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Gooooood morning, AUHoops fans! Hope you're all doing well today. Our American University Eagles are set to face the Land Lizards of the University of Florida today at the Verizon Center as part of the BB&T classic. We don't have anyone available to run the liveblog today. Sorry about that! The game today is on MASN for those of you watching from home. Here are some previews of the game: Yahoo! Sports, AUEagles.com

Now, on paper, this is not a good matchup for us. Florida ripped us last year down in Malariaville, FL 76-60. They returned all the important contributors from that game, and from last season. That doesn't bode well for us. However, coach Billy Donovan is having some issues with his team. Namely that they're not very, well, teamly. After Florida dropped a game to the University of Central Florida on Wednesday, Coach Donovan said, "Our issues are bigger than this loss...We have a bunch of guys on the floor that make nobody better.” Ouch. Harsh words

There's no shortage of talent on this team. Kenny Boynton is a former High School First Team All-American, for example. Then you add in big men Chandler Parsons and Alex Tyrus, and a ton of depth on the bench and it amounts to "oof."

 These are our keys to the game if we're going to win:
1. No slumps or scoring droughts. Against WVU we got shots in the beginning of the game, and none of them fell. I'm not saying today we need to hit every shot we take, but the ones we SHOULD make, we need to make today. You can't afford to blow easy buckets against Florida. We also can't go 3-15 from behind the arc and expect to win. Part of this is because Florida is a tremendous rebounding team, and we can't expect to get a ton of those boards off missed three point shots.

2. Tenacious defense. Central Florida upset Florida by playing lockdown defense and hassling Kenny Boynton and the rest of the Gator frontcourt. JJ's team has to bring his signature defense today. Make them work for every single shot. This team is too talented to think that we can make them shoot in the 30% range, but we can try to wear them down by making them take as much of the 35 in each possession as possible.

3. Slow the tempo down. This goes partly to number two. Last year we got into a run-and-gun game with Florida. AU, as I hardly need remind you, is not a run-and-gun team. We need to limit our turnovers so they don't get on the fast break and put up easy points. Keep the game in half-court sets and use as much time as possible and we might have a shot.

4. Our stars vs. their stars. Vlad and Lumpkins have to step up today. They're going to have a hell of a time inside banging around with Parsons and Tyrus, but they're going to need to gut it out for us to win. You can't expect our frontcourt to do much against Florida's, so we need our big guys to step up today. 8-9 Troy Brewer three-pointers wouldn't hurt either.


I'm not going to lie to you, folks. If Florida brings their A game today and play like a team, I don't give us much of a shot. But, if Florida continues their disjointed ways and AU can do 3/4 of the things I mentioned above, we might have a chance to steal one at the Verizon Center. Wouldn't that be a nice early present for the holidays?

Sorry folks, again, no liveblog today!

Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES (I WANT A GATOR SKIN WALLET!)