’s teams can do–it’s score. While at South Dakota State Nagy’s teams had a three year stretch where they finished 17th, 27th, and 33rd in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency metric, a run that seems nearly unbelievable for a mid-major program to achieve. After also building an offensive machine at Wright State, his era ended last season with the Raiders being 33rd in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency. Given that these numbers are adjusted for quality of competition it is a remarkable feat for a mid-major team to even make it into the top-75 of this metric–much less 33rd. This shows just how potent Nagy is as an offensive coach and he’s looking to bring the style to Southern Illinois as well, though he’ll have to do it in a different way.
While at Wright State, Nagy was known for his incredible identification, recruitment, development, and utilization of big men. Despite the challenges of getting quality size at the mid-major level for most programs Wright State was a factory for big and skilled post players and it’s a big reason the Raiders had so much success. While he’ll certainly look to do that in the long term at Southern Illinois, he wasn’t able to start with the quick turnaround after taking the job and the Salukis are somewhat undersized and young in the frontcourt, so this year it’s all about a talented trio of guards.
Leading the way right now is point guard Elijah Elliott, a 6’1” point guard who transferred to Southern Illinois after averaging 16.6 points and 3.0 assists at Texas Rio Grande Valley–a huge get for Nagy and one that speaks to the resources Southern Illinois is now dealing with. Elliott has picked up right where he left off at his previous school averaging 16.5 points while shooting 44% from deep and his ability to score can put the defense on its heels right away.
Joining Elliott is Kennard Davis, a talented young player who was productive as a freshman and someone Nagy was able to retain despite most players in his situation leaving with a coaching change. Davis has great size at 6’6” and 215 pounds and brings physicality with a bruising driving style–the perfect compliment to the other talented guards on the roster. Currently he’s averaging 14.8 points and 4.0 assists per game, bringing a new playmaking element to his arsenal.
Another huge get in the transfer portal was Ali Dibba, a 6’5” Swedish guard who had a number of productive seasons at Abilene Christian as a lockdown defender and capable scorer. He’ll guard the opposing team’s best players on one end while also bringing some scoring versatility on the other end averaging 13.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 2.5 assists, rounding out the guard trio of productive players that all have different but complimentary games.
The frontcourt is smaller and not as productive with 6’8”, 215 pound Jarrett Hensley often getting the start playing out of position next to 6’7”, 200 pound Antwaun Massey. This is where Southern Illinois weakest and where they are going to have the biggest issue with Florida’s size, and it could be the major difference in the game.
So far Southern Illinois is 2-2 with their wins coming against a non-d1 and North Dakota State, and their losses coming to Charleston and Oklahoma State. They were competitive against Oklahoma State losing 85-78, and the story of the game was quite predictable–Southern Illinois’ guards were better and nearly won them the game, except for the fact that Oklahoma State’s bigs were able to feast around the rim against the undersized Southern Illinois post players. This will be the challenge Southern Illinois faces all season long, and it’s likely a hurdle they will run into against the Gators.
Florida and Southern Illinois tip off Friday, November 22nd at 7 PM ET and it will be televised on SEC Network.