Gators look to get confidence-building win on road at Missouri

The Florida Gators men’s basketball team is set to hit the road yet again for Wednesday’s matchup against the Missouri Tigers.

The game has been moved up to 3 p.m. ET from 9 p.m. ET due to inclement weather in Columbia, Mo.

The Gators are currently in the NCAA Tournament’s Last Four In, according to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, and a loss to the Tigers would be a tough one to overlook come Selection Sunday in March.

Missouri has now won two-straight games against Florida after last year’s 72-70 nail biter in Gainesville. Before the 2019-20 season, Florida head coach Mike White hadn’t lost to Missouri during his tenure. 

“The next one’s going to be extremely difficult,” White said of the matchup. “The Missouri team’s incredibly tough, and physical, and disciplined, and defending at a high level. Very capable team that almost knocked off the No. 1 in the country in the not-too-distant past. And a team that came down last year and got us, and we struggled to have success last time we’re up there as well. So we’ve got our guys’ attention of course.”

Players to watch for Missouri

Mizzou forward Kobe Brown is the Tigers’ do-it-all player as he leads the team in points (12.9 per game), rebounds (8.5 per game), steals (1.5 per game) and blocks (0.8 per game). 

Brown is in good position to have a big night with Florida center Jason Jitoboh out for the season (eye surgery) and forward Colin Castleton still sidelined indefinitely with a shoulder injury.

Outside of Brown, the Tigers rely heavily on their guards.

Missouri guard Jarron Coleman leads the team in assists (3.1 per game) while adding 10.1 points per game. However, he does lead the team with 2.7 turnovers per game.

Guard Amari Davis adds 10.3 points per game and shoots 44 percent from the field. Davis is one of the Tigers’ better free throw shooters at 80 percent on the season, so the Gators will look to avoid fouling him on the back end of this contest.

Javon Pickett is another piece to the Missouri backcourt, and he averages 9.4 points per game while shooting 42.7 percent from the field.

“As long as Cuonzo [Martin] does it, his teams are going to defend at a high level,” White said of the Mizzou coach. “They’re going to execute. I think it’s the program as much as anything, you know. He’s got some good individual defenders, but the toughness that they play with. Again, you gotta have connectivity defensively as well. 

“They can move their feet. They’ve got girth, too. They’ve got some strong guys that take pride in it, and they’ll fight you for every inch on the court. We try to pride ourselves on a lot of similar stuff, and I’m sure we’ll all see a couple good defenses getting after it tomorrow.”

How the Gators get a road victory

UF is 1-4 on the road this season, so a win on Wednesday night would be a step in the right direction for a team who hasn’t exactly handled games away from home well.

It’s still a depleted frontcourt for Florida, so guard Phlandrous Fleming Jr. and forward Anthony Duruji will need to play scrappy when it comes to getting rebounds. Forward Tuongthach Gatkek will be UF’s main source of size, so he’ll have to provide quality minutes as well.

Point guard Tyree Appleby leads the team in steals (1.7 per game) and turnovers (2.7 per game). It’s important that the Gators win the turnover battle and score on fast breaks, and Appleby has to be at the forefront of that.

All in all, Florida is the better team heading into Wednesday night even though it is missing impact players. It’ll be clear early on in the game whether the Gators have the energy and mentality to get a win on the road.

“We’ll go to Colombia, see what works, what doesn’t work, we’ll try to make some adjustments on the fly, of course. What we try to execute, how we play offensively may look different in a couple of weeks,” White said. “We’re just different offensively, of course, but we can rally around that. We can find different ways, other guys get opportunities. It’s one of the beauties of the game of basketball. There’s a bunch of different ways to do it. And we’re searching a little bit right now, of course.”

WHO: Florida Gators (13-8, 3-5 SEC) at Missouri Tigers (8-12, 2-5 SEC)

WHERE: Mizzou Arena

WHEN: Wednesday, Feb. 2, 3 p.m.

WATCH: SEC Network

RADIO: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD