Saturday, January 30
Gainesville, FL
12:00 PM
Florida Gators
vs
West Virginia
Mike White is looking for his first win over a ranked team in five tries as Florida's coach.
WVU = RPI Opportunity for Gators' NCAA Tournament Ambitions
Friday, January 29, 2016 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- When news of ESPN's revamped take on the SEC/Big 12 Challenge -- moving it from December into the middle of conference play -- popped up last year, no one thought much of it. On the Florida front, fans probably didn't think too much about their team's matchup, either.
Now, what do you think?
Here it is, nearly halfway through the Southeastern Conference schedule, and the Gators (13-7) are getting a high-noon house call Saturday from No. 9 West Virginia (17-3) at the O'Connell Center in what has shaped up as the UF's biggest game of the 2014-15 season and the first home sellout of the Coach Mike White era. Programmers at ESPN decided last offseason that the 10-game matchup of teams from the two power conferences got lost in early December and opted to place the SEC/Big 12 Challenge on the weekend between the NFL's championship games and Super Bowl. Good call.
A lot more folks (especially in the South) are paying attention, what with no conference football title games or CFP rankings cluttering up the sports conversation.
For a Florida team that has played one of the toughest schedules in the country and is winless in four cracks at ranked teams this season, the game looms as a potential gold star on whatever resume the Gators ultimately put before the NCAA Tournament selection committee.
Of course, it only looks good if you win it.
"A lot easier said than done," White said. "We have to play really, really well just to have a chance."
In those four games against ranked opponents, the Gators lost by 15 to Purdue (then No. 21) on a neutral floor, by 11 at Miami (17), by six at Michigan State (1) and by three at Texas A&M (15). All four of those teams currently rest in the top 27 of the Ratings Percentage Index, the metric used to seed the NCAA bracket. A fifth team, Florida State, checks in at 44. The Gators lost to the Seminoles also. By just two.
By virtue of its schedule alone, UF is rated 25th in the RPI, but just 1-5 against Top 50 teams (a lone neutral-site win over St. Joseph's, currently 32nd).
West Virginia is No. 17 in RPI, having already played seven teams in the top 50, including a win over Kansas (No. 1 at the time) and four days later a loss at Oklahoma (currently No. 1). The Mountaineers, of course, are coached by Bob Huggins and play with the crazed pit bull mentality the 700-plus game winner has rolled out over his 34 years roaming a collegiate sidelines.
In a way -- indirectly, but not exactly six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon -- White is a branch on the Huggins coaching tree, having served on Andy Kennedy's staff at Ole Miss for five years before jumping to his first head job at Louisiana Tech. Kennedy was an assistant for Huggins at Cincinnati (succeeded him there, actually) and groomed White on a lot of the same concepts, especially when it comes to defense and demands for high-energy performance.
"Andy Kennedy learned a lot from Coach Huggins through osmosis and a lot of things he would say are exactly what Coach Huggins would say and a lot of things that he taught were exactly the way Coach Huggins taught philosophies and mindsets," White said. "Naturally, some of my beliefs and some of the things that I want to stand for through Andy Kennedy are originally from Coach Huggins."
White, in fact, hired a former Huggins point guard, Darris Nichols, as an assistant at LA Tech and brought him to UF. Nichols recalled the first team meeting Huggins had with his Mountaineers player. The new coach flipped through some papers and mentioned how several guys in the room were flunking math, flunking Spanish, flunking social studies, etc.
"I've watched tape, and some of you are flunking basketball too," Huggins said. "You better be able to do something right if you expect to stay around here."
Message sent.
"He holds you accountable," Nichols said.
Nichols scored 993 points, dished 399 assists, shot 45 percent from the floor and nearly 38 from the 3-point line for four seasons at WVU. He knows first-hand Huggins is a no-nonsense guy who sets expectations high both at practice and games. He can be gruff and in-your-face -- certainly not for everybody -- but it's all aimed toward the greater good. After games, Nichols recalled, Huggins would often fume over the team's performance and let them have it.
"That's when we won," he said.
And that's the ferocity the Gators better be braced for when Huggins sets his Mountaineers in fullcourt pressure and leaves them there the 40 minutes. WVU, White said, has about five guys with quickness comparable to UF guards Chris Chiozza and Kasey Hill and they will be in constant contact on defense, basically daring the officials to call fouls. On a couple drills Thursday, the Gators practiced with six defenders on the floor because that's what the swarm of Mountaineers will look and feel like.
Fact: Only five teams in Division I basketball foul more than West Virginia's 24.1 per game, which means the Gators, one of the nation's worst free-throw shooting teams, figure to be at the line a bunch. Making better than 62.3 percent (worst in the SEC) will be paramount.
But so will making better than 42.2 percent (second-worst in the SEC) of their field goals .
"It is a big opportunity for us and we understand that," sophomore center John Egbunu said. "At the same time, we just have a lot we have to be ready for."
