Pregame Stuff: Florida at LSU (Wednesday, 7 pm ET)
Tuesday, February 19, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
FLORIDA at No. 13 LSU
When: Wednesday, 7 p.m. (ET) Where: Maravich Assembly Center, Baton Rouge, La. Records: Florida (14-11, 6-6); LSU (21-4, 11-1) TV: ESPN2 (Karl Ravech and Andy Kennedy) Radio: Gator IMG Sports Network (Mick Hubert and Mark Wise)
STAKES (The Setup)
Pete Maravich Assembly Center (capacity 13,215), built in 1972, was renamed for the former LSU All-American, NCAA all-time scoring leader and college basketball icon shortly after his death in 1988.
Huge opportunity for Florida, but also a very, very difficult one. The Gators have won two straight, with Saturday's road mashing of Alabama far and away the team's finest performance in Southeastern Conference play this season. LSU, though, is not Alabama. The Tigers have won 14 of their previous 15, including last week's buzzer-beating win at then-No. 7 Kentucky, and are tied for first place in the league standings. LSU has a legitimate chance to win its first SEC regular season title in a decade. ... The Tigers lead the all-time series, 63-46 (with a 35-14 edge in Baton Rouge), but the Gators have won the previous two meetings, including a 73-64 home victory Feb. 7, 2018. In that one, guard Jalen Hudson went for 18 points and nine rebounds, forward Keith Stone had 14 points, and forward Egor Koulechov had 12 points, four rebounds and a couple assists. UF trailed by two at the half, but shot nearly 58 percent after intermission and did a defensive number on LSU's best player (read on). ... UF is 3-1 against LSU under Coach Mike White.
With regard to LSU point guard Tremont Waters (3), understand this, Gator fans: Last year was an outlier. In Florida's nine-point win in Gainesville, the electrifying 5-foot-11, 175-pound waterbug had arguably his worst game of the season. Over 35 minutes, Waters scored nine points on 3-for-15 shooting, including 1-for-9 from the 3-point line, to go with seven rebounds, six assists, two steals and a robust seven turnovers. He missed his first nine shots and didn't make a field goal until just over eight minutes remained in the game. That is not who Waters is (plus, UF no longer has a firefly like Chris Chiozza to chase him around all the game). And it wasn't what Waters was during a terrific rookie collegiate season when he became the first SEC freshman since Kentucky's John Wall in 2010 to average at least 15 points and five assists. The Connecticut basketball prodigy is the best player on a Tigers team that has two McDonald's All-America freshmen on the roster. He makes them go when LSU has the ball (his 19.6 ppg in SEC plays leads the league), with his ability to break down a defense (Waters will challenge UF's 1-2-2 press, to be sure), but he just might be better with guarding the ball. Waters leads the SEC in steals per game at 3.1, with six games of at least four steals (one with eight). So far this season, Waters has hit double-figure scoring in 16 straight games. His 15.9 points per game ranks eighth in the SEC. Waters is third in the league at 6.0 assists per game, with five games in double figures. Waters can get careless with the basketball at times, what with seven games of at least five turnovers, so the Gators need to capitalize in the event he gets generous at home.
STUFF (Need-to-Know Info)
KeVaughn Allen's shots haven't fallen much of late, but the senior guard has maintained his aggressiveness and the Florida coaches believe it will pay off.
ABOUT THE GATORS: Their 71 points at Alabama were the most in a SEC game in five games, and the most in in league play in regulation in seven games. What's more, the offense was more balanced and less reliant on the 3-point shot, with 36 shots attempted inside the arc and just 14 beyond it. That said, LSU has some bigger boys (as in two 6-11 dudes) patrolling the paint, so stuff in close will be tougher to come by. ... Point guardAndrew Nembhard was named SEC Co-Freshman of the Week
Andrew Nembhard
after hitting 13 of the 14 field goals he attempted last week, including all nine at Alabama, in leading the Gators to two big victories. With a more aggressive scoring approach, as well as a better shooting percentage (62 percent overall and nearly 54 percent from the 3-point line the last six games), Nembhard's distribution numbers have been scaled back; 19 assists to 11 turnovers. But the UF offense, not exactly free-flowing and explosive this season, was as good as it's been in any SEC game last time out. ... KeVaughn Allen is going through a rough run relative to his percentages -- 29 of 78 overall (37.1 percent), including 8-for-41 from 3 (19.5 percent) over the last six games -- but volume shooting is what Allen has been asked to do since he arrived at UF as a freshman in 2015. He's taken at least nine field-goal attempts in 12 straight games. He's due for one of those breakouts performances he had eight games ago, when Allen went 10-for-16 from the floor and 8-for-10 from deep on his way to 31 points against Texas A&M. ... Forward Keyontae Johnson, after his career-high 13 rebounds at Bama, is now averaging 8.4 boards a game since being inserted in the starting lineup nine games ago, including 3.1 on the offensive glass. He became the first UF freshman to grab at least 13 rebounds in a game since Will Yeguete cleared 15 against North Carolina A&T in 2010; also the first to do so in conference play since Al Horford ripped 18 against Alabama in 2005. Credit Johnson also on the development front. He's become the team's most effective player when it comes to attacking the paint. Johnson has 15 free-throw attempts over the last five games (and has made 14 of them). ... Center Kevarrius Hayes needs three blocked shots to become just the second player in UF history to reach 200 for his career. ... In his 21 starts, shooting guardNoah Locke has just seven where he's failed to make at least two 2-pointers, and that includes the last two