Wednesday evening, the Florida Gators are scheduled to take on the Vanderbilt Commodores for their first game in over two weeks. The obvious narrative filling the airwaves during the game will be the conspicuous lack of the best player on Florida’s roster. Keyontae Johnson has progressed past the need for concern about his survival, but he’s not returned to the team and there is no public information about when he may do so.
Regardless, the Gators have the advantage against their SEC rivals in this game, given a 73 percent chance of victory by the ESPN Basketball Power Index. The Commodores haven’t broken easily so far this year, though, and have gone 4-2 so far on the young season.
In terms of experience, Vandy has a nicely balanced roster this year. They’ve been able to get a significant amount of production out of their youthful talent, as three of their five players with the most minutes are underclassmen. It seems to work just fine; in their four victories, the Commodores have outscored their opponents by 21.8 points, although they haven’t played the thorniest schedule.
Of course, the Gators can’t pull any punches if they’re going to win this game. The Mike White era has been a mostly successful one, but his teams have a bad habit of playing down to the competition. Florida can’t afford to do that on Wednesday, instead, here are three things that need to happen for a victory against Vandy.