Pregame Stuff: Florida vs Texas A&M (Tuesday, 8:30 pm)
Monday, January 21, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
FLORIDA vs TEXAS A&M
When: Tuesday, 7 p.m. (8:30 p.m. EST) Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center, Gainesville, Fla. Records: Florida (10-7, 2-3); Texas A&M (7-9, 1-4) TV: SEC Network (Tom Hart and Jon Sundvold) Radio: Gator IMG Sports Network (Mick Hubert and Lee Humphrey)
STAKES (The Setup)
After back-to-back SEC road games, the Gators are home Tuesday night for the first time in 10 days.
For Florida, it's a chance to pull even in the Southeastern Conference standings. To do so, the Gators will have to win a league game at home for the first time this season, and with a rotation that got smaller over the weekend with the loss of fourth-year junior forward Keith Stone to a season-ending knee injury during the team's 62-52 win Saturday at Georgia. Texas A&M, meanwhile, has lost two straight SEC games, including a listless 66-43 showing at home Saturday against Missouri, which came to town winless in league play. ... UF leads the all-time series, 7-4, including a 4-0 mark at home. ... The two teams last met Jan. 2, 2018 at College Station, with the Gators racing to a 16-point first half lead on 56-percent shooting and leaving with an 83-66 victory. Graduate forward Egor Koulechov led all scorers with 19 points, bombing four of his five 3-pointers, while Stone had one of the finest games of his career in tallying 18 points (on 4-for-6 from deep) and five rebounds over 30 minutes while playing against 2017 SEC Defensive Player of the Year and eventual first-round draft pick Robert Williams. ... UF is 2-2 against A&M under CoachMike White.
A year ago, the Aggies entered January as reigning league co-champions, only to spiral to an 0-5 start in SEC play. They eventually righted the ship, reached the NCAA Tournament and were one of only two conference teams to make the Sweet 16. Along the way, A&M watched freshman TJ Starks blossom into a standout guard who figures to give the league fits the next few seasons. A homegrown Texan (out of Dallas) who helped guide his Lancaster High team to consecutive Class 5A state titles, Starks was promoted to starter midway through his SEC All-Freshman season and over the last 15 games averaged 14.7 points, shot 43 percent from the floor and 38.5 from the 3-point line. As a sophomore, his percentages have taken a dip after the defection of A&M's talented front court players and the increased focus of opposing defenses (34.8 overall and 23 from 3). He had a miserable 0-for-7 afternoon in the loss to Mizzou, but to dismiss Starks and his potential to spark this young, rebuilding team on the road would be a mistake.
STUFF (Need-to-Know Info)
Freshman forward Keyontae Johnson (11) has answered when called upon the last two games, including eight points and seven rebounds in his first career start Saturday at Georgia.
ABOUT THE GATORS: For White and his staff, it's time to adjust the rotation on the fly. The loss of Stone, going strictly by his individual statistics (only 2.4 ppg, 1.8 rpg in SEC play), may not look like much, but the first half the 6-foot-8, 253-pound forward turned in at Georgia (8 points, 3-for-4 from the floor) was the kind of breakout display
Andrew Nembhard
the coaches were looking for from a veteran player with some big games on his resume the previous two seasons. Now, he's gone. ... Freshman forward Keyontae Johnson got his first career start at Georgia and, on the heels of playing a season-high 25 minutes three nights earlier in the loss at Mississippi State, tallied eight points, seven rebounds, two blocks, a couple assists and just one turnover in 32 minutes. ... Johnson in the lineup, along with point guard Andrew Nembhard and shooting guardNoah Locke, marked the first time in 20 years the Gators started three freshmen. Each logged at least 29 minutes. Nembhard had five assists and Locke had 10 points, including the go-ahead 3-pointer with six minutes left after the Bulldogs had rallied from behind and led the previous five and a half minutes. ... Shooting guard KeVaughn Allenplayed his best end-to-end game of the season at Athens. He only scored 13 points, but took and made some big shots late to help ice the win. Defensively, he gave up a season-low two points over 30 minutes and played