Florida at No. 20 Auburn (Wednesday, 7 pm)

Florida at No. 20 Auburn

* When: Wednesday, 7 p.m.
* Where: Neville Arena / Auburn, Ala.
* Records: Florida (7-5, 0-0) / Auburn (10-2, 0-0)
* TV: ESPN (Kevin Fitzgerald and Jimmy Dykes)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Sean Kelley and Lee Humphrey)

Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Alex Fudge	F	6-7 / 240	Senior	8.2 pts / 5.4 reb
Colin Castleton	F	6-11 / 231	R-Senior	15.8 pts / 7.8 reb / 2.5 blk
Will Richard	G	6-5 / 206	Sophomore	10.7 pts / 4.1 reb
Trey Bonham	G	6-0 / 170	Junior	10.2 pts / 2.8 reb
Kyle Lofton	G	6-3 / 188	Graduate	8.4 pts / 2.9 reb / 3.9 ast

Auburn	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Jaylin Williams	F	6-8 / 230	Senior	10.0 pts / 5.6 reb
Johni Broome	F	6-10 / 235	Sophomore	12.2 pts / 8.2 reb / 2.8 blk
Chris Moore	F	6-6 / 230	Junior	6.6 pts / 2.6 reb
Zep Jasper	G	6-1 / 190	Senior	3.5 pts / 0.9 reb
Wendell Green Jr.	G	5-11 / 175	Junior	12.6 pts / 3.7 reb / 3.7 ast

The Breakdown

Neville Arena (capacity 9,121) at Auburn University

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and 20th-ranked Auburn return from holiday break to open their Southeastern Conference slates, one of five league games that will tip off the season Wednesday night. The Gators will be eight days removed from their last outing, a 62-53 loss to Oklahoma in the inaugural Jumpman Invitational at Charlotte, N.C. The Tigers, the defending conference regular-season champion, traveled west, all the way to Seattle, and easily defeated Washington, 84-61, a week ago. ... The game will pit first-year UF coach Todd Golden against Auburn's Bruce Pearl, who hired Golden to his first Tigers staff as director of basketball operations in 2014. The next season, Golden was promoted to full-time assistant coach and in 2016 left to become associate head coach at San Francisco. ... Auburn leads the all-time series 90-82, though Florida has won three of the previous four, including a 63-62 victory on Feb. 19, 2022, when the Tigers came to Exactech Arena/O'Connell as the nation's No. 2 team. The Gators won behind 26 points from point guard Tyree Appleby, including four second-half 3-pointers, to go with 19 points and eight rebounds from forward Colin Castleton. UF led by eight with just over two minutes remaining, but had to withstand some late-game gaffes (turnovers, fouling a 3-point shooter, missed free throws) before escaping with the first home victory in program history over an opponent ranked as high as No. 2. The Tigers, who lost just three SEC games in their championship season, were led by freshman forward Jabari Smith, the eventual No. 3 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, who poured in a game-high 28 points, went four of five from deep, 10 of 11 from the free-throw line and also grabbed seven boards.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Auburn
76.5	Scoring	73.7
.454	Field-goal percentage	.447
.356	3-point percentage	.302
67.2	Scoring defense	62.1
.414	Field-goal percentage defense	.388
.358	3-point percentage defense	.271
49th	KenPom.com overall ranking	16th
74th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	44th
38th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	12th
26th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	11th
64th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	29th
61st	Overall strength of schedule ranking	24th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

The game represent another "Quadrant 1" opportunity for Florida, as far as the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET), the metric that ultimately will seed the NCAA Tournament, is concerned. The Gators have played five such games so far, which is the most in the SEC. They've also lost all five (Florida Atlantic, Xavier, West Virginia, Connecticut and Oklahoma). Playing a loaded

schedule is always a good thing, but means nothing without any victories. Here's another chance at a big one. ... The Gators' performance on the offensive end in the Jumpman game against the Sooners was a disaster. UF shot just 32.8 percent for the game and a stupefying 2-for-22 from the 3-point line (9.1 percent), including 0-for-9 after halftime, as OU took over the game, in good part due to transition opportunities following Florida empty possessions. ... The Gators got a solid showing from forward Colin Castleton (22 points, 8 rebounds) and 14 points from guard Trey Bonham, but not much else. Florida's three other starters — forward Alex Fudge, plus guards Will Richard and Kyle Lofton — combined to hit only four of 23 shots and miss all nine of their 3s. Minus Castleton and Bonham, the eight other Gators who checked in totaled 17 points. Obviously, those are unsustainable numbers that need to change, but doing so against a defensive-mind group like the Tigers will be difficult, especially on the road. ... Fudge, at the power forward spot, had posted a pair of double-doubles in his four games since replacing CJ Felder in the starting lineup, but went scoreless against the Sooners after getting in early foul trouble. ... Richard was averaging 13.6 points and shooting better than 55 percent from the floor and the arc, as well as 86 from the free-throw line, going into the UConn game three weeks ago. He's totaled nine points in the three games since on 4-for-17 overall shooting, 0-for-8 from deep and been to the free-throw line just twice. ... Heading into the OU game, Lofton was coming off a 15-point, 7-assist outing against Ohio, but went 1-for-8 from the floor with just two assists against the Sooners. ... Backup guard Kowacie Reeves hit one of the Gators' two 3-pointers against OU. It was banked in from the top of the key. He finished with five points and six rebounds in 19 minutes. ... The Gators are one of the best teams in the country at taking care of the basketball (just 16 percent of their possessions end in turnovers, which ranks 27th nationally), but less than half of their baskets (45.6 percent) come off assists, which ranks 305th nationally. It's hard to get assists (impossible, actually) when shots don't go in.

