Pregame Stuff: Florida vs Ole Miss (Wednesday, 6:30 pm)
Tuesday, January 29, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
FLORIDA vs OLE MISS
When: Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. (EST) Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center, Gainesville, Fla. Records: Florida (11-8, 3-3); Ole Miss (14-5, 4-2) TV: SEC Network (Roy Philpott and Mark Wise) Radio: Gator IMG Sports Network (Mick Hubert and Bill Koss)
STAKES (The Setup)
Freshman point guard Andrew Nembhard (center) will lead UF into Wednesday night's Southeastern Conference game against Ole Miss.
Both teams are coming off losses in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge, with Florida dropping a 55-50 road date at Texas Christian and Mississippi losing 87-73 at home to No. 20 Iowa State. The Gators are a game behind the Rebels in the Southeastern Conference standings, so a win would be ground-gaining, especially given the formidable run of ranked opponents (four straight, starting Wednesday) on the UF schedule. ... Florida leads the all-time series 65-46, but had a three-game winning streak against Ole Miss snapped in the last meeting. In that one, Jan. 13, 2018, forward Bruce Stevens scored 22 points, while guard Deandre Burnett had 20 points and six assists to lead the Rebels to a 78-72 victory that marked UF's first league loss after opening the conference season with four straight wins. The Gators were led by a career-high 23 points and eight rebounds from third-years sophomore forward Keith Stone, but shot just 37.7 percent for the game while allowing the Rebels to hit 15 of 25 shots after halftime (60 percent). ... Florida coach Mike White is 3-1 against Ole Miss, his alma mater, where he started as a point guard for four seasons (1995-99) on a pair of NCAA Tournament teams.
Terence Davis is a sturdy, physical and dangerous guard who not only leads the Rebels in scoring and rebounding, but ranks in the SEC's top 10 in field-goal percentage (4th/.482), scoring (7th/15.8 ppg) and steals (9th/1.5 pg). Davis goes by the nickname "TD," which is fitting, given he was an all-state wide receiver at Southaven (Miss.) High and had more than 20 Division I scholarship offers to play football. He's shooting 40.9 percent from the 3-point line and went for 30 points against Butler. Though Davis was just 2-for-11 from the floor against UF last season, he finished with eight points, eight rebounds, four assists and two blocks in 23 minutes off the bench. He impacts the game in all kinds of ways. Davis already has 1,312 career points, despite scoring just 36 during his 2015-16 freshman season. That year, Davis averaged 1.6 points over 20 games. The next year, he went to 14.9 per game as a sophomore, marking the biggest scoring jump in the SEC. He's capable of coming into the O'Dome and putting up some digits.
STUFF (Need-to-Know Info)
Senior guard KeVaughn Allen is averaging 17.8 in SEC play, but fell short of that in Saturday's loss at Texas Christian, where he finished with just 13 points.
ABOUT THE GATORS: They're out to avoid the program's first 3-4 start in SEC play since 1998, which was the second season under Coach Billy Donovan. ... UF is 0-6 against teams that began the week in the Top 40 of the NET, the first-year system that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee will use to choose and seed its 68-team field in March. The Gators, who were in all but one of those six losses, will likely have at least six more games against Top 40 or 50 teams (starting with this one), but playing them doesn't count anywhere close to as much as winning them. ... UF ranks next-to-last in the league in scoring offense (68.7 ppg), but stays in games
Jalen Hudson went 1-for-10 overall and 1-5 from 3 at TCU.
