Just one game away from a perfect non-conference slate the Florida Gators (12-0) will have quite an opportunity to enter SEC play unscathed as they take on the Stetson Hatters (1-10), a team near the bottom of the sport by just about any metric you want to want to look at.
When it comes to scheduling for high-major teams you are generally trying to put some of your easier non-conference games around the Holiday break, which the Gators did with North Florida and Stetson. While they knew they certainly weren't getting a mid-major powerhouse or anything like that when they scheduled Stetson they likely expected a team that would provide a bit more of a challenge.
The Hatters are in year six of the Donnie Jones era (a coach who had a stint at UCF that you may remember) and it looked like things were on an upswing. In 2023 the Hatters won the Atlantic Sun regular season title, but ran into a Lipscomb team that was a bad matchup for them all year long who knocked them out of the Conference Tournament, foiling what looked to be a certain NCAA Tournament berth. Fortunately they were able to get some revenge last year where they didn't win the ASUN but came third and went on to win the ASUN Tournament, entering the NCAA Tournament as a 16-seed where they got blasted by eventual Champion UConn.
After two incredibly successful seasons you would hope that Stetson would be able to keep their momentum going but that wasn't the case at all. In addition to their graduating players, anyone with eligibility used the visibility from the NCAA Tournament to head to bigger programs in the transfer portal. Jalon Blackmon went to Miami, Stephan Swenson went to UC Santa Barbara, Aubin Gateretse went to Utah State, and Alec Oglesby went to Middle Tennessee leaving Coach Jones to have to functionally replace the entire roster.
It appears, at least so far-that this mission was unsuccessful.
Looking up and down the roster there is very little division-I experience. Nearly everyone on the Hatters is a JUCO or division-II transfer, a way for Jones to keep his roster a bit older despite not having D1 experience.
Stetson is 1-10 on the year, but their only win came against non-D1 New College Florida. Unlike a lot of smaller schools in the southeast, Stetson doesn't go and play a ton of high-major buy games to earn money for the program and has only played two high-majors so far-Oklahoma (losing 85-64), and LSU (losing 99-53). Sometimes when you look at mid and low-major opponents with poor records it's due to them playing nearly all high-major buy games, but that isn't the case for Stetson. Most of their games have come against mid-major competition and so far they haven't found the secret to coming away with a win-though they have been competitive. They lost by 3 to Omaha, East Carolina by 7, South Florida by 2, and Mercer by 6 in overtime, so it's not like they're getting blown out and if not for a few possessions not going their way here and there they certainly could have a couple wins on the board.
Unfortunately that wasn't the case, and Stetson now finds themselves at the basement of college basketball. They are 350th in KenPom and 358th in the NET, and that's out of 364 teams, I'll remind you. Needless to say-this is not a game the Gators want to come out flat for. Losing to a team like this on the road would be one of the worst losses in the NET era, and while the Gators have already made plenty of history this year on the positive side they don't want to balance it out with any history on the other end of the spectrum.
Stetson has a fairly balanced point distribution with guard Mehki Ellison leading the way with 13.2 points and Jordan Wood (12.1), Josh Massey (10.9), and Jamie Phillips (10.9) right behind him. Ellison is a 6'0" guard who is knocking down 40% of his threes, largely off the dribble. He isn't someone who likes to get in the paint and finish, so whoever is guarding him will have to know all his dribble moves are designed towards creating space for the three.