through fatigue at a different level. ... Center Kevarrius Hayes had seven points and nine rebounds at Georgia. His last three games have produced seven, eight and nine boards, respectively. ... Fifth-year senior Jalen Hudson scored just three points and had four personal fouls in only 11 minutes against the Bulldogs, but they were (far and away, coaches said) his best 11 minutes of defense this season and included a pair of steals. ... Third-year sophomroe Dontay Bassett had just two points in that game, but also had two blocks and drew three charges. ... ABOUT THE AGGIES: They're in the eighth season under Coach Billy Kennedy and have a 144-107 record and two NCAA Tournament appearances (both over the last three seasons) to show for it. ... A&M started the season 1-4, then bounced back for five straight wins, only to lose by 15 at home to Texas Southern in the last game before opening SEC play. ... The
Savion Flagg
Aggies lone league win was an 81-80 road upset of Alabama, but their last three losses have all come by double digits, including the horrific no-show at home against Mizzou. The Aggies were never in that one, falling behind by 15 at halftime on the way to shooting 26 percent from the floor, 18.2 from the arc, and just 52 percent from the free-throw line. ... A&M ranks last in the SEC in scoring defense (73.1 ppg) and last (by far) in 3-point shooting percentage (.279), with that latter statistic dipping to 25.5 in league play. The Aggies are making just 39.9 percent against conference foes, but that's better than UF's 37.2. ... Forward Savion Flagg is at better than 15 points a game versus the SEC and for the season is close to 49-percent shooting from the floor. Nearly a third of his rebounds come on the offensive end and he's a decent decision-maker with the ball. Flagg's 41 assists rate second on the team. ... Guard Wendell Mitchell is the third of just three Aggies in double figures, but he's shooting 35 percent overall and 32 from 3. ... Forward Christian Mekowulu is at 51 percent from the floor and 40 from 3 (the lone Aggie over 40 percent), but has only attempted seven long balls this season. ... Backup forward Josh "Finding" Nebo (8.1 ppg, 5.2 rpg), at 6-9 and 244 pounds, has mostly dunked his way to 75-percent from the floor (51 of 68) and has 42 blocked shots. Better find him before entering the paint. ... Backup guard and junior-college transfer Brandon Mahan (6.4 ppg, 3.5 rpg) leads the team with 22 makes from distance.
STATS (Some Numbers of Note)
KeVaughn Allen's soft, lefty floater with 2:24 to play Saturday at Georgia put the Gators up by seven.
* 6 — Consecutive double-digit scoring games for Allen, his longest such streak since the last seven regular-season games of his sophomore year. Over those six games, Allen has averaged 14.6 points, shot 48.2 percent overall, 39.3 from the arc, and hit 19 of 21 free throws (90.7 percent). Memo to KeVaughn: Keep doing what you're doing.
* 8 — Consecutive games in double-figure scoring by Locke, the longest such streak by a UF freshman since Bradley Beal went 10 straight games during the 2011-12 season on his way to becoming just the second "one-and-done" player in Florida history. During Locke's eight-game run, he's shooting a nudge over 41 percent from the floor and long distance.
* 35 — Florida's NET rankings (the new RPI system implemented by the NCAA this season) through Sunday, despite an 0-6 record in so-called Quad-1 games.
* 93 — Combined minutes for UF's three freshmen at Georgia. That's 46.5 percent of the team's 200 available minutes. That's a lot of youth winning on the road.
* 1999 — The last year UF started at least three freshmen in a game. Mike Miller, Udonis Haslem and LaDarius Halton started Jan. 2 in the SEC opener that season at Kentucky, where the Gators were pummeled 93-58. Then-Coach Billy Donovan went with at least three each of the first 11 games that year, including four (along with Teddy Dupay) in the first three games of the season.
STATEMENT (Random thought)
This is a game, obviously, the Gators have to win, but also a dangerous one. When an opponent is struggling like the Aggies, it's easy to make assumptions and overlook the task. That's human nature. This is where the Gators, even with three freshmen on the floor, need to take their maturity and sense of what needs to be done to another level.
