Game Preview: Florida State Seminoles at Florida Gators

No, this is not an early football preview. Relax.

This is the first big test of the season for Florida State Basketball, as playing Florida is always a good line to draw of where FSU is as a team early on in the season. UF holds a decent margin in this series, 45-29, but FSU did win 7 straight from 2014 to 2020.

The Seminoles are off to a decent start this season, but the competition has been lackluster. Back-to-back 94-67 wins over Kennesaw State and Central Michigan, two teams in the bottom half of the KenPom rankings, have people intrigued, but it's hard to tell just how good this team is yet. Florida started off with a 93-73 win over Loyola Maryland (a game that started up 16-0 for the Gators) before falling to Virginia 73-70 in a neutral site game in Charlotte, and then pulling away against Florida A&M 89-68 Tuesday night.

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This should be a very entertaining matchup, one with a lot of early-season stakes, and bragging rights are always on the line in this series. Florida is playing host to this game in the Exactech Arena at the Stephen C. O'Connell Center in Gainesville, FL, at 7 pm on the SEC Network.

Florida Gators Breakdown (2-1)

For those familiar with my game previews, we're changing things up a little bit for this preview. There are going to be a few different film breakdowns for both teams, and I'm going to do my best to identify some easy offense opportunities for Florida where they might try to catch FSU slipping and some other things. I'll be doing my best to explain why certain stats look the way they do instead of just providing them. I'll probably do these styles of previews for the bigger games (aka UNC, Duke, Miami, etc), as long as people like them.

Anyways, Florida is in their second season under Todd Golden who came way across the country from San Francisco after leasing them to an NCAA Tournament bid in just three seasons, something hard to do in a conference with Gonzaga, St. Mary's, and BYU. He was also an assistant at Auburn from 2014-2016 in the early days of Bruce Pearl's tenure there. I thought Florida ended up better than they actually did last season: just 16-17 and 9-9 in SEC play.

Out go key contributors in Colin Castleton (thankfully), Kyle Lofton, and Kowacie Reeves, as well as some reserves, and in come nine new players, though one has already left the team. None of those are bigger than the two main guys Florida brought back: Riley Kugel and Will Richard.

Kugel struggled for most of his freshman season last year, before popping off for 17.3 PPG while shooting 38% from 3 over the Gators' last ten games. It's looking like everyone is buying into the hype and voting him First Team All-SEC Preseason still has mixed results right now. His first game of the year against Loyola Maryland was really good; 23 points on 10/15 shooting and 6 steals. Second game against Virginia was lackluster; 14 points on 6/18 shooting and 4 turnovers. His performance against FAMU was forgettable; 5 points on 1/7 shooting and 3 turnovers.

Florida has to find a way to get him on track, because he was pretty upset by the end of the FAMU game. To me, he's more of a player who wants to make the flashy play/finish at the rim and maybe not always the best play. Great athlete in space and glides in the air, but can be taken off of his game with physicality. He's a very good straight-line driver, something the 'Noles have struggled to contain at times this season.

Will Richard has done the opposite of Kugel, starting slow to the season with just 3 points on 1/4 shooting against Loyola, before turning it around the next two games: 16 points on 4/10 shooting (4/7 from 3 and 4/4 from the FT line) against Virginia and 20 points on 6/12 shooting (2/5 from 3, 6/7 from FT) against FAMU. He's a plus athlete, arguably the best athlete they have, and if they can ever get Richard and Kugel playing good ball at the same time, it could make it difficult for opposing defenses. He will fire it from three when given space and has legitimate NBA range. Once he sees one go through, he just becomes more and more confident.

Even though Castleton is no longer there, they did their best to clone him, bringing in Micah Handlogten from Marshall and signing Alex Condon from Australia. Both are similar players: aggressive on the offensive glass (Handlogten is top-15 currently in offensive rebound rate), good shot blockers, great screeners, and clean-up messes on the offensive end. Condon is still getting his feet wet and makes freshman mistakes, especially when trying to dribble, but each player has hit two 3s in a game this season, which is a surprise considering Handlogten hit one three all of last season at Marshall. They don't have the creative freedom that Castleton did offensively, but they both fit what Florida wants to do. Handlogten is currently averaging 10.7 PPG and 9.0 RPG, getting more offensive boards than defensive.

Helping them down low is Tyrese Samuel, a hybrid 4/5 from Seton Hall, and is extremely athletic, as you'll see in a play later. He's mainly going to play the 4 this year, as Coach Golden wants to run two bigs, and he's great at what he does: phenomenal rebounder, great at drawing fouls, and a good shot blocker. He's averaging 11.3 PPG and 9.0 RPG. I'm really intrigued by the matchup between him and Baba Miller, who is almost the exact opposite player.

