Under the Radar Game of the Day – Saturday, January 10, 2015: North Florida at Jacksonville

North Florida at Jacksonville, 3:00 PM Eastern, espn3

First, congratulations to the NJIT Highlanders for our adopted team’s huge home win over Yale last night, with yours truly there to root our team on!  I know that Yale played most of the game without their top scorer, Justin Sears, and just wanted to assure everyone that I personally had nothing to do with his tooth getting knocked out early in the game.  I also wanted to give a shout out to Ky Howard for NJIT.  While he may not have the best stats at the end of the games, it was clear that the Highlanders are a vastly better team with him on the floor.  Ky literally through himself around the floor and was the spark the team needed every time a big run happened.

For today’s game, the UTR focuses in on what is (with all apologies to Stetson and Florida Gulf Coast fans) the best rivalry in the Atlantic Sun, the River City Rumble between North Florida and Jacksonville.  Round One this year takes place on Jacksonville’s home floor.  The Dolphins enter tonight’s game at 6-11 on the season while the Ospreys are 8-9.  This is the first conference game for both teams.  UNF clearly had the better non-conference season of the two, most notably scoring a 73-70 upset road win over Purdue.  While USC-Upstate and FGCU are the two clear favorites in the A-Sun this season, it would not surprise us at all if North Florida was able to hang right there with those two all season long.  In order to do that, they need to start with a win over their biggest rival this afternoon.  We would also like to point out that this is the first day of Jacksonville using its new mobile streaming that will be bringing espn3 webcasts of virtually all sporting events at the university.