Florida vs LSU (Wednesday, 7 pm)

Florida vs. No. 12 LSU

* When: Wednesday, 7 p.m.
* Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center, Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (9-5, 0-2); LSU (14-1, 2-1)
* TV: SEC Network (Tom Hart and Jimmy Dykes)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Mick Hubert and Lee Humphrey)

Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Anthony Duruji	F	6-7 / 220	R-Senior	9.1 pts / 4.4 reb
Colin Castleton	F	6-11 / 231	Senior	15.6 pts / 9.2 reb
Tyree Appleby	G	6-1 / 163	Graduate	10.0 pts / 2.0 reb / 3.6 ast
Brandon McKissic	G	6-3 / 185	Graduate	7.0 pts / 3.1 reb
Myreon Jones	G	6-3 / 175	Senior	9.1 pts / 3.6 reb

LSU	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Darius Days	F	6-7 / 245	Senior	14.3 pts / 6.5 reb
Efton Reid	F	7-0 / 238	Freshman	8.4 pts / 5.3 reb
Brandon Murray	G	6-5 / 214	Freshman	9.1 pts / 2.7 reb
Mwani Wilkinson	G	6-5 / 206	Sophomore	4.1 pts / 3.5 reb
Xavier Pinson	G	6-2 / 154	Senior	10.9 pts / 3.1 reb / 4.6 ast

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida, after falling Saturday night 85-73 at No. 9 Auburn, has dropped the first two games Southeastern Conference games of a season for the first time since 2009-10. Obviously, the Gators are already in a hole, but it's a manageable one, considering their two losses have come to two of the better teams in what is being hailed as the best league in the country. But they don't need that hole to get much deeper. Now comes another outstanding conference foe. LSU opened 2021-22 with 12 straight wins before losing its SEC opener (also at Auburn, ranked 11th at the time and now up to No. 4), then beat 16th-ranked Kentucky and 18th-ranked Tennessee, both at home. ... The Tigers lead the all-time series 65-50, but the Gators have won the last two (and three of the previous four), including last season's 83-79 victory in what was the second league game of the COVID-altered slate, coming on Jan. 2, 2021. Junior forward Colin Castleton scored 19 of his 21 points in the second half, including a remarkable run of 15 straight to start the period and break open a 40-40 tie. Castleton, who went seven of 10 from the floor and made all seven of his free throws, was one of four Gators to tally at least 16 points that night. Sophomore guard Tre Mann pitched in 19 points and five rebounds, with classmate Scottie Lewis adding 17 points and five rebounds. Junior forward Anthony Duruji had 16 points and seven boards for a Florida team that shot 50 percent for the game (despite going just 5-for-21 from the 3-point line) and defended the Tigers at 41 percent, including 35 in the second half. ... The Gators are 7-3 against the Tigers under Coach Mike White, including 4-1 at home.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	2021-22 Stats	LSU
73.6	Scoring	76.9
.429	Field-goal percentage	.448
.312	3-point percentage	.323
63.4	Scoring defense	56.4
.435	Field-goal percentage defense	.349
.299	3-point percentage defense	.266
39th	KenPom.com overall ranking	9th
45th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	77nd
39th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	1st
134th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	52nd
50th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	3rd
75th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	13th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They played pretty well, all things considered, in the loss at Auburn. Down 13 in the first half. Tough road environment. One of the best teams in the country. The Gators, though, didn't flinch. Instead, they fought back and made it a one-point game with just over eight minutes left. The lead was just two with seven to go when the Tigers took off on a 10-2 run that lit the home crowd and

put the game away. UF was more connected on the glass and much better with its ball security, especially point guard Tyree Appleby, who had arguably his best all-around game of the season; and certainly his best half of the season. Appleby finished with 11 points, four rebounds, a season-high nine assists and four turnovers. Of the latter, he had three in the game's first eight-plus minutes before, like the rest of his teammates, settling in against a Tigers defense that was ranked sixth in the country in efficiency. Appleby had four assists, no turnovers and two steals in the second half, as the Gators took a nine-point deficit at intermission down to one. The game marked just the second time this season Appleby had a better than 2-for-1 assist-to-turnover ratio with at least four assists. ... Given the competition, forward Colin Castleton may have had his best game of the season against the Tigers and their 7-foot-1 center Walker Kessler, a candidate for SEC (maybe even NCAA) Defensive Player of the Year. Castleton worked Kessler to death in the post, using his footwork and touch to finish with 21 points (7 of 14 from the floor, 8 of 11 at the free-throw line), 10 rebounds and fouling Kessler out over 33 minutes. The Gators are going to need a similar performance against these set of Tigers and their elite defenders in the front court (read on). ... After taking just one shot in a loss three nights earlier to Alabama, forward Anthony Duruji hit six of his 12 field-goal tries, including two 3s, at Auburn. He finished with 14 points (his most since tallying 15 in Game 2 vs. Florida State) and five rebounds. ... Guard Myreon Jones, the team hopes, has worked his way out of a shooting slump that saw him miss 28 of 32 attempts from the 3-point line over a stretch of five and a half games. In the last game and a half, Jones is 6-for-14 from distance. Getting Jones close to his Penn State career marksmanship of 37 percent would be one of the single, most significant aids to the UF offense. ... The grad-transfer duo of Brandon McKissic and Phlandrous Fleming Jr. had a tough outing at Auburn. McKissic missed two pivotal free throws that could have broken up the Tigers' late-game run (Auburn immediately hit a 3), while Fleming (10.6 ppg, 3.5 rpg), still finding his sea legs following his bout with COVID, went 1-for-6 from the floor with three turnovers; and that was on the heels of an 0-for-6 outing with three TOs against Bama. ... After a couple back-to-back games hitting double-figure scoring, reserve forward CJ Felder had just two points and one rebound over 13 minutes against the Tigers, but that was more a product of Duruji's solid, all-around effort keeping im on the floor. They're basically the same player and play the same position, so if one is playing well the other probably will sit.