Starting at the lead guard is Iona transfer Walter Clayton Jr, who actually was offered by Florida as a football player out of high school, but he decided he wanted to play college basketball, initially for Rick Pitino. Once Coach Pitino left for St. John's, Clayton decided to return to his home state and play for the Gators. Clayton led the country in free throw percentage last year, going 102/107 (95.3%) from the stripe, while also hitting 43.1% of his 3s. He's off to a bit of a shooting slump this season, already missing as many FTs as he did all of last year (12/17 for 70.6%) and his 3-point percentage almost being cut in half (3/12 for 25%), yet is still averaging 13 PPG. Despite all of that, Clayton's biggest issue has been turnovers, as he had three in the final minute including two in the last 15 seconds against Virginia. They don't have the ball pressure that Florida State does. He and Kugel combine for almost 6 turnovers per game.

Off the bench, Thomas Haugh is a young freshman who will back up Samuel and is a solid rebounder. Guard Denzel Aberdeen seems to have taken a step forward since last season as a hyper-quick guard who loves to call his own number, but I'm not sure how much he'll play going forward with the next player coming back.

The biggest unknown is Zyon Pullin, a very talented transfer from UC Riverside, who averaged 18/4/4 last season while shooting 39% from 3 and tested NBA Draft waters, before eventually transferring to Florida. Because he participated in the Portsmouth Invitational, which is not a sanctioned pre-draft event by the NCAA, he was forced to sit out the first three games of the year but will be back on the court Friday night for the Gators. Coach Golden has said the plan is to keep their same starting 5 and bring Pullin off the bench, but I could absolutely see a world where Pullin still plays 24-28 minutes because he's simply too good to take off the floor.

Florida is struggling in three main areas to start the season: shooting the basketball (both from 3 and the free throw line), live-ball turnovers, and 3-point defense. Despite having four players on the roster that shot 37% from 3 or better last season, as a team they're shooting just 31.7% and that's being heavily carried by Will Richard's 40%. Take him out of the equation, and the team is down to just 28.9%. They're hoping getting Pullin back will help that, but guys like Clayton and Kugel have to shoot the ball better. The free throw line is simply inexplainable: just 61.3% as a team. Once again, Will Richard is buoying this percentage with his 84.6%, as no one else is above 71%, and guys like Samuel, Aberdeen, and Haugh are in the 30-40% range. They'll turn that corner eventually, and when they're shooting 30 free throws in a game it doesn't hurt them as badly, but against a team like Florida State, those percentages may come back to haunt them.

With the turnovers, they're giving it way too often in live-ball situations, currently ranking in the bottom 40 nationally in offensive steal rate, or the rate at which the other team's defense steals the ball from them. Facing a team in FSU that is top-40 in defensive steal rate could be a mismatch waiting to happen. They have a lot of lazy passes and a lot of instances where they're being too loose with the basketball while driving to the basket. Florida A&M wasn't able to take advantage of those steals in transition, but the Seminoles should be able to. Below is a quick three clips of UF (mainly Kugel) being really careless with the basketball and not going up strong.

The 3-point defense has been absolutely abysmal, allowing teams to shoot 36.8% from deep. Even a team like Florida A&M, who came into the game 5/27 (18.5%) from the arc, shot 5/13 (38.5%) against the Gators. They're giving up way too many quality looks, whether it's by getting out of position for a steal and getting beat, or sinking in too far to cover someone in the post despite being one pass away from the corner. It's kind of shocking to see how many open 3s they're giving up to start the season, and against a team like FSU that has shooters in Darin Green Jr. Josh Nickelberry, and Cam'Ron Fletcher, that may come back to haunt them. Look how lazy this defensive possession is for Florida against Virginia.

Those are two wide-open looks with little to no close-out, one turned down by Ryan Dunn before Reece Beekman knocks it down. If Florida's 5s defend that way on the perimeter, Cam Corhen may have 6-8 wide-open looks from 3 this game. It's important to say this doesn't happen every possession, but it happens more than it should.

What Florida is doing well is dominating the paint (138 points in the paint through three games, free throws, and points in the paint account for 74.2% of their 252 total points scored) and getting offensive rebounds. They currently sit 2nd in the country in offensive rebound rate at 48.2%, meaning basically half of every miss they shoot ends in an offensive rebound, and have had 46-second chance points through three games. While FSU has allowed offensive rebounds, they've done a fairly good job of limiting the second-chance points, and that'll have to continue here. And while the Gators aren't hitting their free throws, they're getting to the free throw line a lot, currently sitting in the top 80 or so in free throw rate. If they ever do start hitting their free throws, it could spell trouble.

