Florida Gators

NCAA TOURNAMENT WEST REGION
FLORIDA vs No. 14 NEVADA

When: Monday, 6:50 p.m. (EST)
Where: Wells Fargo Arena, Des Moines, Iowa.   
Records: Florida (19-15); Nevada (29-4)  
TV: TNT (Kevin Harlan, Reggie Miller, Dan Bonner and Dana Jacobson) 
Radio: Gator IMG Sports Network (Mick Hubert and Mark Wise) 



STAKES (The Setup)  Florida is back in the NCAA Tournament for a third straight year and the 20th time in program history. The Gators are 43-17 all-time in the tournament, with 11 trips to the Sweet 16, another 10 Elite Eights, five Final Fours and two national championships. Nevada, ranked 14th in the Associated Press poll, is making its third straight appearance in the "Big Dance," and ninth appearance overall, with a 6-8 all-time mark and two trips to the Sweet 16, one coming last year. … UF is the region's No. 10 seed and Nevada is the No. 7. ... The Gators are here because of their three-game run in the Southeastern Conference Tournament last week, when they smashed Arkansas by 16, defeated ninth-ranked, top-seeded and regular-season champion LSU on a 3-point shot with one second left, then lost to eventual tournament winner Auburn by three in the semifinals. The defeat of LSU gave UF two wins over the conference champs and coupled with an ambitious overall schedule one of the last at-large bids into the field of 68. The Wolf Pack's place in the tournament was never in doubt, even after being ousted by San Diego State in the second round of the Mountain West Conference Tournament. Nevada started the season with 14 straight wins and dominated its league on the way to a third straight conference crown and school-record 29 victories. … This will be the first meeting between the two teams, both of which have been around more than a hundred years. … The Gators' last NCAA trip was in 2018 to Dallas, where as a No. 6 seed they beat 11th-seeded St. Bonaventure, 77-62, then lost to No. 3-seed Texas Tech, 69-66, on a game that went down to the final possession. The Wolfpack, which played as a 7-seed in 2018 as well, defeated 10th-seeded Texas in overtime, 87-83, then upset No. 2-seed Cincinnati, 75-73, but lost a 69-68 heartbreaker in a battle of Cinderellas to No. 11-seed Loyola Chicago, which eventually reached the Final Four.

STARTERS (Probable Lineups)

Florida	Pos.	Ht.	Wt.	Class	Per Game
Keyontae Johnson	F	6-5	225	Freshman	8.1 pts / 6.2 reb
Kevarrius Hayes	F	6-9	227	Senior	8.1 pts / 6.3 reb / 1.9 blk
Jalen Hudson	G	6-6	195	R-Senior	9.0 pts / 2.9 reb
KeVaughn Allen	G	6-2	193	Senior	12.0 pts / 2.8 reb
Andrew Nembhard	PG	6-5	191	Freshman	8.1 pts / 2.8 reb / 5.3 ast

Nevada	Pos.	Ht.	Wt.	Class	Per Game
Tre'Shawn Thurman	F	6-8	225	R-Senior	8.3 pts / 5.7 reb
Trey Porter	F	6-11	230	R-Senior	7.4 pts / 4.8 reb
Jordan Caroline	F	6-7	230	R-Senior	17.3 pts / 9.6 reb
Caleb Martin	G	6-7	200	R-Senior	19.2 pts / 5.1 reb
Cody Martin	G	6-7	200	R-Senior	11.7 pts / 4.5 reb / 5.1 ast

STANDING OUT (One to Watch) 
STUFF (Need-to-Know Info)  ABOUT THE GATORS: They enter the tournament having led the SEC in scoring defense (63.6 ppg), finishing second in 3-point percentage defense (.320) and third in turnover margin (plus-3.0). Some of their key offensive numbers — 68.3 ppg, field-goal percentage (.427), 3-point field-goal percentage (33.5) — as well as rebounding digits (33.5 pg and minus-0.6 margin) were middle-of-the-pack or worse. … UF is 4-2 in two trips to the NCAA Tournament under Coach Mike White. … Center Kevarrius Hayes was sensational in the SEC Tournament and is playing the best basketball of his four seasons, having averaged 12.0 points on nearly 74-percent shooting and 9.0 rebounds over the three games, and even taking his elite defense (and communication skills) to another level. … Speaking of next level, what about

