Kicking the season off with a ranked win over Miami in Tampa the Florida Gators (1-0) will now head home to Gainesville Thursday to take on former assistant Jordan Mincy and the Jacksonville Dolphins (1-0).
When Mincy took the Jacksonville job in 2022, which frankly doesn’t even feel that long ago, college basketball was in a different place. In his first year the Dolphins had one of their best seasons in years finishing 163rd in KenPom and it looked like Mincy might be stepping up for a bigger job in short order. Then player movement and NIL really took over in college basketball, and the job became an even more difficult one. Though things have stayed afloat, Jacksonville has found themselves near the middle to lower end of the Atlantic Sun, struggling to build any momentum.
This year once again sees a lot of new faces for Jacksonville, and with their first game coming against a non-D1 opponent (a 105-61 win over Paine) the Gators will bring them their first real test.
In this game the standout was 6’10”, 270 pound third year player Nehemiah Turner who looks to be like the kind of rare size and talent you seldom see at a school like Jacksonville. His journey has been a bit of a strange one, with some differing reports and opinions of his personality. Two years ago as a freshman at Central Arkansas there were some games he didn’t play, and other games he went nuclear, such a span of a week where in one week he went from starting, to not starting, to having a game where he scored 37 points and added 11 rebounds in the ASun tournament. This led to him transferring to Minnesota, where he started the season in the rotation before leaving the team entirely midway through the year. Some said he had an injury, some said he was totally healthy–whatever the case may be, he has shown he has a pretty high ceiling as a basketball player when he’s on. He actually came off the bench in Jacksonville’s first game but had 16 points in 16 minutes, and Jacksonville will probably need more burn from him against Florida’s size. 

 

Though just 16 minutes for Turner seemed a bit surprising, it does go alongside how the Dolphins play. Last year the team had essentially an 11-man rotation with no one playing more than 27 minutes per game, and you also see it reflected in the scoring where they had only one double-digit scorer and seven players averaging between 6 and 12 points per game. Since they aren’t necessarily going to out-talent or out-athleticism teams, the deep rotation allows the Dolphins to keep energy up and play with defensive intensity which has been the strength of Mincy’s teams in his head coaching career.
Who was that one double digit scorer, you might ask? That was freshman Hayden Wood, who surprisingly returns to Jacksonville for this season. In a world where everyone is trying to make moves after quality seasons Wood chose to stay back after averaging 11.8 points while shooting 38% from three, and it’s a decision that could very well pay off for him as he looks to potentially get even better opportunities next offseason. Wood has length to get his shot off at 6’6”, and the Dolphins will need him to get off a lot of attempts against the Gators Thursday.
Some other players to know are Stetson transfer Jamie Phillips and Lafayette transfer Caleb Williams, both savvy pickups by Coach Mincy. Phillips had a blazing start to last season averaging over 16 points per game before having the season cut short due to injury, and while some teams didn’t want to take the risk Mincy was willing to gamble a bit to get that kind of scoring and Phillips was on point against Paine scoring 18 points. Caleb Williams also averaged 16 points per game shooting a ton of threes and hitting 33% of them, but as a sub-6’0” guard a lot of programs weren’t interested in his services which also shows just how much things are changing in portal recruiting. Whatever the case may be, he’s an electric undersized guard that could be a problem in conference play.
Given that Florida is hunting yet another 1-seed, their focus in these types of games could be a challenge. Jacksonville has some nice pieces up and down the roster but may not have the size and scoring juice to really hang with the Gators, but you never know what could happen and that’s why they play the games.
Florida and Jacksonville will tip off Thursday, November 5 at 8 PM ET and it will be televised on SEC Network+.