Florida's offense is predicated on getting down the floor quickly. If they can't score in the first 12 seconds of the shot clock, their half-court offense is absolutely brutal to watch. As much as Florida State wants to go fast, if they're not forcing a bad shot or turnover early, it may be better to let it play out and let Florida mess up on their own because they will. Their bigs do a great job of running in transition, and they're good for a few of those kick-ahead buckets each game, as well as taking advantage of turnovers.

Here's one example of something they try to get quickly.

Florida will try to get this action a few times when they can: overload one side of the floor, so there's no help on the side of the floor where the ball is headed, get a high screen-and-roll, and there's a big posting up under the basket to seal off the screener's defender as the lob pass goes away from the overloaded side. If the post defender isn't paying attention, it leads to baskets or fouls, like it did here. Because it's in transition (they're just a few seconds into the shot clock), it doesn't allow the defense time to realize what's happening, and is a great way to make up for bad halfcourt offense.

When it does get down to halfcourt offense, Coach Golden loves to try to get to high-low action (one big high, one big low trying to play between the two) throughout the game. On this play early on in the Loyola game, they actually show it twice, once when Handlogten catches it at the top of the key, and again when Tyrese Samuel gets it in the high post before Samuel ends up driving it. He won't be able to do that easily against Baba Miller, Jamir Watkins, or Cam'Ron Fletcher. This action could potentially cause issues because Florida State fronts the post and up the line instead of playing behind and allowing the big to catch it on the block. Sort of like Loyola plays it here, but Florida State would change a couple of small things.

Florida State would defend this with the initial post defender fully between the post man and the ball (not 3/4s locked like Loyola is), with the furthest weakside help defender, which in this case is the far corner, standing in the paint or on the lane line to help on any over the top pass. There'd be more switching for FSU as off-ball guys on offense rotate to make it easier for that corner defender to stay sunken in. Loyola plays the second repositioning really well, except you'd like the defender guarding Samuel to close that space on the catch faster because that's what really allows him to put his head down and get to the basket. If Baba Miller is there as soon as he catches it, Samuel isn't going to be as comfortable.

Here is another angle of their high-low, this time against Florida A&M, with a look that'll be harder for FSU to bring in help.

Because Florida has bigs that can shoot in Handlogten and Condon, it forces the defense to give up more space than normal in the paint.

The biggest thing from there is just relying on Kugel and Clayton to get downhill and make plays for others, something Kugel particularly hasn't done all that effectively in the last two games.

Florida State Seminoles Breakdown (2-0)

It was yet another convincing win for the Seminoles, even if it was against the worst team in the MAC and in the 300s on KenPom. There are always things to clean up, but Florida State was losing games like these last year; it's a much better start.

The biggest revelation has been the tempo. Florida State is playing SO fast, but it's not the offense causing the main uptick in tempo, it's the defense. Small sample size so far, but Florida State's average offensive possession is about a second faster than last year, but defensive possessions are three seconds quicker than last year. FSU's 18.5 seconds per defensive possession last season was one of the 15 slowest in college basketball. If you had told Florida State basketball fans in 2010 "there will be a time where a Leonard Hamilton team on average uses just half of the shot clock," most people would've thought you were insane, but FSU is right at about 15 seconds per possession on both sides of the ball.

The defense is causing so much quick chaos, with 38 turnovers forced in two games, leading to 46 points. Their 31.3% turnover rate forced against Central Michigan is their highest since February 2022, and I don't think it's a fluke. They're going to have another chance against a Florida team that isn't great at taking care of the basketball.

Another revelation has been the 3-point disparity. Last season, FSU was 344th in 3-point defense, allowing opposing teams to shoot 37.6% from 3. Through 2 games this year, FSU has allowed a 3PT% of just 18.2% against two teams that want to shoot the 3. On the offensive side, FSU shot just 33% from deep last season, compared to 37.7% so far this year on high volume, averaging about 30 attempts from deep. If they're falling against Florida, they'll have a good chance to win, as the Gators have allowed Virginia and Loyola (MD) to shoot 36.4% from 3 on a slightly lower volume than FSU is shooting.

Let's take a look at the quality of shots Florida State is allowing, which is easily the biggest story for the defense for me.

A couple of housekeeping notes. It says there was a 3-point attempt in the first half by Kennesaw State's Simeon Cottle with 13:52 remaining according to ESPN's play-by-play and StatBroadcast's play-by-play, but it's not on the broadcast or the replay, so it's not shown here. The first Central Michigan clip and the last one in the first half are choppy and I can't find a clear one for whatever reason, but I included both anyway. The clip around the 12:30 mark in the second half was super choppy right before the shot, but at least we can see the contest.