games. Locke, now at 40.6 percent from distance, went a combined 1-for-14 from the arc against Vanderbilt and Alabama, but is fighting through some hip/groin soreness that flared up on him last week worse than it had all season, limiting his practice reps. He felt better during Monday's practice, but this is a malady Locke will be dealing with the rest of the season, and it cannot be curtailed merely by resting. ... Reserve swingman and fifth-year senior Jalen Hudson (6.8 ppg) is averaging 10.0 ppg over his last three games and against Bama hit his first 3-point shot in five games. ... Speaking of backups, the incremental increase in minutes for redshirt freshman Isaiah Stokes(11 points, 3 rebounds last week) will continue, but his struggles with ball-screen defense will prevent him for being on the floor for extended periods of time, unless Hayes or Dontay Bassett, who provided nine quality, high-effort minutes at Tuscaloosa, are in foul trouble. ... ABOUT THE TIGERS: They're in Season 2 under Coach Will Wade, with a 39-19 overall mark to show for it since coming from Virginia Commonwealth, but a huge jump from a season ago when the Tigers went 8-10 and tied for ninth in the conference. LSU not only is tied atop the league standings, but among the SEC frontrunners, Tennessee and Kentucky, looks to have the easiest schedule down the stretch to make its first regular-season conference title in 10
Freshman Emmitt Williams and Coach Will Wade
years a possibility. ... LSU ranks second in the league in scoring at 82.9 points per game and shoots 47.2 percent from the floor as a team (fourth), although just 32.6 from the arc (that's 12th among SEC teams). ... Defensively, they rate near the bottom of the league in shooting percentage allowed (.462) against SEC opponents. ... UF is almost always overmatched by size, but LSU will be a significant challenge with the duo of Naz Reid and Kavell Bigby-Williams roaming the paint. The two are a mixture of youth and experience, what with Reid being the freshman and 2018 McDonald's All-American and Bigby-Williams being the fifth-year graduate student who transferred from Oregon (where he played on the Ducks' 2017 Final Four team) after some off-court issues. Reid, from Asbury Park, N.J., is shooting 49.4 percent from the floor and with his 3-point touch at better than 37 percent is more than capable of drawing his man away from the basket. Bigby-Williams, from England, has not attempted a 3 this season, but at nearly 68 percent he hasn't had to, either. ... Guard Skylar Mayes has been a solid, reliable player on both ends for three seasons and needs just 46 points to reach 1,000 for his career. ... LSU's two freshman off the bench are capable of doing severe damage. One of them, 6-6, 225-pound forward Emmitt Williams (7.9 ppg, 5.6 ppg), with his roots in Fort Myers, Bradenton IMG Academy and Orlando Oak Ridge High, at one point last year was believed to be headed to UF until he was derailed by some off-court issues. The 6-6, 225-pounder and reigning McDonald's All-America game dunk champion has a motor commensurate to South Carolina's Chris Silva, but as a freshman is far more advanced at this stage of his career. He's shooting 63 percent from the floor and has almost as many offensive rebounds (65) as defensive (70). His classmate, sturdy 6-4, 200-pound guard Javonte Smart (10.4 ppg, 3.2 rpg) is coming off a 19-point game at Georgia, when he went 6-for-10, hit three of four 3-balls and got a technical for taunting his defender, something he excels at just as much as does his offense.
STATS (Some Numbers of Note)
Former UF guard Eric Hester, then a freshman in 2017, strikes a 3-point pose after dropping one of his five treys (in as many attempts) the last time the Gators ventured to Baton Rouge.
* .704 — Free-throw percentage for the Gators this season, the first time they've been over 70 percent since mid-November. In SEC play, Florida is at 76.4 percent, which ranks fourth in the league.
* 3 — Quadrant 1 victories for Florida this season. No, that's not many, but the Gators' 13 games against current Q-1 opponents are two more than any other SEC team has played. Florida, as of Tuesday, was rated 33rd in the NET (the system that ultimately will seed the NCAA Tournament). For what it's worth, two of the next three conference teams in front of the Gators, No. 30 Ole Miss and No. 21 Auburn, have Q-1 records of 4-7 and 0-7, respectively. As of Tuesday (with the numbers constantly changing), the UF-LSU game will be a Q-1 opportunity for the Gators, but not for the Tigers.
* 19 — 3-point shots, a school record, made the last time UF went to LSU. That was Jan. 26, 2017, and the Gators obliterated the Tigers, 106-71, in scoring the most points in a league game in 46 years, while handling LSU its most lopsided home defeated in 57 years (since before Maravich took his first jumper there). Five different UF players buried at least three 3s, including little-used freshman backup guard Eric Hester, who probably wasn't even on the scouting report but came off the bench to go 5-for-5 from distance.
* 22 — Consecutive free throws made by Allen, dating to the Jan. 19 win at Georgia. Allen is now at 88.9 percent from the line for the season and 87.8 percent for his career, which ranks No. 1 all-time in program history.
* 2009 — Last time LSU won the SEC regular-season crown, thanks to contributions from the likes of Marcus Thornton, Tasmin Mitchell and Garrett Temple, as well as Coach Trent Johnson, who was in his first year in Baton Rouge after coming from Stanford. That team finished 27-8, including 13-3 in league play.
STATEMENT (Random thought)
Florida has played Florida State, Michigan State, Tennessee twice, plus Kentucky, and lost all five. Each are potential Final Four teams. LSU fits that profile, as well. The Gators will have to shoot it, take care of the ball and maintain their high level of defense -- not to mention extra poise on the road -- just to be in the game late.
