With only a week left in the Southeastern Conference’s regular season, defending national champion Florida stands on another title-winning doorstep.
The No. 5 Gators will host struggling Mississippi State on Tuesday night in Gainesville, Fla., and a victory would result in coach Todd Golden’s squad earning the program its first outright regular-season SEC title since 2014.
Florida (23-6, 14-2) will have to deal with one of the league’s top scorers in Josh Hubbard, but the Bulldogs (13-16, 5-11) are playing some of their worst basketball of the campaign recently.
After hosting ESPN’s College GameDay in the leadup of their contest with No. 20 Arkansas, the Gators found themselves in a tight one for the first 10 minutes before a strong run led to a 53-34 halftime margin.
Behind Thomas Haugh’s 22 points and Rueben Chinyelu’s 17th double-double (12 points, 16 boards), Florida dominated over the final 30 minutes in a 111-77 clobbering of the Razorbacks.
That ninth straight win in an unbeaten February gave Florida a share of the SEC crown.
In Knoxville, then-No. 17 Alabama, chasing the Gators in the standings, shocked then-No. 22 Tennessee with a 10-2 run in the final 3:41 and won 71-69 despite leading only the last 24 seconds.
Florida must win one of its next two games or have the Crimson Tide lose at Georgia or home against Auburn to notch the conference’s regular-season crown outright.
The SEC-leading Gators have six players scoring in double figures.
Haugh leads with 17.1 points per game, and Alex Condon nets 14.4. After that, Boogie Fland (11.6), Xaivian Lee (11.4), Chinyelu (11.3, team-best 11.7 boards) and Urban Klavzar (10.2) add scoring.
“We’re getting a lot of great contributions from guys, and when we’re able to get rest for starters, those guys can come in and keep the score going the right direction,” said Golden. “(Depth is) huge for us, and against a lot of these teams that we play, they’re really talented, but they don’t have the depth that we do where we’re able to wear teams down.”
Bulldogs coach Chris Jans has watched his club lose six of eight and be uncompetitive in a few tilts, including Saturday’s 88-64 blowout loss to visiting Missouri, which was actually worse than the final score.
With two minutes left in the first half, the Tigers led the home side 50-19 and eventually pushed that advantage to 36.
Seven of Mississippi State’s 11 conference setbacks have been by double digits.
The Bulldogs have allowed at least 85 points in each of the past four games.
“Yeah, it’s tough to even hear that,” Jans said. “One of my job responsibilities, 1A, 1B, 1C, somewhere in there, is on game day to get our guys to compete at the highest level. I told them for whatever reason I’ve failed for the most part most of the games to get them to play to the standard we’ve created.”
In addition to the team being better defensively, Hubbard, who averages 21.4 points, needs to pick up his game.
After tallying 46 points in his team’s most recent win, Mississippi State’s 91-85 defeat of visiting Auburn more than two weeks ago, Hubbard has produced outings of 13, 11 and 16 points.
Jayden Epps (13.7) is the only other player in double figures.
