Billy Donovan has been preaching the value of rebounding all season, and this will be his chance to see if the Gators believe him.
No. 3-seeded Florida will take on No.-11 seeded Minnesota, a team that battered and muscled its way to the best rebounding margin in the bruising Big Ten, Sunday night (6:10 p.m., TNT). The Gators are looking for their third straight Sweet 16 appearance, unprecedented in program history.
To get there, they must overpower a Golden Gophers team that prides itself on pushing people around.
“We’ll be fine,” Florida forward Erik Murphy said after practice Saturday at the Frank Erwin Center. “We’re a physical team, too. We’re not worried about being bullied. We’re going to come out with the mindset to match their physicality and exceed it.”
The Gators (27-7) have struggled to do that lately, though they posted a plus-17 rebounding differential in their 79-47 first-round win over Northwestern State on Friday. Before that, they had outrebounded three of their previous 11 opponents.
Minnesota (21-12) averages an 8.2 rebounding advantage and leads all major-conference teams with 12.8 offensive rebounds per game. That edge does not guarantee success, however. The Gophers lost 11 of their final 16 regular-season games despite owning a rebounding advantage in seven of those losses.
In the frontcourt, Trevor Mbakwe scores 9.9 points and gets 8.8 rebounds per game, while Rodney Williams averages 10.1 points and five rebounds. Florida will counter with center Patric Young (6.3 rebounds per game), Murphy (5.5) and reserves Will Yeguete (5.9) and Casey Prather (3.8).
“They chase it, the go after it,” Donovan said. “This will be not only be a challenge for our frontcourt, but it will be a challenge for our team collectively. They are relentless going to the glass.”
The Gophers won the rebounding battle in 23 of 31 games during the regular season. They out-rebounded Illinois, which is at this site to face Miami as part of the East region, by a total of 29 over three games.
UCLA out-rebounded the Gophers 42-36 on Friday, but that shortage was irrelevant as Minnesota shot 50.8 percent from the field and cruised to an 83-63 victory.
The Gators allowed fewer rebounds than any team in the SEC and were third in the conference in margin at plus-4.8. They shot an SEC-best 48.1 percent from the field and still collected 10.5 offensive rebounds per game.
“We’ve got to make sure we come ready for the physical confrontation,” Prather said.
While the players and programs are unfamiliar — the programs have not met since the Gophers beat UF in a 1993 NIT game — the coaches are longtime rivals and friends.
Minnesota’s Tubby Smith was the head coach at Kentucky for a decade before he was fired and landed with the Gophers in 2007. During his time with the Wildcats, Smith reached the Elite Eight four times and won national championship.
He also went 16-10 against the Gators while coaching Georgia and Kentucky, though UF beat him six straight times in his final three seasons with the Wildcats.
“We had our battles when I was at Kentucky and Georgia, but I’m happy to be facing him again in this type of a venue,” Smith said of Donovan.
Even before coaching against each other, they were part of the same staff at Kentucky under Rick Pitino for two seasons. Both already had a rough idea of what to expect before starting their film scouting last week.
“Tubby’s always going to put an emphasis on defense, they’re always a tough, disciplined team,” Donovan said. “He’s probably changed some things offensively over the years based on his personnel, but the core value of who Tubby is as a coach has probably stayed the same.”
