The opening SEC gauntlet for the Horns continues with a road game against one of the best teams in the country.
For the third time in the last four games, the Texas Longhorns will face a top-five opponent as head coach Rodney Terry’s team travels to Gainesville for a matchup against the No. 5 Florida Gators, a program still playing at a high level on the court despite probes into sexual misconduct by head coach Todd Golden and assistant Taurean Green.
At 15-2 overall and 2-2 in conference play, Florida’s record reflects the difficulties of SEC with a shootout 106-100 loss to No. 8 Kentucky in Lexington and an 83-82 home loss to unranked Missouri, both poor performances defensively for the nation’s No. 20 team in adjusted defensive efficiency.
The Gators also have a resounding 30-point victory over the Volunteers that dropped Tennessee to No. 6 in this week’s AP Top 25 poll, as well as a road win over Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Golden has built a balanced team that ranks No. 8 in adjusted offensive efficiency even though Florida is an average team in free-throw rate and three-point shooting, which it makes up for by rebounding 41.2 percent of its missed shots and turnover and two-point shooting efficiencies that rank around the top 50 in the country.
It’s time a team that relies heavily on three-point attempts or ball movement with a guard-heavy attack that features leading scorer Walter Clayton Jr. at 17.8 points per game, Alijah Martin at 15.8 points per game, and Will Richard at 13.2 points per game. Those three players have also combined for three quarters of the team’s make three-pointers and a little more than half of the team’s assists.
On defense, the Gators are third in effective field-goal percentage because they hold opponents to 27.8-percent shooting from three, fourth nationally, and 43.2 percent from inside the arc, seventh nationally, with a blocked-shot rate that ranks 30th.
The challenge for Texas is a significant one — BartTorvik.com gives the Longhorns a 16-percent win probability with an expected margin of more than 10 points, reflected in the line at FanDuel of 10.5 points.
If the scoring ability of junior guard Jordan Pope continues, the Horns have a chance to compete against higher-ranked opponents as he’s averaging a team-best 20.7 points per game over the last seven contests, hitting 46.2 percent of his shots from beyond the arc.
In the road win over Oklahoma, Pope scored a team-high 27 points with four steals as the coaching staff emphasized the importance of making an impact defensively.
So Texas will test its level of improvement in SEC play with the most difficult game of the season after facing UConn, Auburn, and Tennessee in Austin.
Tip is at 3 p.m. Central on ESPN2.