The Tigers

The NCAA clouds continue to hover over Baton Rouge, but Will Wade and the Tigers continue to win and clean up on the recruiting trail. Unlike Auburn's completed dealings with the enforcement staff in Kansas City, LSU's issues are ongoing, but they've not deterred Wade or the Tigers in any way. Over the past four seasons, LSU is 79-26, including 40-15 in league play,

LSU trainers tend to injured guard **Xavier Pinson** during Saturday's win at Tennessee.

with the 2019 regular-season conference banner hanging in the Maravich Assembly Center and a run of top-5 and 10 recruiting classes, to boot. ... The Tigers, though talented and absolutely elite on the defensive end (No. 1 overall in the nation in efficiency), they aren't particularly deep and could be without point guard Xavier Pinson, who suffered a knee sprain in the team's win Saturday against Tennessee. Pinson, the transfer from Missouri, is shooting 42 percent from the floor, 81 from the free-throw line and rates second on the team in steals with 31. The team got some good news Sunday in learning the injury was an MCL rather an ACL, but his availability figures to be a game-time decision. ... If Pinson is unable to go, the Tigers may opt to reconfigure their starting unit and go big; as in giving standout sophomore Tari Eason, the transfer from Cincinnati, his first start with the program. Eason was named to the American Athletic Conference 2021 All-Freshman Team, then bolted for LSU. Now he leads the team in scoring (16.2 points) and field-goal percentage (.532), is tied for the lead in blocks (18) and is second in rebounds (7.6, with 37 offensive rebounds). He also is quite adept at the getting to the free throw line (his 63 attempts also top the squad), where he's converted at 79.4 percent. He went for 24 points and seven rebounds against Tennessee. ... When Eason and 7-foot center Efton Reid (.518 field-goal percentage, 46 offensive rebounds, 18 blocks) are on the court together, that's a lot of length (and talent) to contend with. Reid has a tendency to get in foul, trouble, evidence by his 8-minute, 4-foul (0 points, 1 rebound) outing against the Volunteers last weekend. ... Forward Darius Days has been terrific throughout his career and is a quintessential glue guy as the Tigers' No. 2 scorer, top rebounder and 3-point shooting threat (.356) from the "3" or "4" spot. He's also a microcosm of the LSU team when it comes to defense. Elite on that end. Days went mostly unrecruted out of Gainesville The Rock, the same program that produced former UF star and 2014 SEC Player of the Year Scottie Wilbekin and NBA All-Star center Joel Embiid (Kansas). ... Guard Brandon Murray, the 2021 Maryland Player of the Year, is an early candidate the SEC's All-Freshman team, shooting 45.7 overall, 34.8 from deep and playing tremendous defense on the perimeter. ... Sophomore Eric Gaines (8.5 ppg, 3.5 rpg) likely would be the first guard to step in for Pinson if he can't go. ... Forward Mwani Wilkinson played in all 27 games as a freshman last season and is playing a similar, unselfish, defense-first role again.

Numbers of Note

**Jalen Hudson** (3) lets fly a 3-ball during his amazing performance against LSU in 2019.

* 1 — Where the Tigers rank in the SEC — and the nation — in field-goal percentage defense, based on their .349 stinginess. The closest conference defense is Auburn at .383.

* 12 — Where the Gators rank in the SEC in field-goal percentage offense, based on their .429 marksmanship. Only Missouri (.411) and Vanderbilt (.407) are shooting at a lower clip.

* 33 — Points scored by UF wing Jalen Hudson in a 79-78 overtime loss against LSU on March 6, 2019 (on Hudson's "Senior Night, not less), which marks the only time in White's previous six seasons the Gators lost at home to the Tigers. During one stunning second-half stretch of that game, Hudson scored 27 of his team's 30 points in what became a hard-fought defeat against the eventual 2019 SEC regular-season champions.

* 37 — Points needed by Jones to reach 1,000 for his career. He scored 834 in three seasons at Penn State and has 129 at UF.

* 1981 — The last year Florida opened SEC play with three losses. The Gators dropped an early season Dec. 6, 1980 road date Mississippi State, then fell at home against 10th-ranked LSU on Jan. 3, then at Georgia on Jan. 7. That UF team, the first under Coach Norm Sloan in his second stint with the Gators, finished 12-16 overall and 5-13 in league play.

Bottom Line

The paddle-wheel of UF's brutally difficult start to the SEC schedule continues. The Gators need to make some NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) hay and this one represents a golden opportunity, especially at home.

Gators Calendar

Florida vs LSU (Wednesday, 7 pm)