Staying in the hunt for the top of the SEC the Florida Gators (18-2, 5-2 SEC) will take on the Tennessee Volunteers (17-3, 4-3 SEC at the time of publishing) for the second time this season on February 1st.
Currently the Gators are third in the SEC and are behind Auburn by 1.5 games (Auburn is sitting at 6-0 and have played one less game from the Gators) so they are still very much in the mix for a league title through the first third of conference play. Of course, one of the reasons why is that one of the league favorites was Tennessee and the Volunteers have unexpectedly dropped a number of games after going through conference play undefeated and in discussions for the top team in the country.
When Florida first saw Tennessee on January 7th the Volunteers were riding high, undefeated on the season with wins over Illinois, Baylor, and Louisville. After the Gators handed them their first loss the struggles continued with them also dropping games to Vanderbilt and Auburn, with the Vanderbilt loss certainly being one they would like to have back. This means that Tennessee has lost 3 of their last 6 and are looking far from the machine they presented as for the first two months of the season, and the Gators will be going into this game with a ton of confidence given how the season’s first meeting went.
Florida is also going to have a rest advantage in this meeting with a “bye week” that sees them go from Saturday, January 25th to this game on Saturday, February 1st without any action, while Tennessee has to take on Kentucky on January 28th. While Kentucky is also having their issues recently this will still be a very challenging game for Tennessee and it’s entirely possible they could go into the game with Florida 4-4 in SEC play which would hav