Of the 41 shots we can see some sort of contest, by my count 26 are contested heavily, 9 were open stand-still shots, 2 were pull-ups from the logo, 2 were side-steps or stepbacks in transition where FSU still did a decent job of forcing a tough shot, and 2 open shots moving to the side. So 26 contests and 2 tough transition shots is a contest rate of 68.3%, which is going to win you a lot of basketball games.

Florida State had a hard time defending the 3 in a scramble situation after drive-and-kicks last season, but they're doing a much better job of it. This particular clip at the 16:20 mark in the first half against CMU is just a thing of beauty. These are things I know FSU practices, so it's good to see the hard work paying off.

The last revelation has been the ball movement. So far, Florida State has 46 total assists on 69 made shots; 2/3rds of every shot made has been the result of an assist. That's a beautiful thing to see. For comparison, only 53.4% of shots made were the result of an assist last season for FSU, which makes sense considering the ball-hungry players they had last season. Ball movement and keeping things moving is how this offense is going to sustain success.

Injury Report

Primo Spears is still awaiting word from the NCAA on his transfer waiver.

Jaylan Gainey is still recovering from a torn ACL he suffered before last season. The team is hopeful to have him back by the end of the month, but will more than likely be missing this game.

Florida's Zyon Pullin will be available to play, after being suspended by the NCAA for the first three games for participating in the NBA Draft event Portsmouth Invitational, and then deciding to return to college and transfer to Florida.

Aleks Szymczyk has been out with a broken foot and is supposed to be back soon. The initial injury was announced on September 1st and was supposed to be a 10-12 week injury. Friday's game would be 11 weeks to the day.

EJ Jarvis, a Yale transfer, left Florida's team before the start of the season for personal reasons.

Projected Starters

Florida

G: Walter Clayton Jr

G: Riley Kugel

G: Will Richard

F: Tyrese Samuel

C: Micah Handlogten

Florida State

G: Jalen Warley

G: Darin Green Jr

F: Jamir Watkins

F: Baba Miller

C: Cameron Corhen

Keys to the Game

Easy Offense

This is key for both teams really on what they want to do offensively and want to stop defensively. For Florida, their entire offense revolves around getting baskets early in the shot clock, whether in transition, or catching a defense sleeping on a secondary action if that initial look isn't there. They want to feast in the paint, while also dominating on the offensive glass and getting second-chance points. FSU really has to find a way to keep the Gators out of the paint.

For Florida State, the defense wants to force turnovers and turn those into momentum baskets at the other end: lobs, dunks, 3s, etc. There will also be plenty of opportunity for back cuts against an over-aggressive Gator defense if FSU chooses to take advantage of them. And they'll get those turnovers from Florida, they just have to convert them.

Be Physical Without Fouling

Riley Kugel really struggled to get in a rhythm against Florida A&M, and it's because they weren't afraid to be physical with him. He's a good athlete who glides in space, but if you get into his bubble, he's in his own head and struggles in the half-court.

Florida gets to the free throw line a lot, with 30+ free throw attempts twice already this season, but they haven't been the best at making them. Still, Florida State wants this to be fast-paced more than likely, and if you can be physical without fouling, you'll force Florida into some bad shots, and they'll have to battle on the glass to hold off a very aggressive offensive rebounding team.

This can be an issue though. Kennesaw State shot 25 free throws last week, just to turn around and allow Central Michigan to have 31 free throw attempts. For Florida State to win, it has to be around what Virginia did to Florida, with the Gators attempting just 15 free throws in that game.

3-Point Line

Florida State has been on the good side of the 3-point difference early on, while Florida has been on the opposite, not defending the 3 well or shooting it themselves very well. The Gators have the talent to be a good shooting team, and are more than capable defensively, they just haven't shown it yet.

Florida State is hoping that trend continues. If it does and FSU wins the transition game, it'll be really tough for Florida to overcome that, in my opinion, even with their expected presence in the paint.

Game Prediction

Florida opened as favorites by 6 points, with a projected total of 158.0, according to DraftKings.

I really like Florida State's chances in this game. Florida still has a lot of new and moving pieces that are working to get integrated into the system, and it's sloppy at times. I also don't trust Florida's gameplan like I do Florida State's right now. FSU knows what it wants to do, Florida is still figuring things out. Maybe I'm drinking the garnet Kool-Aid a little early, but I think the Seminoles go down to Gainesville and get a win in a fun one.

Florida State 79 - Florida 73

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