Florida Gators
Seed: 2
Record: 28-7
Conference: SEC
vs.
Brigham Young Cougars
Seed: 3
Record: 32-4
Conference: Mountain West
Date: Thursday, March 24
Time: 7:27 pm Eastern
Location: New Orleans, LA
Region: Southeast
Will the Cougars get Gator chomped? or will Florida get Jimmered? Tune in on Thursday to find out!
Team Comparisons with SportsRatings Statistics
Florida BYU
Power Ratings
Strength: #21 (#11 of 16) Strength: #6 (#5 of 16)
Neutral court: #24 Neutral court: #6
Injuries Adj: #22 Injuries Adj: #38
Tempo-free: #18 Tempo-free: #10
Offense: #18 Offense: #9
Defense: #38 Defense: #24Special Analyses
2nd half of season: #17 2nd half of season: #8
Last 6 games: #12 Last 6 games: #29 Consistency: #278 Consistency: #311
- Wins vs. tournament teams (15): Morehead St.+6, @Florida St.+4, Kansas St.+13, @Xavier+4, @Tennessee+OT, @Georgia+OT, Vanderbilt+OT, Kentucky+2, Tennessee+1, Georgia+9, @Vanderbilt+10, =Tennessee+11, =Vanderbilt+11, UC Santa Barbara+28, UCLA+8
- Wins vs. Sweet Sixteen teams (2): @Florida St.+4, Kentucky+2
- Losses to tournament teams (3): Ohio St.-18, @Kentucky-8, =Kentucky-16
- Other losses (4): @Central Florida-3, Jacksonville-OT, South Carolina-3, @Mississippi St.-7
Key Info: Those who were shocked by Florida's 2-seed should look at that top bullet point—Florida had 13 wins over tournament teams and now has 15. Sure, the Gators don't rank that well in power ratings, but the committee doesn't use those. They won a lot of close games that could just as easily have been losses—but again, not something the committee cares about. And they had some bad losses, but wins are what matters most in the end.
The team was hitting its stride late when they fell apart against Kentucky. This follows that pattern of unpredictability (if that makes any sense) that has plagued the Gators and makes us question whether they can put together a Final Four run. They're vulnerable to being upset, but if they clear the early hurdles they can beat a better team. They'll have to, to make it very far, as they rank only as good as a 6 seed for the complete season. Florida is led by guards Erving Walker and Kenny Boynton; it was Chandler Parsons who sparked their opening win with nearly a triple-double against Santa Barbara, but Walker's 21 paced the Gators against UCLA.
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- Wins vs. tournament teams (8): Utah St.+6, Arizona+22, @Nevada Las Vegas+12, San Diego St.+13, Nevada Las Vegas+14, @San Diego St.+13, =Wofford+8, =Gonzaga+22
- Wins vs. Sweet Sixteen Teams (3): Arizona+22, San Diego St.+13, @San Diego St.+13
- Losses to tournament teams (2): @UCLA-7, =San Diego St.-18
- Other losses (2): @New Mexico-9, New Mexico-18
Key Info: BYU wasn't a very consistent team even before Brandon Davies got suspended from the squad (they only found out he had violated the school's honor code—for having sex—because he got a girl pregnant). Since his suspension started, BYU has played their two worst games of the season and three of their 10 lowest-rated. This doesn't bode well for a long tourney run, and neither does an 8-point win over 14-seed Wofford. A 22-point win over Gonzaga should lessen doubts, but it only underscores the team's variability in performance.
They still have Jimmer. Fredette is averaging a nation-leading 28.5 points per game and had 52 against New Mexico, a game in which BYU finally beat the Lobos after losing both at home and on the road. The Cougars beat San Diego State at home and on the road by 13 both times before falling in the Mountain West final by 18. The Cougars' performances are all over the place, but until recently they played either good or great games; without Davies, "poor" has been added to the mix. Fredette's 32 paced BYU against Wofford and he had 34 against the Zags. He'll have to continue that pace to keep BYU alive and avert anymore disaster games by the Cougars.
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Game Analysis: Florida played a great opening game and a decent one against UCLA, but both were played in their home state against teams from the west coast. Now they meet BYU in the middle of the country, though still in the South. But their home court advantage is gone.
BYU has shown it can pull a great game out of its cap even if Jimmer doesn't score 52. If they play like they did against Gonzaga they'll beat Florida, plain and simple. But you can't count on BYU for consistency. Nor for that matter can you count on Florida. This game's outcome is predicated on which version of each team shows up.
Vegas Line:
Florida by 2 1/2
Power rating spread
BYU by 4.6
% Chance to win
Florida: 39%
BYU: 61%
Our power ratings for the whole season suggest BYU is the better team. But there's a lot of variability in both teams, and particularly since BYU lost Davies. In the last 7 games BYU has looked good (Gonzaga, New Mexico, and Wyoming wins), bad (TCU win, SDSU loss, and Wofford win), and ugly (New Mexico loss). Does the Gonzaga win demonstrate that the team has now adjusted to playing without Davies? With any other team I might think so, but BYU is a special case due to their overall variability of play, and the fact that they are so dependent on one player.
Using the Injury Adjustment for BYU, Florida is 2.4 point favorite in our power rating, basically agreeing with Vegas. BYU falls to a 44% chance to win. To get a comparison with Florida's recent play, we can use each teams' last 7 games, a small sample that favors the Gators by 9 points.
Bottom line: This matchup is the essence of randomness. Jimmer might score 50 on the Gators in a blowout or Florida could win by 20. I'm not sold on the new BYU just because of the last game. What it probably does is remedy some of the skew of the earlier games without Davies, which made them look almost impossibly bad without him—they dropped as far without Davies as you'd expect them to fall if they lost Fredette, which is unrealistic. I really think BYU might win one more game, maybe two, but at some point their overreliance on Fredette is going to be the end of them. Could be as early as Thursday.
Final prediction: Florida 74, BYU 71
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