You might have football on the mind right now with that season only a week away but basketball never sleeps and SEC hoops fans got a treat on Friday with the announcement of the conference basketball schedule. Here is how things look for the Gators:
Saturday Jan. 5 South Carolina
Wednesday Jan. 9 at Arkansas
Saturday Jan. 12 Tennessee
Tuesday Jan. 15 at Mississippi State
Saturday Jan. 19 at Georgia
Tuesday Jan. 22 Texas A&M
Saturday Jan. 26 at TCU (SEC/Big 12 Challenge)
Wednesday Jan. 30 Ole Miss
Saturday Feb. 2 Kentucky
Tuesday Feb. 5 at Auburn
Saturday Feb. 9 at Tennessee
Wednesday Feb. 13 Vanderbilt
Saturday Feb. 16 at Alabama
Wednesday Feb. 20 at LSU
Saturday Feb. 23 Missouri
Wednesday Feb. 27 at Vanderbilt
Saturday March 2 Georgia
Wednesday March 6 LSU
Saturday March 9 at Kentucky
Let’s take a walk through the roadmap of the season with some thoughts that I have.
Gauntlet
First, and this is no surprise to any of you, the SEC is going to be a monster conference. As I look up and down the league I see a whole lot of NCAA bids and I see a whole lot of difficult games and not a lot of places where you can take a breather. Looking at the standings from last season a lot of the teams that were at the top are going to be really good again. Auburn (#1) returns a lot of talent from their surprising team last year AND gets Austin Wiley and Danjel Purifoy back from their eligibility issues, Tennessee (#2) bring pretty much everyone back and Kentucky (#4) actually has some veteran talent and some sharpshooters from the perimeter for once. The middle of the standings also got better, too. Mississippi State (#7) will figure to be in many analysts’ preseason Top 25s with the veteran pieces that will provide a stifling defense, LSU (#10) has one of the best point guards in the country in Tremont Waters and a deadly recruiting class, and though Alabama (#9) lost their stud in Collin Sexton they’re bringing back a lot of other talented guys I like and they could be the surprise team of the league. How about the bottom of the conference, too? Georgia (#11) and Ole Miss (#14) just hired two of the most sought-after coaches this past offseason in Tom Crean and Kermit Davis and Vanderbilt (#13) has two top-15 players in their recruiting class. A lot of teams that were already good got better and there just wasn’t a lot of teams that took steps back. The SEC was fantastic last year and it could be even better this year.
Starting Block
Though there won’t be a cupcakes on the schedule I think the start of the league slate is the easiest for the Gators and they’ll need to start strong. The six game collection of South Carolina, at Arkansas, Tennessee, at Mississippi State, at Georgia, and then Texas A&M probably sees the fewest NCAA Tournament teams of any stretch and I think the Gators need to go at least 4-2 here if they want to finish in the top three of the SEC again this year. Holding home court against Tennessee will be daunting but trips to Arkansas and Georgia are decent opportunities for Florida to steal games on the road.
Meat Of The Order
The shortest month of the year may feel like the longest for the Gators as February looks to be the toughest stretch of the season. Going against Kentucky, Auburn, and Tennessee to start the month bunches together the three toughest teams in the SEC back to back to back and the cherry on top is that they’re on the road for both Auburn and Tennessee. There won’t be any chances for rest after that fire-walk as they’ll then take on a Vanderbilt team whose young talent should be galvanized by then, an Alabama team that returns a handful of players who gave the Gators migraines in a meeting last year, and then LSU whose young but talented frontcourt could give the Florida bigs some major fits. If they can weather the storm during this stretch they should be well set up for a great finish in the standings.
Exorcising Demons
Every Vanderbilt player seems to somehow grow 5 inches before taking on the Gators. Even though the Commodores haven’t been world-beaters the last several years they have licked their lips every time they see the Gators on the schedule and there is good reason why. Florida is 1-8 against Vanderbilt in the Mike White era and Florida hasn’t won at Memorial Gym since 2014. I should also add that the one win the Gators got was in a rock fight of a game last year where it wasn’t exactly a decisive victory that left you feeling like the Gators were back in business against what has been perhaps their most frustrating conference foe. This year, with Vanderbilt having more raw talent then ever, the Gators will need to find a way to put recent history in the past and start a new era of winning games in Nashville.
Twice Is (Not?) Nice
Playing Kentucky, Tennessee, LSU, Vanderbilt, and Georgia twice is another example of why the Gators are going to have one of the toughest schedules in the country. Though Georgia may provide some easier games (perhaps just relative to the league, I still have a lot of respect for Crean and what he could do in even his first year) the other four teams are going to provide a dirty double punch the Gators will have to be prepared for. I’m always interested by the second game opponents play together in a regular season as you get to see which coaches and which teams can play the adjustment game better. How Florida adjusts to seeing these teams a second time could be one of the major points in how they finish.
New NET
With the NCAA announcing the new NET metric that will be used to evaluate teams when it comes to NCAA Tournament bracket I’m interested to see how Florida’s difficult schedule will factor in to the algorithm. If they were still using the ancient RPI I’m certain this schedule would have been very favorable to the Gators and I’m hoping (and truthfully, expecting) that the difficult schedule will make the NET kind to the team as well.
Hey, as long as you’re winning games, things will sort themselves out.
Basketball season is coming, folks! With the SEC set to be one of the best conferences in college hoops again you can look forward to boatload of entertaining matchups. Cheers!