PK85: Florida vs West Virginia (Sunday, 8:30 pm ET)

Florida vs. West Virginia

* When: Sunday, 8:30 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Chiles Center, Portland, Ore.
* Records: Florida (4-2); West Virginia (5-1)
* TV: ESPNU (Doug Sherman, Cory Alexander and Brooke Weisbrod)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Sean Kelley and Lee Humphrey)

Projected Starters

The Chiles Center (capacity 4,852) is home to the University of Portland Pilots.

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
CJ Felder	F	6-7 / 240	Senior	3.7 pts / 4.7 reb
Colin Castleton	F	6-11 / 231	R-Senior	20.7 pts / 8.5 reb / 3.3 blx
Will Richard	G	6-5 / 206	Sophomore	14.5 pts / 5.0 reb
Trey Bonham	G	6-0 / 170	Junior	9.3 pts / 3.0 reb
Kyle Lofton	G	6-3 / 188	Graduate	8.3 pts / 4.0 reb / 4.2 ast

West Virginia	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tre Mitchell	F	6-9 / 225	Senior	11.8 pts / 4.2 reb
Jimmy Bell Jr.	F	6-10 / 285	Senior	4.0 pts / 5.2 reb
Emmitt Matthews Jr.	G	6-7 / 210	R-Senior	9.7 pts / 2.8 reb
Erik Stevenson	G	6-4 / 205	R-Senior	14.0 pts / 1.7 reb
Kedrian Johnson	G	6-3 / 185	R-Senior	8.0 pts / 1.8 reb / 3.2 ast

The Breakdown

Florida's **Colin Castleton** (12) and West Virginia's **Emmitt Matthews Jr.** figure to meet at the rim a couple more times Sunday night like they did about 22 months ago in Morgantown, WVa.

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and West Virginia will square off in the third and final game for both teams in the Phil Knight Legacy side of the "PK85." The game, in essence, will be third- or fourth-place bragging rights after both were beaten in their opening-round games Thursday and dropped into the consolation bracket. UF was defeated by Xavier 90-83 and bounced back Friday with an 81-68 win over Oregon State, while WVU was beaten 80-68 by No. 24 Purdue and followed that by whipping Portland State 89-71. ... The game will represent a Quadrant-1 opportunity for both teams, with each currently 0-1 in Q-1 chances. ... The Gators lead the all-time series 7-3, including victories in four straight meetings, dating to 2003. The last three wins came under Coach Mike White, with two of them coming in SEC/Big Challenge events, the most recent being Florida's 85-80 win over 11th-ranked West Virginia at Morgantown, WVa., on Jan. 30, 2021. In that one, UF forward Colin Castleton scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half, made all nine of his free throws, grabbed seven rebounds and blocked five shots. Junior guard Noah Locke dropped in a season-high 19 points, making three of four 3-pointers after the break, and junior point guard Tyree Appleby had 12 points and seven assists. UF used a big second half of 55-percent shooting to offset a monster first half from Mountaineers big man Derek Culver, all 6-10 and 255 pounds of him, who big-bodied his way to a career-high 28 points and 12 rebounds, but was held to just seven after halftime. The game featured 14 ties and 13 lead changes before an old-time 3-point play by Castleton with just over three minutes left gave UF the lead for good. ... Florida is 26-19 all-time against teams currently in the Big 12 Conference (with a dates against Oklahoma and Kansas State coming up over the next two months). ... UF coach Todd Golden has never coached against a Big 12 opponent.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	West Virginia
80.5	Scoring	80.2
.463	Field-goal percentage	.506
.362	3-point percentage	.353
70.7	Scoring defense	63.3
.433	Field-goal percentage defense	.395
.365	3-point percentage defense	.325
42nd	KenPom.com overall ranking	36th
38th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	47th
57th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	43rd
41st	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	146th
61st	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	73rd
229th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	119th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They have two wins over high-major opponents, but neither the road victory at Florida State nor Friday's victory against Oregon State pack any NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) punch that all teams need to build resumes for postseason consideration. That's why this would be a significant "get" for the Gators,

especially after their poor defensive performance in the opening-round PK85 loss to a very good Xavier team. ... Forward Colin Castleton arrived here as the nation's No. 3 scoring leader at 25.3 points per game, but has been held to 23 points in the two tournament games. UF's standout big, though, has shown up on the glass and with blocked shots. ... The Florida star of this tournament has been guard Trey Bonham, the Virginia Military Institute transfer who got his first UF start against the Musketeers and in the two games averaged 21.0 points, hitting 16 of his 31 field-goal attempts (51.6 percent), made five of 13 shots from the arc, along with 3.0 rebounds 2.5 assists and turned the ball over just once. ... Guard Will Richard's steady, high-efficient play traveled to Portland. The Belmont transfer is the only UF player besides Castleton to reach double-figure scoring in all six games this season. Richard is shooting 58 percent from the floor, 50 percent from the arc (12 of 24) and is still perfect from the free-throw line (17 of 17). ... Point guard Kyle Lofton, who is now sharing ball-handling duties with Bonham while also sharing the floor at the same time, had a season-high five turnovers against Oregon State, which was one more than he had in the team's first five games. His ratio, though, is still a solid 25 assists to just nine turnovers. ... Freshman guard Riley Kugel arrived here with just 11 points over the first four games, but scored 12 against Xavier and found double-figures again with 10 against OSU. Yes, Kugel had a couple pivotal easy misses in the first tournament game, but he's settling into a nice, comfortable kind of groove, with nine makes in his last 19 field-goal tries. ... Forwards CJ Felder and Alex Fudge (6.5 ppg, 3.2 rpg) continue to take turns at the "4" spot, where they've combined to average 10.1 points and 7.8 rebounds while going 11-for-11 from the free-throw line. ... Backup center Jason Jitoboh went 3-for-3 from the floorin 12 minutes against OSU. ... Guard Kowacie Reeves (7.2 ppg, 2.2 rpg), who started the first four games of the season before being replaced by Bonham, did not play in the second half at Florida State or the first-round loss here to Xavier, but got eight minutes of reserve action and scored two points. ... Fifth-year guard Myreon Jones (2.2 ppg, 2.0 rpg) hit his first 3-pointer of the season against the Beavers.

