PK85: Florida vs Xavier (Thursday, 5:30 pm ET)

Phil Knight Legacy ("PK85")

Florida vs. Xavier

* When: Thursday, 5:30 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Veterans Memorial Coliseum (Portland, Ore.)
* Records: Florida (3-1); Xavier (3-1)
* TV: ESPN2 (Doug Sherman, Cory Alexander and Brooke Weisbrod)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Kyle Crooks and Lee Humphrey)

Projected Starters

Veterans Memorial Coliseum (capacity 12,888) was the original home of the Portland Trailblazers.

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
CJ Felder	F	6-7 / 240	Senior	3.3 pts / 5.3 reb
Colin Castleton	F	6-11 / 231	R-Senior	25.3 pts / 8.8 reb / 3.2 blk
Kowacie Reeves	G	6-6 / 192	Sophomore	8.5 pts / 2.3 reb
Will Richard	G	6-5 / 206	Sophomore	14.0 pts / 4.5 reb
Kyle Lofton	G	6-3 / 188	Graduate	9.8 pts / 3.8 reb / 3.8 ast

Xavier	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Zach Freemantle	F	6-9 / 225	Senior	16.5 pts / 7.3 reb / 4.0 ast
Jack Nunge	C	7-0 / 245	Senior	17.0 pts / 6.8 reb
Colby Jones	G	6-6 / 205	Junior	13.3 pts / 5.0 reb / 4.0 ast
Souley Baum	G	6-3 / 205	Junior	14.0 pts / 3.8 reb / 5.0 ast
KyKy Tandy	G	6-2 / 190	Senior	6.3 pts / 2.0 reb

The Breakdown

UF walk-on **Jack May** (right) consoles teammate **Phlandrous Fleming Jr.** as the final moments of Fleming's college career and Florida's 2021-22 season tick down during the Gators NIT loss at Xavier seven months ago.

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida is back in Portland for the second staging of the Phil Knight Legacy tournament (or "PK85") five years after a sensational performance in the "PK80," which was hatched in 2017 to commemorate the 80th birthday of the Nike founder. Knight is still around, so they're running it back, with an equally impressive field as the last time. UF, which is coming off Friday's furious second-half rally and 76-67 win at Florida State, gets Big East Conference member Xavier in first-round play. The Musketeers, like the Gators, started the season with a trio of mid-major games; unlike the Gators, the Musketeers won all three of theirs, then were beaten 81-79 at home Friday night by Indiana. ... The Florida-Xavier survivor will face either No. 8 Duke or Oregon State in a winner's bracket matchup Friday afternoon, as opposed to a loser's bracket game for the other two. All teams have Saturday off, with UF's potential Sunday opponent coming from the quartet of No. 6 Gonzaga, No. 24 Purdue, West Virginia or Portland State. ... A second eight-team event, called the PKI, will be staged at the three venues and is equally stocked: No. 1 North Carolina, No. 12 Michigan State, No. 18 Alabama, No. 20 Connecticut, along with Iowa State, Oregon, Portland and Villanova. High-level hoops in this town this week. ... Xavier and Florida will play for the sixth time, with the Musketeers leading the all-time series 3-2. XU ended UF's 2021-22 season last March 20 in the second round of the NIT at Cintas Center in Cincinnati, as the Musketeers pounded the Gators and interim Coach Al Pinkins 72-56 six days after Coach Mike White shocked his players with the news he was leaving for the vacant job at Georgia. In that one, five different Xavier players scored in double figures, led by 16 points from forward Nate Johnson, plus 12 points and eight rebounds from center Jack Nunge. The game was tied at 33 at halftime, but the Musketeers shot 52 percent after the break versus 22.2 for the Gators, who were just one of 19 from the 3-point line for the game. Xavier went on to win the NIT title. ... Florida is 22-21 against current members of the Big East. ... UF coach Todd Golden has never faced a Big East team.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Xavier
79.8	Scoring	84.8
.447	Field-goal percentage	.524
.357	3-point percentage	.443
66.5	Scoring defense	70.8
.397	Field-goal percentage defense	.419
.329	3-point percentage defense	.347
36th	KenPom.com overall ranking	34th
45th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	22nd
39th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	71st
52nd	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	76th
61st	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	37th
278th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	238th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They did the tale-of-two-halves thing in the comeback win at Tallahassee and stole one on the road, thanks to 52-percent shooting after halftime and 16-for-21 performance at the free-throw line, while holding FSU to 33 percent overall and 0-for-10 from the 3-point line, plus forcing 11 turnovers in the second half.If the Gators trot out anything remotely similar against the Musketeers, who do not have the depth issues of the Seminoles, they will lose. ... Florida went to

