The Connecticut Huskies basketball team will be playing the Florida Gators tonight in a battle between two of the top programs in the nation, both ranked in the top 15. The game will be live streamed from Storrs, Connecticut at 7:00 PM ET.
It is still early in the season but after barely scraping by Boston College and Indiana by a combined three points to win the 2K Sports Classic, Connecticut (7-0) defeated an undermanned Loyola, Md. squad in an unimpressive 76-66 home victory on Tuesday. The Huskies seemingly had a chance to blow things open against the Greyhounds, grabbing a 23-9 lead with less than eight minutes to play in the first half, but Loyola trimmed the deficit to eight by halftime.
"We get up 15 points and then we give the lead up again," coach Kevin Ollie said. "I want to get up 15 points and then I want to go up 25. I don't want to go back down to five. And that's the way we've been playing in some of these games and great teams don't do that."
Florida (6-1) is still working out some of the early-season kinks in its game. The Gators began a challenging four-game stretch with a 67-66 home victory over Florida State on Friday.
After dealing with the Huskies, Florida will host No. 6 Kansas next Tuesday prior to traveling to New York to meet No. 16 Memphis in the Jimmy V Classic on Dec. 17.
Florida is led offensively by senior forward Casey Prather, who is averaging 19.1 points after entering the season with a 3.1 career scoring average.
The Gators won the only previous meeting between these teams, 69-60 in overtime in the 1994 regional semifinals of the NCAA tournament. Ollie was on that UConn team.
