- Mar 27, 2016
- 4,890
- 3,201
The Gators had problems with Vanderbilt and lost to Kentucky on the road, but they got past a rocky start with a strong February – highlighted by a win over the Cats. However, they’re flawed, and they fattened up late on a slew of easy teams – masked a bit by that win over UK.
They don’t pass well and they’re just okay from three, and their interior presence suffers injury issues up front.
The Buccaneers won their regular season and tournament championships by making just about everything. One of the nation’s leaders in field goal percentage, they have a killer up front in the abtly-named Tevin Glass – who eats up every rebound – to help out the rest of the Buc team that owns the boards and dominates on the inside.
They can hit from the outside, too, connecting on an impressive 38% from three. Active defensively, they come up with a ton of steals, move the ball around well, and do just about everything right.
Emphasis added.
Now some facts:
1. KenPom rates UF's schedule 11th, the toughest by far of any team in his top 10.
2. UF hist 36.2% of its 3s while not as good as ETSU's 38.3%, is only ok, while 2.1% percentage points higher is I guess impressive. In numbers that means if each team took 100 3s this game ETSU would on average out score UF by 6 points. Now of course any team can get hot from the arc so those numbers need not hold up in one game.
3. UF rebounds 51.3% of oppenents misses while ETSU rebounds 52.6% of oppenents rebounds. That difference does rank ETSU at 58th and UF at 102nd. UF grabs 37.3 boards per game ranking 77th while ETSU grabs 35.8 boards per game rankings 153rd. BTW, Glass averages 6.2 rebounds per game in 22.3 minutes per game with a 16.4 rebounding percentages, somewhat similar but a bit better than Hayes and Robinson in terms or rate or percentage .1 better than Robinsons 6.1 rebounds per game.
4. ETSU does have a good bit better assists per possession number than UF, ranking 95th (.201) or an assist every 5.0 possessions to UF's 235th (.173) or an assist every 5.8 possessions on the other hand ETSU has very high turnover rate ranking 307th (20.2%) or a turnover every 5.0 possessions while UF's turnover rate is ranked 49th (16.2%) or a turnover about every 6.17 possessions.
UF of course needs to come out ready to play and play hard against a team that will put it all on the line and ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IN ONE GAME.