2025 men's NCAA Tournament Round of 32 preview (Sunday)
Don't you know? Pump it up. You got to pump it up.
Same as yesterday. First game’s free, remaining seven are paywalled. Let’s have a fun day. Some tweaks this year: one video for each game, new stats, new things to look for, deeper previews.
(1) Florida (-9.5) vs. (8) UConn, 12:10 PM ET, CBS
Really bizarre move here to put the two 1-vs-8/9 games as the standalones, but such is life when one game is Florida/UConn and the other involves Duke. Collectively these two games represent an impressive ten of the last 20 champions, a thing that is a pretty big deal for ratings and such. Also, this game matters an immense amount to me for the following reason.
As a game, I think this one is a good bit more interesting than Duke/Baylor for reasons we’ll get to. Couple of key factors here for me are watching the pace of this game and - you guessed it - shooting variance. While pace is a huge discussion piece of Alabama/St. Mary’s later on I haven’t seen anyone note how big a deal it could be here. This is the 43rd-fastest offense versus the 342nd-fastest, and as is standard, fewer possessions usually equal fewer points, which means a somewhat increased chance of an upset.
Structurally though, this will test a couple of pieces of the Florida experience - and the bright orange orb ball - we don’t see tested often. UConn’s defensive coverage of drop first, switch last is not dissimilar to that of Alabama or LSU…two defenses that Florida shredded to the tune of 1.24, 1.25, and 1.33 PPP. That’s a scary thought for UConn. Then again, I’ve maintained for about two months that UConn’s rim protection is quite a bit better than most think. They foul a lot, but at 45.8% opponent 2PT%, this is actually the best 2PT% defense the Gators have played all year. That didn’t matter as much when they worked through Tennessee/Texas A&M/Auburn to varying success rates, but in a one-off game, anything is plausible.
I’m also pretty interested in UConn on the other end of the court. Florida’s defense of giants is obviously very stout on the interior but their perimeter length allows for greater switchability, and Golden has mixed coverages well all year based on personnel. The one area I’ve noticed a lot of consistency in actually ‘getting’ Florida, though, is off-ball screens; they rank in the 32nd-percentile nationally in covering these and it was one reason why Tennessee found a surprising amount of success and good looks against them in their last two games. Only 13 offenses run more off-ball screens than UConn. It just takes a day where shots go in.
THING TO WATCH FOR: The off-ball screens. We’ve seen Hurley run a lot of these for Karaban, Ball, and McNeeley. The most successful are for Ball. It’s a serious stretch to compare these two, but the highest-ISO/lowest spot-up defense the Big East has is Xavier. In two games against X, UConn ran their season high in off-ball screens, per Synergy: 15 and 16 possessions ending with them. They may set another high here.
THING TO CTRL+F THE BOXSCORE FOR: UConn’s turnover numbers. I think they might determine the outcome here more than anything else. Florida went 2-3 when scoring six or fewer points off TOs this year and 29-1 in all other games; all three losses saw them force eight or fewer turnovers. UConn’s gone 8 or fewer in 12 games this year (9-3), though just two of their last 10.
THREE MOST STATISTICALLY SIMILAR GAMES: 2017 (2) Kentucky over (10) Wichita State; 2013 (9) Wichita State over (1) Gonzaga; 2011 (1) Kansas over (9) Illinois
PREDICTION: Florida 75, UConn 70. I’d like to pick the upset here but can’t fully get there.