The Mountaineers

Coach Bob Huggins is the second-winningest active coach in college basketball (behind Syracuse's Jim Boeheim), with a career record of 920-399 in stops at Division II Walsh, Akron, Cincinnati, Kansas State and his alma mater of West Virginia, where he's gone 331-189 over 16 seasons, with 10 trips to the NCAA Tournament, including a run to

the 2010 Final Four. ... His teams have always been known for their physicality and ability to defend, but this WVU team (as well as some recent ones) is very efficient on the offensive end, thanks to 58.7 percent on 2-pointers, which rates 20th nationally. ... The Mountaineers, who went 16-17 last season and did not make the postseason, rebuilt the roster through the transfer portal, with their most interesting acquisition being forward Emmitt Matthews Jr. He played at WVU from 2018-21, then transferred to Washington, where he started all 31 games and averaged 11.7 points and 4.7 rebounds during '21-22. After the season, he transferred back to West Virginia and is currently fourth on the team in scoring on 50-percent shooting from the floor and 37.5 from deep. ... Another interesting transfer story is that of guard and leading scorer Erik Stevenson, who averaged 11.6 points and 4.7 rebounds at South Carolina last year after transferring from Washington after transferring from Wichita State. Confused? Yeah, that's right. This is Stevenson's fourth school in five seasons. ... Forward Tre Mitchell, the transfer from Texas, is at 63.4 percent from the floor this season. He was six of seven and made all four free throws in the Portland win. ... Point guard Kedrian Johnson, a junior-college product in his third WVU season, is second on the team with 19 assists to just eight turnovers and leads the team with 13 steals. ... Backup guard Joe Toussaint (11.5 ppg, 3.2 rpg) transferred from Iowa and is the Mountaineers' No. 3 scorer, assist leader with 20 and top player off the bench. The next-best reserve is 6-10, 225-pound forward Mohamed Wague (7.0 ppg, 3.2 rpg), who is a staggering 18-for-22 from the floor. That's 81.8 percent. ... Stocky backup sophomore guard Seth Wilson (5.0 ppg) has made six of 10 from 3 in this tournament.

Numbers of Note

* .856 — Jitoboh's field-goal percentage this season, based on his 6-for-7 shooting through the six games.

* .984 — Stevenson's free-throw percentage during his lone season with the Gamecocks, based on 61-for-62 from the line. If it's close late, don't foul him.

* 7 — Coaches in college basketball history with more career Division I wins than Huggins' 849. They are Mike Krzyzewski, Boeheim, Roy Williams, Bob Knight, Dean Smith, Jim Calhoun and Adolph Rupp.

* 11 — Consecutive double-figure scoring games for Richard, including his last five at Belmont, where he was a named to the 2022 Ohio Valley Conference All-Newcomer Team as a freshman last season. Richard has averaged 14.6 points per game over those 11 games (and two schools), which is just 0.1 off his current UF average of 14.5 points. Consistency.

* 23.0 — Average margin of victory in WVU's five wins over Mount St. Mary's (plus-18), Pittsburgh (25), Morehead State (20), Penn (34) and Portland (18). They got beat up on pretty good by an excellent Purdue squad, though, which three nights ago got 24 points and 12 rebounds from 7-4, 290-pound center Zach Edey. The Boilermakers shot 56 percent for the game, while holding the Mountaineers to 41.3 percent and just 5-for-22 from the 3-point line (22.7 percent).

* 2002 — The last year West Virginia beat Florida. The Gators were ranked eighth when they faced the unranked Mountaineers at Charleston, W.Va.. Guard Joe Herber hit an 18-foot jumper with 50 seconds left to give WVU the lead for good in a game it trailed by nine in the second half and eventually won 68-66. Since then, UF defeated WVU four straight at four different venues: '03 (at Miami), '16 (Gainesville), '18 (New York) and '21 (Morgantown).

Bottom Line

Xavier was a really, really good team ... but West Virginia might be the best team the Gators face in this tournament (and a great barometer for some more very difficult games on the near horizon).

Gators Calendar

PK85: Florida vs West Virginia (Sunday, 8:30 pm ET)