Florida Gators

Florida vs. South Carolina

 
* When: Wednesday, 7 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (11-8, 4-3) / South Carolina (8-11, 1-5)
* TV: ESPN2 (Kevin Fitzgerald and Pat Bradley)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Sean Kelley and Lee Humphrey)

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Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Colin Castleton	F	6-11 / 231	5th-Senior	14.8 pts / 7.8 reb / 3.1 blk
Will Richard	G	6-5 / 206	Sophomore	10.2 pts / 4.2 reb
Riley Kugel	G	6-5 / 207	Freshman	6.3 pts / 2.2 reb
Myreon Jones	G	6-3 / 177	5th-Senior	4.6 pts / 2.5 reb
Kyle Lofton	G	6-3 / 188	5th-Senior	8.6 pts / 2.8 reb / 3.8 ast

South Carolina	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Hayden Brown	F	6-5 / 225	Grad	11.1 pts / 4.1 reb
Gregory Jackson II	F	6-9 / 210	Freshman	15.1 pts / 6.6 reb
Chico Carter	G	6-3 / 189	Senior	11.1 pts / 2.1 reb
Jacobi Wright	G	6-2 / 180	Sophomore	5.7 pts / 2.3 reb
Meechie Johnson	G	6-2 / 172	Junior	12.5 pts / 4.1 reb / 3.4 as

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and South Carolina meet in a mid-week Southeastern Conference game nearing the mid-point of the league schedule. The Gators have won four of the previous five after defeating Mississippi State 61-59 on the road Saturday night and currently sit in a tie for fifth place, along with Kentucky, in the SEC standings. The Gamecocks have dropped three straight, all at home, the most recent being Saturday's 81-66 loss to 16th-ranked Auburn. ... UF leads the all-time series 47-28, including a 71-63 win at Columbia on Jan. 15, 2022. After the starting the season 0-3 in league play, the Gators got their first league victory by shooting 55 percent (66 in the second half) and dishing 17 assists for the game. Freshman guard Kowacie Reeves, in just his second start, scored a career-best 14 points, as did fifth-year guard Phlandrous Fleming Jr., who hit six of his 10 field-goal attempts. Senior forward Colin Castleton had 10 points, seven rebounds and a career-high eight blocked shots. ... South Carolina has a three-game win streak at the O'Dome, with the road team owning a six-game streak in the series. 
 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	South Carolina
72.3	Scoring	63.7
.439	Field-goal percentage	.398
.335	3-point percentage	.317
65.3	Scoring defense	72.2
.399	Field-goal percentage defense	.470
.313	3-point percentage defense	.365
41st	KenPom.com overall ranking	244th
115th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	241st
13th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	245th
82nd	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	329th
44th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	277th
19th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	143rd

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They've won four out of five and in getting one on the road in Starkville, for now, tallied the first Quadrant I victory as it relates to the NCAA Evaluation Tool that ultimately will seed the NCAA Tournament. With what lies ahead on the schedule -- Saturday at No. 5 Kansas State, No. 4 Tennessee at home, at Kentucky, at No. 2 Alabama -- the Gators can ill-afford to waste a home game against an

opponent that, at least on paper, looks inferior. ... Coach Todd Golden said Tuesday the status of forward Alex Fudge (7.5 ppg, 5.1 rpg) was doubtful after the 6-10 sophomore left the game Saturday following a collision trying to draw a charge early in the first half. Fudge, a lengthy and solid defender who has started 11 consecutive games, had seven points and three rebounds in 12 minutes that game. ... UF, after an underwhelming non-conference season, has redirected itself by playing some of the best defense in the country this month. Since opening SEC play on Dec. 28, the Gators rank No. 5 overall in defensive efficiency (second only to Tennessee among league teams) and have held opponents to under 40-percent shooting in six of their seven conference games. In defeating Mississippi State, the Bulldogs were limited to 39.3 percent and just four of 17 from the 3-point line, but all four of those makes came in the second half when MSU erased a 16-point first-half Florida lead to twice tie the game and ultimately, on the game's final possession, missed two five-footers in the final last seconds. The Gators were far from perfect in winning a second SEC road game, surrendering 36 points in the paint and 13 offensive rebounds to one of the nation's best teams on the glass. But they found a way to win a game they probably would not have earlier in the season. ... Offensively, the most encouraging development in Starkville was UF hitting 10 shots (in 24 attempts) from the 3-point line (41.7 percent). That equaled the most in any conference game this season, as well as the most over the previous 10 games. The Gators have hit 10 3s in two of the last three, with guard Will Richard going 4-for-5 at MSU on his way to 12 points. ... Forward Colin Castleton got banged around, but battled for 13 points (just 5-for-14, but with the second 3-pointer of his career), four rebounds, four steals and a block. ... The backcourt of Kyle Lofton and Myreon Jones, making their second start together, combined for just eight points, but also 12 rebounds, 11 assists and zero turnovers. ... With Richard expected to slide to the "4" spot, look for guard Riley Kugel to get his first start since Dec. 7 (just his third of the season) at the "3."  Kugel hit a couple of big 3s on his way to eight points and five rebounds in 22 minutes against the Bulldogs. He's 48 percent from the floor and 47 from 3 over the last five games, with a team-best plus-41 on-court ratio. ... Another front court option is Kowacie Reeves (9.1 pts, 3.1 reb), who after going 2-for-28 from the 3-point line through the first six SEC games shook his slump by knocking down two of his six attempts on the way to nine points. Reeves and Richard are basically interchangeable between the "3" and "4," though Richard gets the edge as a rebounder. ... Another and different-look front court option would be pairing 6-11, 300-pound senior center Jason Jitoboh (2.7 ppg, 1.5 rpg) alongside Castleton and Richard up front. After Fudge went down, the Gators needed Jitoboh in Starkville and the big fella answered with four points and three rebounds in 12 minutes, garnering praise from Golden afterward. Whether he's in a bigger lineup with Casteton or playing the post in UF's small-ball configuturation, Jitoboh will get increased minutes this game because his team needs him. 

