This week and weekend is going to be a bit light on the college sports scene given finals week and the end of the college football season. Still, Tuesday offers up a fantastic hoops matchup between two of the nation’s premier programs.

Bill Self takes his Jayhawks into Gainesville, Florida for a date with a banged up Gators squad. Florida, like Kansas, boasts one of the toughest home courts in all of America, and this place should be raucous tonight.

Kansas is coming off a loss at Colorado and already has two on the season. Their upcoming stretch includes games with New Mexico, Georgetown, San Diego State and Oklahoma following this outing. To say that this is a critical stretch for Self’s troops heading into conference play would be an understatement.

Having to play in Colorado will help prep Kansas for this one, but the two opponents are obviously different. Florida boasts a suffocating defense that has proven capable of limiting virtually any opponent, including Wisconsin and UConn in road bouts that saw the home teams score no more than 65 points.

But Kansas’ offense is more interior based as they prefer to pound the ball in down low. Patric Young and Will Yeguete are the only true interior defenders on Florida’s roster with any legitimate size, however. That could become an issue for the Gators here.

To make matters worse, Scottie Wilbekin is out indefinitely after having suffered an apparent ankle injury in the UConn game last week. Not only does Wilbekin’s absence create a weakness in terms of depth at the point guard position, but Wilbekin had also taken on more of a scoring mentality with freshman guard Kasey Hill out of the lineup.

The Gators still have a plethora of wing bodies who could come up huge in this game. Casey Prather, Dorian Finney-Smith and Michael Frazier are all longer and experienced guard/wing bodies who should play an important role in neutralizing Kansas’ other primary weapons: Wayne Selden and Andrew Wiggins.

Florida is one of the rare venues (like allen Fieldhouse) that commands a bit extra in regard to a point spread. I had this number at Florida -2 considering the depth limitations and the possibility that they could get hammered down low in a game like this.

Tight games do, however, favor the team with the better ball handlers (as evidenced by Shabazz Napier’s performance last week following Wilbekin’s injury). While Kansas has some really talented guards, they are going through a bit of a transitionary period at the point guard spot.

On Saturday at the Buffaloes, they opted to start freshman Frank Mason over Naadir Tharpe. Both guards played a lot down the stretch with Tharpe still registering 28 minutes during the game.

Mason is a really talented player with good potential as a program body for years to come (think Aaron Miles). But you get the sense that with all the changes and new faces on this roster, there is a long way to go before they come together in total.

This will be another dogfight and I look for another close outing. Vegas’ 2.5 spread is quite justified here and I really can;t back either side given the issues in play. Still, these are two really good teams that are just going through some minor struggles to start their year. I look for both to be major factors come March.