because of a league-best scoring defense (61.5 ppg) and field-goal percentage defense that rates third (.408). TCU, which entered Saturday's game ranked 38th in offensive efficiency, managed just 55 points and shot just over 27 percent in the second half, thus becoming the eighth UF opponent this season to fail to score 60 points. ... Guard KeVaughn Allen's string of eight straight games scoring in double figures is the longest such run of his career. He's averaging 16.1 points over that span, but is also coming off a poor 4-for-13 (floor) and 2-for-9 (arc) showing against the Horned Frogs. ... Guard Noah Locke had his team-best string of double-figure scoring games snapped nine against TCU, where he also was off the mark (2-9/1-5). ... Against the Frogs, the front court of center Kevarrius Hayes and forward Keyontae Johnson combined to make eight of 15 shots, grab 12 rebounds and block five shots to go with three steals and two assists. The problem, scoring-wise, came on the perimeter, where the quartet of Allen, Locke, point guard Andrew Nembhardand backup wing Jalen Hudson totaled just 10-for-41 overall and 6-for-23 from distance. ... With his offensive options dwindling, White may have no choice but to opt to take a closer look at redshirt freshman forwardIsaiah Stokes, who has struggled for playing time for reasons that start with his conditioning. Going that route, though, will come with a price to pay on defense, rebounding and with fouls committed. ... ABOUT THE REBELS: They're in the first year under Coach Kermit Davis, who worked wonders during the 16 previous seasons at Middle Tennessee State, where he went 332-138, won nine Sun Belt or Conference USA titles and reached three NCAA tournaments, including a second-
Kermit Davis
round upset as a No. 15 seed over Michigan State in 2016. This is the sixth head-coaching stint for Davis, who parlayed back-to-back NCAA berths at Idaho (1989-90) into the top job at Texas A&M, but was fired after one 8-21 season. He was head coach at Chipola (Fla.) Junior College for one season, returned to Idaho for a season, then served as associate head coach to John Brady at LSU for five seasons (1997-2002), before heading to MTSU. ... After climbing to No. 18 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, Ole Miss fell out of the rankings after back-to-back losses last week. ... The Rebels are 3-2 on the road, including a win at No. 22 Mississippi State. One of their losses was an 83-76 setback at Butler, a team UF split two games against this season. ... Ole Miss ranks seventh in the SEC in scoring at 77.7 points per game and rates as the nation's 29th best team in offensive efficiency. They're shooting 36.5 percent from the 3-point line as a team, which rates fourth in the SEC. On any given night, they have four or five players capable of dropping in 25 points. ... Guard Breein Tyree currently ranks second in the league in scoring (17.3 ppg), third in field-goal percentage (.489), fourth in minutes (32.5 pg) and eighth in free-throw percentage (.826). He went for a career-high 31 in a win over Vanderbilt. ... Guard Blake Hinson is a freshman out of Deltona, Fla., who played his senior season at Sunrise Christian Academy in Kansas. At Deltona High, Hinson averaged 29 points per game and, playing alongside brother and current South Carolina guard Evan Hinson, led his team to the Class 5A Final Four for the first time. In just his third SEC game, Hinson ripped Mississippi State for a career-high 26 points, marking the most by a Rebels freshman since 2011. ... Devontae Shuler is second on the team in assists (3.1 pg) and steals (1.5 pg), but also put 24 points on Cincinnati back in November. ... Center Dominik Olejniczak is not a major offensive presence, but he is an imposing defensive one at 7-foot, 260, and likely will discourage some driving opportunities.
STATS (Some Numbers of Note)
Ole Miss guard Marshall Henderson bombed in four second-half 3s on his way to 21 points and helping lead the Rebels to a 66-63 upset of top-seeded Florida in the 2013 SEC Tournament at Nashville. The win gave Ole Miss its first tournament title since 1981.
* .000 — Field-goal percentage for Breen, currently the Ole Miss leading scorer, in the last UF meeting, when he started and went 0-for-6 from the floor in 24 minutes.
* 8 — Consecutive games between the Gators and Rebels decided by single digits, a run that dates to March 17, 2013, when mercurial guard Marshall Henderson led Mississippi to a 66-63 comeback win over Florida in the championship game of the SEC Tournament. Thirteen of the last 14 meetings (back to January 2008) have been decided by 10 points or less.
* 10 — Seasons UF associate head coachAl Pinkins, in his first year with the Gators, spent with Davis at his various coaching stops. Pinkins played forward for Davis for two seasons at Chipola JC (1993-95) before transferring to North Carolina State, then eight on Davis' coaching staff at MTSU (2003-11).
* 187 — Career blocked shots by Hayes, who needs three to pass Al Horford (2004-07) and move into second place on the all-time UF list.
* 1936 — The first year Florida and Ole Miss met in basketball. The Gators lost 51-32 at Oxford.
STATEMENT (Random thought)
An offense (Mississippi) versus defense (Florida) matchup that both teams really need to have. The Gators need it more.
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