The Tigers

It's Pearl's ninth season and he has another outstanding team; maybe not as good as last year's championship squad (nor the Final Four bunch of 2019), but the guy is a terrific coach who has a proven program blueprint. Pearl's career record (at Division II Southern Indiana, followed by Wisconsin-Green Bay, his NCAA-fraught stint at Tennessee and now Auburn) shows a record of 638-245 (.723), including 176-100 at Auburn. Over the last six seasons, that Auburn mark is 132-46 (.742), with four seasons of at least 25 wins. ... Pearl's hallmarks over the years have been

fast, athletic teams that excel in transition. The '22-23 Tigers look the part, but their strength is defense. Auburn ranks 12th in the country in defensive efficiency, 14th in effective defensive field-goal efficiency, 30th in 2-point percentage allowed (.439) and 13th in 3-point percentage allowed (.271). Those are tough numbers for the Gators, given their offensive struggles against high-major programs to date. ... Last season, the Tigers, despite two of the best front-court players in the country (Smith and fellow first-round pick and 7-footer Walker Kessler), were mad bombers, with the backcourt duo of Wendell Green Jr. and KD Johnson jacking a combined 341 shots from the 3-point line at just 30.4 percent between the two. While both Green and Johnson (transfers from Eastern Kentucky and Georgia, respectively) have so-called "logo range," Pearl has switched their green lights to yellow. In fact, Johnson is now coming off the bench (he has not started a game this season), as the Tigers want to play through the low post and Johni Broome, the transfer from Morehead State and Plant City, Fla., product who was aggressively pursued in the portal by the Gators last offseason. Broome is shooting better than 50 percent from the floor and has been a force on the glass, with nearly a third of his rebounds on the offensive end. Green leads the team in scoring and has just one less field-goal attempt than Broome, but he remains a boom-or-bust guy from the arc at just 27.7 percent on a team-high 47 attempts. The mercurial Johnson is the team's fourth-leading scorer, but sits at 29.5 from deep, but like Green he will be on the attack from all three levels. The two rank 1-2 in free-throw attempts (Green with 62, Johnson with 39) and both hit at over 80 percent. ... Forward Jaylin Williams has been a four-year soldier for the program and has started every game this season after starting none in '21-22. Williams is at nearly 49 percent from the floor on the season and 41 from 3, but is considered an exceptional defender in the front court along the lines of guard Zep Jasper, who has started all 44 games of his career despite averaging just 4.6 points per game. He'll play about half the game (18.6 minutes) on one of the opponent's best scorers. ... Allen Flanigan, the son of former Auburn standout and four-year starting point guard Wes Flanigan (1993-97), is putting together another excellent off-the-bench season (7.7 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 23.1 minutes pg). ... Backup center Dylan Cardwell (5.2 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 2.3 bpg) is shooting 82.6 percent from the floor (28-for-32 from the floor), mostly dunks, of course, and is considered an NBA prospect for his ability to defend and do the down-low dirty work.

Numbers of Note

**Bruce Pearl** guided Auburn to two of the program's five all-time SEC regular-season championships (2018 and '22), one of the two conference tournament titles ('19) and the only Final Four in school history (2019).

* .210 — Florida's combined percentage from the 3-point line in its four games (all losses) against high-major opponents, based on the 17-for-81 shooting against Xavier, WVU, UConn and OU.

* .367 — Pearl's winning percentage against the Gators as Auburn's coach (2014-present), based on UF's 7-4 record (six of those wins coming under former coach Mike White).

* .600 — Pearl's winning percentage against the Gators as Tennessee's coach (2005-11), based on UT's 9-6 record (all games against former coach Billy Donovan).

* 22 — Victories for UF over 23 games of the series from 2001-18, the most dominant run by the Gators over any of its conference foes in program history. The lone blip along the way was a 61-58 loss in quarterfinal play of the 2009 SEC Tournament at Tampa.

* 1927 — The first year the Gators and Tigers played in men's basketball. The date was Jan. 15. The place was Auburn. The Tigers won 51-34

Bottom Line

Will this new start be any different from the last new start? Needs to be.

Gators Calendar

Florida at No. 20 Auburn (Wednesday, 7 pm)