forward Keyontae Johnson? All he did in the tournament was lead UF in scoring (13.7 ppg) and rebounding (10.0) and also tallied a team-best four steals. Johnson, who twice posted double-doubles in Nashville, also shot 56.7 percent from the floor and hit six of 13 shots from the 3-point line (.462), but was a confounding 1-for-10 from the free-throw line after going into the event at 71.4 percent on the season. … Point guard Andrew Nembhard had a pretty good SEC tourney debut as well, and not just because of his last-second, 3-ball heroics against LSU. He finished with 19 assists and just five turnovers, though he did have his struggles with Auburn's aggressive, overplaying defense in the title game. Nevada likes to play fast, as well, but is not as reliant on steals and transition as the Tigers. … KeVaughn Allen entered the tournament on a wicked-cold streak (just 3-for-22 from the floor and 2-for-13 from deep during a regular-season ending three-game losing skid), but snapped out of it, somewhat, in scoring 12.7 points per game and had a different vibe about him. … Jalen Hudson was scoring just 6.8 points per through 21 games, but over the last 12 is at 14.0 points, which looks an awful lot like the 15.5 he averaged as the team's leading scorer as a fourth-year junior in 2017-18. Over that stretch, Hudson is shooting 42 percent overall and just 32.2 from 3. Not great, but far better than when he was struggling so to find the basket nearly two-thirds of the way through the year. … Backup guard Noah Locke, fighting through the soreness of a nagging groin injury for nearly two months, hit three of four shots against Auburn and along with third-year sophomore forward Dontay Bassett and, to a lesser extent, sophomore guard Mike Okauru, comprised the UF bench in the tournament. Redshirt freshman forward Isaiah Stokes played just four minutes over two games in Nashville and may be in for more of the same against a team that really likes to play uptempo. In a game against a team that scores a lot of points, he get called on for special circumstances. ... ABOUT THE WOLF PACK: They're 110-33 in four seasons under Coach Eric Musselman, whose previous head coaching stops were both in the NBA: two seasons with the Golden State Warriors (2002-04) and one with the Sacramento Kings (2006-07). Other than that, Musselman's resume is as an assistant, including one season as associate head coach at LSU. ... Two of the Pack's four defeats have come over the last five games. Besides the setback in the Mountain West 

tournament loss to SDSU, there was an 81-76 loss at Utah State that snapped a 10-game winning streak. ... Nevada is 52-17 in MWC play under Musselman. ... The roster (and certainly the starting lineup) is among the oldest in all of college basketball. The Pack starts five fifth-year seniors, all of whom transferred from other schools (in one case, transferred from two other schools) and has eight transfers on their active roster, plus another two sitting on this season. ... Nevada, with an adjusted offensive efficiency that ranks 26th nationally, wants to play fast, which means this game will be a stare-down contest of which team can control tempo. ... Most prominent in the Nevada relocated players are twin brothers Caleb and Cody Martin, by way of North Carolina State. Caleb is the team's leading scorer while Cody runs the team and is the engine that keeps the Pack playing at its furious pace. Caleb is shooting 41.7 percent from the floor and 34.3 percent. He's reached 20 points in nine of his last 13 games, including 30 in a win over Boise State. His 306 attempts from distance are 102 more than any UF player has attempted. Cody, the playmaker, is a box-score stuferf with 167 assists and jus 62 turnovers. ... Forward Tre'Shawn Thurman is a grad-transfer from Nebraska-Omaha, where he averaged 13.8 points and 7.8 rebounds in the Summit League. He's at 50-percent overall for the season and nearly 80 percent from the free-throw line. ... Big man Trey Porter is on his third school in five years, having started at George Mason, transferred to Old Dominion, then grad-transferred to Nevada. Porter is hitting 60.7 percent of his shot on the season, but is not going to take his man outside (just 1-for-7 from deep). ... Backup 5-10 guard Jazz Johnson is the top reserve and the lone player off the bench averaging in double figures (11.2 ppg). His 70 makes from the 3-point line (at 45.2 percent) rates second on the team. 


STATS (Some Numbers of Note)   * .000 — Florida's record as a 10-seed in the tournament, based on a 64-61 loss to Iowa State at Tallahassee, Fla., in 1995, then a 99-92 double-overtime defeat against Brigham Young at Oklahoma City in 2010. 

* 2 — "Quadrant 1" games played by Nevada during the season, which is 14 fewer than Florida played. The Wolf Pack went 1-1 in their Q1s, while the Gators went 4-12. Nevada played just two teams that reached the NCAA Tournament, going 2-1 against Utah State and Arizona State. Florida played 14 games against nine NCAA teams and went 3-11. 

* 7 — Teams that have combined to win at least four games over the previous two NCAA tournaments, which includes Florida. The teams in the 2019 field to win more than UF's four are Kentucky with five, along with Gonzaga, Kansas, Michigan, North Carolina, Villanova, all with seven each. 

* 21 — Teams in the NCAA field that have reached the tournament each of the last three seasons, including both the Gators and Wolf Pack. UF is one of just two SEC programs, along with Kentucky, that has done so. 

* 1,705 — Career points for Allen, who against Auburn became the sixth player in school history to pass the 1,700-point milestone. Barring a blistering and productive run through the tournament, Allen will finish his UF career as the school's No. 6 all-time scoring, as he trails Erving Walker (1,777 points from 2008-12) by 72. 

* 1987 — The first year Florida played in an NCAA Tournament. The Gators, seeded sixth in the East Region at Syracuse, N.Y., made a surprising run to the Sweet 16, defeating 11-seed North Carolina State, 82-70, then No. 3-seed Purdue, before losing to No. 2-seed Syracuse at the Meadowlands, 87-81. Three years later, those victories were vacated as part of the findings of a NCAA investigation into rules violations under former Coach Norm Sloan.  


STATEMENT (Random thought) 

Tough draw for the Gators, relative to size, athleticism and experience. Then again, when you're playing for the 10 spot, they're all going to be tough draws.