THE ESSENTIALS WHAT Jumpman Invitational #45 Michigan (6-5, 1-1 B10) vs #38 Florida (7-3, 0-0 SEC) WHERE TicketIQ Center Charlotte, NC WHEN 7:00 PM THE LINE Kenpom: UF-1 Torvik: UF-3 TICKETS From $117 TELEVISION ESPN (link) THE OVERVIEW Second-year head coach Todd Golden doesn't like to stay put. The son of a guy who played college ball with Dr. J and Rick Pitino, Golden had a solid career as St. Mary's point guard and a few years of playing in Israel. He was on his way to a moderately successful career in advertising before a buddy convinced Todd to come be the numbers nerd for Columbia. The buddy was Kyle Smith, now the head coach at Washington State. Golden quickly moved into an assistant role, then repeated the climb in two years with Bruce Perl at Auburn before rejoining Smith, who'd moved on to San Francisco. When Smith got the job at Wazzu, Golden moved up to head coach, and in three years was running his own SEC squad. Between his meteoric rise and the fact that he hasn't aged since middle school, Golden makes every list of young up-and-comers. I would like to address the rumors that I am twelve. Golden lost nine of his last eleven games in his first year in Gainesville, and somewhere in there also lost Colin Castleton. Golden's main accomplishment last year was taking a Mike White team that usually finished last in the SEC in tempo and teaching them how to play fast. They were ~270th in non-COVID years under white, moved up to 70th last year, and are now 16th. They're also the worst Power 5 team in non-steal turnovers, since those passes up-court don't always connect, and first in offensive rebounding, because they like to keep two bigs on the floor. They're not the worst matchup for Michigan—that would be Texas Tech—but they're not a good one. Florida is in many ways a bigger version of these Wolverines if you replaced Dug with a headbandy 6-2 Andre Curbelo type and Nimari Burnett with both versions of himself. Like Michigan, UF's defense is worse and their offense better than the sum of its parts. Also like Michigan, contested opponents' threes are going in at a much higher rate than the national average, which in both teams' cases could be bad luck, sampling error, or both. Their own shooting looks like it could regress to a higher mean. UF was in Charlotte earlier this year for a 73-70 loss to Virginia in which the Gators shot 7/25 from outside. The rest of their relevant non-conference season was beating Pitt in the Brooklyn tournament before falling 95-91 to Baylor, getting hammered on the road at Wake, and doing the same to FSU at home. East Carolina almost pulled off an upset on Thursday, climbing within 2 with 1:06 remaining in yet another night when the shots wouldn't go in. That's suppressed the shooting metrics, but shooting is indeed UF's weakness; they're scoring under 0.9 points/jumpshot, almost all of their threes are assisted, and they aren't very good at free throws. Get back, shoo them away from the rim, and you should have a good time. But oh do they love going to the rim. [Hit THE JUMP for big bigs bigs bigs.]