After a disappointing opening night that saw a loss to Arizona the Florida Gators (0-1) will have an excellent opportunity to put up their first win against the North Florida Ospreys.
North Florida has been a regular non-conference opponent for the Gators over the last decade as they are always willing to make the trip to Gainesville, and while they have roughly the same look over that time, for the first year things will be different as longtime head coach Matthew Driscoll left somewhat late in the offseason to go be an assistant at Kansas State. This has been a recent trend in college basketball as low-major head coaches see their jobs getting tougher and tougher, and with money exploding at the high-major level there are often similar or higher salaries to be an assistant in a power five. With the move happening later in the offseason the Ospreys had no real opportunity to do a search and instead chose to go with long time assistant Bobby Kennen, who had the lengthy resume as an assistant to justify the role. Having been with Driscoll and North Florida since 2009, he is likely to keep the same style of play, and that’s one that’s known to anyone who has watched the Ospreys play.
There is a reason the Ospreys are known as the “Birds Of Trey”–they are going to let three-pointers fly. In a world where seemingly everyone is saying they want to shoot more threes, no one is actually doing it more than North Florida who has led college basketball in three-point rate in each of the last two seasons. Last year they were also 15th in average possession length, so you can expect a ton of pace to pair with the heavy three-point attack. It’s a style that has made them run hot and cold in league play, but it’s also something that has allowed them to occasionally go nuclear and be competitive against high-major opponents, and it even resulted in them getting wins over South Carolina and Georgia Tech last season in the opening weeks–wins that had media wondering if they were the next fun, plucky mid-major that could maybe make a run in March. That wasn’t the case, and they finished 7th in the Atlantic Sun Conference, adding to the frustration that possibly fueled the change for Driscoll.
Fast forward to this year, and as is the case for many low-major teams–North Florida was completely gutted by the transfer portal. A school without much budget, the Ospreys have no real way of retaining players that could go to bigger leagues, and they also don’t have much chance at bringing in many impactful transfers. This year’s roster has almost completely turned over, with the only returning piece of note being guard Kamrin Oriol who averaged 7.3 points per game last season. He’ll be expected to be a leader as pretty much the only real returner, so we’ll see if he can increase his offensive load. The one nice transfer piece the Ospreys did pick up was Lafayette guard Devin Hines who scored 9.9 and 9.8 points the last two years, with the most recent being one where he played just 8 games before losing the season to injury. Hines is a native of Key West who was looking to get closer to home, with Florida’s wealth of in-state talent being just about the only recruiting advantage North Florida has.
Entering the season, North Florida is ranked 342nd in the country according to KenPom and 358th in the country according to T-Rank.
Most of North Florida’s talent comes from the non-D1 ranks, and they’ll be playing their first game of the season against the Gators. You can expect them to continue to put up a ton of threes, something that will be very different than the Arizona game where the Wildcats shockingly took just 5 total threes, though that was a result of the Gators struggling to keep them out of the paint. This game will be about the Gators trying to tighten up some of the defensive lapses they had against Arizona while hopefully gaining some overall confidence.
Florida and North Florida will tip off Thursday, November 6th at 8 PM ET and it will be televised on SEC Network +.