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Trailing late in the contest, Tennessee (#8 AP, 17-4, 4-4 SEC) held Kentucky without a field goal in the last 5:20 of the Tuesday’s game to give themselves a chance at victory, but shot just 2/12 from 3-pont range to close the contest, ultimately losing 73-78.

Florida (#5 AP, 18-2, 5-2 SEC) last played a week ago, an 89-59 win over Georgia. It was the third of UF’s five SEC wins in which the Gators won by 20 points or more.

Previously on Vols vs. Gators

One of those 20+ win margins for Florida came in the last meeting between the Vols and Gators, a 43-73 Vol loss in Gainesville. It was just Florida’s third win in the last 10 games of the series, but their second win in the last three. Tennessee has a 81-60 lead in the all-time series, including a 51-18 lead at home.

Scouting Florida

• Florida is 7-17 all-time in top-10 matchups, but 0-10 on the road in such games.
• SR G #1 Walter Clayton Jr. has averaged 18.9 points and has a school-record 43 straight games with a 3. Clayton has 6 games with 25+ points this season, including a career high 33 at Kentucky.
• SR G #5 Will Richard scored 22 and hit the game winner against South Carolina, which was also Richard’s 1,000th point as a Gator.
• SO F #21 Alex Condon had a double-double against Tennessee with 12 points/12 rebounds. Over the last three games Condon is averaging 10 points/9 rebounds.
• SO F #10 Thomas Haugh and JR G # 11 Denzel Aberdeen will be the first off the bench for the Gators. Haugh has averaged 6.7 points and 6.3 rebounds over the last three games, while Aberdeen scored 16 points in the first UT-UF game and has shot 50% from the field over the last three outings.

Prediction

This Tennessee team is in a very strange spot. They’re 17-4, but judging by fan reaction online, you’d think they’re 7-14. I think that’s because the losses, though few, all seem to be similar: really good defense on one end; flat, uncreative offense on the other end. It also doesn’t help that three of the Vols’ losses came in the last four games—so everything feels like a downward trend. Even the most sunshine pump-y of us are running out of ways to spin the current state positively.

In non-conference wins against Louisville, Baylor, and Illinois, Tennessee shot 38/85 (.447%) from 3. In conference wins against Arkansas, Texas, Georgia, and Mississippi State, the Vols shot 38/104 (.365%) behind the arc. But in losses at Florida, at Vandy, at Auburn, and Tuesday against Kentucky, UT shot just 29/117 (.248%) from 3. The best shooting came months ago, and the worst shooting has come primarily in three of the last four games—all losses.

In SEC games, three-point shots have made up 46% of UT’s offense. That’s a higher share of threes than Alabama—whose 5-out offense is specifically designed to create threes—has. Fans are left wondering why a team who only makes 30.3% of their threes in conference play (9th in the league) is depending so much on the deep ball. At the same time, Tennessee has the 3rd-best Free Throw Percentage, but their Free Throw Rate is last in the SEC (conference play only). If the Vols got to the line just as much as the average SEC team, they’d probably be 19-2 or even 20-1 right now.

Going into the Auburn game, it felt important to finish the stretch of AU-UK-UF with a 2-1 record. Now the best case is 1-2, and here comes Florida, who not only beat Tennessee by 30 points a few weeks ago, but saw Tennessee shoot 3s at a 4/29 (.138%) clip in that first meeting. Not only does 0-3 seem possible, it seems probable. Sure the Vols are still getting a ~60% win probability from the analytics sites like Kenpom and Bart Torvik. But they had a ~80% win probability against Kentucky, and we see how that worked out. It’s not unthinkable for Tennessee to beat Florida. The defense has remained largely excellent—in fact one theory about the Vols’ offensive woes pins the trouble on the amount of energy expended on the defensive end leaving Tennessee too exhausted to shoot well on the other end, a theory that has legs (so to speak). If those shot begin to fall, or if UT finally finds a way to shoot a reasonable amount from the stripe, Tennessee could win. But until they pull out of this slump, I simply cannot expect them to win. Vols 68, Gators 74.