The Gamecocks

Their in the first season under Coach Lamont Paris, who spent the previous four at Tennessee-Chattanooga, where he took over a program in shambles and bereft of talent. The Mocs went 22-43 in Paris' first two seasons, then combined to go 38-21 the last two. In 2021-22, UTC went 27-8, won the Southern Conference and held serve by capturing the league's postseason

tournament to earn a No. 13 seed in the NCAA Tournament. In first-round play, the Mocs nearly upset No. 4-seed Illinois, but fell 54-53. The resurgence of the UTC program caught the eye of South Carolina administrators who tabbed Paris, a former assistant under both Bo Ryan and Greg Gard at Wisconsin, to succeed Frank Martin, who was fired last March after 10 seasons and just one tournament berth (that one, of course, ended in the Final Four at the Gators' expense). ... The Gamecocks had a huge win over cross-state rival Clemson, currently unbeaten and leading the Atlantic Coast Conference, early in the season and, of course, famously (or infamously, if you wear Big Blue) went to Lexington on Jan. 10 and shocked Kentucky for what stands as their lone conference win of the season. USC's season-long metrics aren't very good, but those two wins are evidence of what the team is capable of. So, of course, are the two losses the last two weeks by more than 40 points (against Tennessee and Texas A&M), both at home. ... South Carolina ranks last in the SEC in scoring, 13th in free-throw shooting and 12th in rebounding. The Gamecocks' have made 144 shots from the 3-point line (they're prolific out there), but at only 31 percent. ... Paris and his USC staff, like every staff these days, had to do some rebuilding via the transfer portal, nabbing a quartet of players, but their biggest recruiting coup, by far, was landing hometown superstar Grady Jackson II, who was listed as the No. 1 overall prospect in the nation for the Class of 2023. After verbally committing last year to North Carolina, Jackson opted to reclassify to '22 and signed with the Gamecocks. He leads the team in scoring and rebounding, but his freshman shooting percentages aren't great: 39.4 percent from the floor, 32.4 from the arc and 64.2 at the free-throw line. Jackson had 30 points, eight rebounds and two blocks in the loss to Auburn. He had a 16-rebound game earlier this season against Western Kentucky. ... Point guard Meechie Johnson will be facing the Gators for the second season in a row, but in a different uniform. Johnson came from Ohio State, where he was mostly a backup, and like Jackson has not posted great shooting numbers (35.9 overall, 31.5 from distance). ... And then there's Chico Carter Jr., a Murray State transfer by Martin two years ago. Carter is one of the team's better shooters in game action (48 percent, 37 of 80 on 3s), but just 56.5 percent at the free-throw line. ... Forward Hayden Brown came from the Citadel, where Paris got a first-hand look at the second player in program history to tally at least 1,400 points and 700 rebounds on his way to two-time first-team All-Southern Conference honors.

Numbers of Note

* .363 — Florida's winning percentage against South Carolina since the 2015-16 season, based on the Gamecocks' 7-4 record in the series. 

* 1.000 — Golden's winning percentage against his fellow first-year SEC coaches, with a chance to keep that record perfect with a victory over USC and London. Golden already has wins over Mike White (Georgia), Matt McMahon (LSU), Dennis Gates (Missouri) and Chris Jans (Mississippi State), with a rematch against White on the road Feb. 28. 

* 1,168 — Points scored by Eddie Shannon, now a South Carolina assistant coach, during his four seasons with the Gators (1995-99). Shannon was the point guard for UF during its run to the Sweet 16 on Coach Billy Donovan's first NCAA Tournament in 1999. Shannon ranks 40th on the program's all-time scoring list, as well as fifth in assists (493), fourth in assists per game (4.25) and No. 1 steals (204) and second in steals per game (1.76). He was on Paris' staff at UTC and accompanied him to Columbia.

* 1991 — The year South Carolina joined the SEC in basketball, part of a two-team expansion along with Arkansas. Football joined the SEC fold in 1992. 

* 2017 — The last year the Gators defeated South Carolina at home, which was the season that ended with a loss to the Gamecocks in the NCAA East Regional final at Madison Square Garden, just one game shy of the Final Four. That one was an 81-66 victory, led by Kevaughn Allen's 26 points (13-for-14 from the free-throw line), seven rebounds and three assists. 
 

Bottom Line

Forget about the paddle-wheel of opponents coming up. Protect the house.