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Today at the Battle 4 Atlantis, Oklahoma played Butler, Georgetown squared off with Wisconsin, North Carolina and UCLA met in a clash of two of the most successful programs in college basketball history ... and Florida plays UAB at 9:30 p.m. on AXS TV.
The Gators got a booby prize on Thanksgiving, in other words.
The intrigue level is low tonight, even if Dorian Finney-Smith is likely to make his return to Florida's starting lineup, a very good sign. Florida, despite its 2-2 record and copious problems, is a much better team than UAB, which has lost at home to the Louisiana-Monroe team Florida beat, to South Florida, and, on Wednesday, to Wisconsin, in a game that was 37-17 at halftime and never got closer. Florida's a more talented, more efficient, and generally better team, and the undersized, thin Gators will even have size advantages all over the court against the Blazers, who don't have a player taller than 6'9" or heavier than 225 pounds.
That sounds like the scenario for a Florida blowout even before we factor in the likelihood that Billy Donovan lit into his team over the last 24 hours, hoping for a more consistent performance than the one the Gators put on against Georgetown in Wednesday's overtime loss. This shouldn't be close, and if it is, we might need to really start re-evaluating these Gators: Snoozing and losing a game against a bad team (UAB isn't in the KenPom top 200) would be a disaster.
But if it's not close, it might well be a boring blowout you switch to when Seahawks-Niners is on commercial break. Frankly, even I'm not that interested in this one: There's a Migos show in Gainesville tonight (yep!) and I kinda wish I were there, instead of at home, watching AXS TV.
I guess "Versace" can wait until next time Migos come to Gainesville. Or something.
Once again, your AXS TV channel listings:
- Advanced Cable Communications: Channel 679
- AT&T U-verse: Channel 1106
- Atlantic Broadband: Channel 501
- CenturyLink Prism: Channel 1105
- Cox Communications (in the Gainesville/Ocala area): Channel 199
- DirecTV: Channel 340
- DISH: Channel 167
- Home Town Cable Plus: Channel 372
- Verizon FiOS: Channel 569
- WOW!: Channel 918