Like the nation's No. 1 team in turnovers forced, steals and fewest 3-pointers allowed, and the No. 2 team in 3-point percentage defense and offensive rebounding.
In other words, one of the best all-around teams in the country.
In the big picture for the Gators, it's the really big SEC/Big 12 Challenge.
Now, what do you think?
Here it is, nearly halfway through the Southeastern Conference schedule, and the Gators (13-7) are getting a high-noon house call Saturday from No. 9 West Virginia (17-3) at the O'Connell Center in what has shaped up as the UF's biggest game of the 2014-15 season and the first home sellout of the Coach Mike White era. Programmers at ESPN decided last offseason that the 10-game matchup of teams from the two power conferences got lost in early December and opted to place the SEC/Big 12 Challenge on the weekend between the NFL's championship games and Super Bowl. Good call.
A lot more folks (especially in the South) are paying attention, what with no conference football title games or CFP rankings cluttering up the sports conversation.
For a Florida team that has played one of the toughest schedules in the country and is winless in four cracks at ranked teams this season, the game looms as a potential gold star on whatever resume the Gators ultimately put before the NCAA Tournament selection committee.
Of course, it only looks good if you win it.
"A lot easier said than done," White said. "We have to play really, really well just to have a chance."
In those four games against ranked opponents, the Gators lost by 15 to Purdue (then No. 21) on a neutral floor, by 11 at Miami (17), by six at Michigan State (1) and by three at Texas A&M (15). All four of those teams currently rest in the top 27 of the Ratings Percentage Index, the metric used to seed the NCAA bracket. A fifth team, Florida State, checks in at 44. The Gators lost to the Seminoles also. By just two.
By virtue of its schedule alone, UF is rated 25th in the RPI, but just 1-5 against Top 50 teams (a lone neutral-site win over St. Joseph's, currently 32nd).
West Virginia is No. 17 in RPI, having already played seven teams in the top 50, including a win over Kansas (No. 1 at the time) and four days later a loss at Oklahoma (currently No. 1). The Mountaineers, of course, are coached by Bob Huggins and play with the crazed pit bull mentality the 700-plus game winner has rolled out over his 34 years roaming a collegiate sidelines.
In a way -- indirectly, but not exactly six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon -- White is a branch on the Huggins coaching tree, having served on Andy Kennedy's staff at Ole Miss for five years before jumping to his first head job at Louisiana Tech. Kennedy was an assistant for Huggins at Cincinnati (succeeded him there, actually) and groomed White on a lot of the same concepts, especially when it comes to defense and demands for high-energy performance.
"Andy Kennedy learned a lot from Coach Huggins through osmosis and a lot of things he would say are exactly what Coach Huggins would say and a lot of things that he taught were exactly the way Coach Huggins taught philosophies and mindsets," White said. "Naturally, some of my beliefs and some of the things that I want to stand for through Andy Kennedy are originally from Coach Huggins."
White, in fact, hired a former Huggins point guard, Darris Nichols, as an assistant at LA Tech and brought him to UF. Nichols recalled the first team meeting Huggins had with his Mountaineers player. The new coach flipped through some papers and mentioned how several guys in the room were flunking math, flunking Spanish, flunking social studies, etc.
"I've watched tape, and some of you are flunking basketball too," Huggins said. "You better be able to do something right if you expect to stay around here."
Message sent.
"He holds you accountable," Nichols said.
Nichols scored 993 points, dished 399 assists, shot 45 percent from the floor and nearly 38 from the 3-point line for four seasons at WVU. He knows first-hand Huggins is a no-nonsense guy who sets expectations high both at practice and games. He can be gruff and in-your-face -- certainly not for everybody -- but it's all aimed toward the greater good. After games, Nichols recalled, Huggins would often fume over the team's performance and let them have it.
"That's when we won," he said.
And that's the ferocity the Gators better be braced for when Huggins sets his Mountaineers in fullcourt pressure and leaves them there the 40 minutes. WVU, White said, has about five guys with quickness comparable to UF guards Chris Chiozza and Kasey Hill and they will be in constant contact on defense, basically daring the officials to call fouls. On a couple drills Thursday, the Gators practiced with six defenders on the floor because that's what the swarm of Mountaineers will look and feel like.
Fact: Only five teams in Division I basketball foul more than West Virginia's 24.1 per game, which means the Gators, one of the nation's worst free-throw shooting teams, figure to be at the line a bunch. Making better than 62.3 percent (worst in the SEC) will be paramount.
But so will making better than 42.2 percent (second-worst in the SEC) of their field goals .
"It is a big opportunity for us and we understand that," sophomore center John Egbunu said. "At the same time, we just have a lot we have to be ready for."
Like the nation's No. 1 team in turnovers forced, steals and fewest 3-pointers allowed, and the No. 2 team in 3-point percentage defense and offensive rebounding.
In other words, one of the best all-around teams in the country.
In the big picture for the Gators, it's the really big SEC/Big 12 Challenge.
Players Mentioned
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