Florida State shooting 41.5 percent from the 3-point line, but clanged 3-for-17 (just 17.6 percent) and still won. The Gators turned 16 turnovers into 23 points and also beat the Noles on the glass 42-32, with 14 offensive caroms that led to 11 second-chance points. ... Forward Colin Castleton made nine of his 14 shots and seven of 10 free throws on the way to 25 points, nine boards and one block over 32 minutes. He's hit at least 25 points in each of the last three games. ... Guard Will Richard played 36 minutes, scored 13 points, grabbed six rebounds and made all four of his free throws to stay perfect from the line this season on 14 attempts. Richard is shooting 54.5 from the floor and 46.5 from deep. ... Point guard Kyle Lofton logged a season-high 36.5 minutes on the season, which was more along the lines of the 38.1 he averaged over four years at St. Bonaventure, where last season he tallied 15 points and 11 assists in 40 minutes of the NIT semifinal against Xavier. Lofton had nine points, three assists and two rebounds, but shared ball-handling duties after halftime with junior backup guard Trey Bonham. The Virginia Military Institute transfer started the second half and proved a difference-maker by pressuring the Seminoles ball-handlers while giving the Gators two point guards on offense. Bonham hit a 3 to start the second half (his only field goal of the game on five attempts), but grabbed seven rebounds and had three assists and went 6-for-7 from the free-throw line for 11 points. ... CJ Felder and backup "4" Alex Fudge combined for six points, 10 rebounds, two blocks and one nasty dunk. ... Fifth-year senior forward Myreon Jones is still looking for his first field goal (0 of 8, all but one of them 3s), but Golden has confidence in Jones as a ball-handler. He had two assists in 12 minutes vs. FSU. His game is coming. ... Neither starting wing Kowacie Reeves (9:29 minutes first half) nor backup freshman guard Riley Kugel (5:32) played in the second half against the Seminoles. Don't be surprised if one of them (or perhaps Jones) has a break-out game in Portland.

The Musketeers

It's the first season of the second go-around around under Coach Sean Miller, who was jettisoned in disgrace at Arizona last year after 12 seasons, five Pac-12 championships and seven NCAA appearances for his part in the infamous pay-for-play FBI scandal. Miller got to Tucson because of what he did in Cincinnati. As coach at

Xavier from 2004-09, Miller's teams went 120-47, won four Atlantic 10 titles and went four NCAA tournaments. His career winning percentage is a robust .730. Miller took over for Travis Steele, who was fired after last season's 19-13 record and NIT season. Steele went 124-71 over four seasons at XU without an appearance in the NCAA. ... In their last outing, the Musketeers trailed by eight with just over two minutes to go, but rallied on a 9-2 run to close the game to just one and had a shot to win the game, but guard Adam Kunkel's driving layup attempt with four seconds left bounced away and Indiana closed out. ... Xavier is an experienced bunch with five upperclassmen starters. ... The Musketeers don't shoot a bunch of 3s (they rank 350th in percentage of attempts from deep at 26.0 percent), but they work for great shots. Xavier ranks third nationally in field-goal assist percentage at 72.1. Three different XU players have at least 15 assists, compared to just one UF player. Six players in their main eight-man rotation are shooting better than 50 percent or better. ... Seven-footer Jack Nunge will be the next "big" to get a crack at Castleton (and vice versa). It'll be a rematch from their matchup in the NIT, when Nunge had 12 points and eight rebounds to Castleton's 10 and six. Nunge, who transferred from Iowa after the '20-21 season, is at 54.8 percent on ths season and is capable of drawing out his defender (5-9 from the arc). ... Forward Zach Freemantle, alongside Nunge will pose a severe challenge for the UF frontcourt. He's at 60.5-percent shooting (with just one 3-point try) and can facilitate, with a team-high 20 assists. ... UF sees wing Colby Jones as the guy who really makes the Musketeers whole. He is an aggressive driver who has gotten to free-throw line 24 times and also dished 20 assists in just three games. ... Kunkel is shooting nearly 58 percent from the floor and 53 from the 3-point line. ... Guard Souley Boum, also with 20 assists, is an Oakland product and grad transfer from UTEP who Golden is familiar with him. He played at the University of San Francisco as a freshman when Golden was there as an assistant.

Numbers of Note

UF coach **Mike White** hugs **Chris Chiozza** after his senior point guard scored a career-high 26 points, dished 10 assists and grabbed eight rebounds over an exhausting 46 minutes in the Gators' 111-105 overtime defeat of Gonzaga at the 2017 "PK80."

* 4 — Players in the country who have made 100.0 percent of their free throws (like Richard has) but attempted more than Richard's perfect 14 of 14. Villanova forward Brandon Slater leads the nation at 22-for-22.

* 12 — Points needed by Castleton to move into second place on the school's all-time list of players who transferred into the program. Castleton, in his third season after transferring from Michigan, currently sits at 850 points, which is 11 behind Jalen Hudson (2017-19), who scored 861 points over his two season after coming to UF from Virginia Tech.

* 43 — Hours it would take to drive from Gainesville to Portland.

* 101.0 — Points averaged by UF in the PK80 of 2017. The seventh-ranked Gators went to Portland and defeated Stanford 108-87, No. 16 Gonzaga in an epic 111-105 double-overtime thriller, then lost to No. 1 Duke 87-84 in the bracket's title game after blowing leads of 17 points with 10 minutes to go and 10 points with four minutes to go.

* 2,923 — Miles from Exatech Arena to Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Bottom Line

The road trip to FSU was the appetizer to a hearty, five-course meal of a very difficult non-conference stretch. The PK80 is the main course.

Gators Calendar

PK85: Florida vs Xavier (Thursday, 5:30 pm ET)