Florida vs Florida A&M (Tuesday, 7 pm on SEC+)

Florida vs. Florida A&M

* When: Tuesday, 7 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (1-1) / Florida A&M (0-2)
* TV: SEC+ (Kyle Crooks and Mark Wise)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Sean Kelley and Lee Humphrey)
* Ticket info

Projected Starters

UF guard **Walter Clayton** against Virginia Friday.

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tyrese Samuel	F	6-10 / 239	Graduate	12.5 pts / 9.5 reb
Micah Handlogten	C	7-1 / 235	Sophomore	15.0 pts / 10.0 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Junior	9.5 pts / 1.0 reb
Riley Kugel	G	6-5 / 207	Sophomore	18.5 pts / 3.5 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Junior	10.5 pts / 6.0 reb / 5.0 ast

Florida A&M	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Keith Lamar	F	6-5 / 210	Senior	10.5 pts / 2.5 reb
Shannon Grant	F	6-10 / 300	Senior	5.0 pts / 1.5 reb
Jordan Chatman	G	6-4 / 210	Senior	2.5 pts / 1.0 reb
Hantz Louis-Jeune	G	6-4 / 175	Senior	8.5 pts / 4.5 reb
K'Jei Parker	G	6-1 / 190	Freshman	12.5 pts / 4.0 reb

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and Florida A&M will square off in a meeting of cross-state foes. The Gators are coming off Friday night's 73-70 loss to Virginia in a Hall of Fame Classic series game at Charlotte, N.C. The Rattlers, meanwhile, are halfway through a four-game start to the season that has them playing four power conference opponents. FAMU already has lost at Creighton and Nebraska, and now comes to Gainesville, followed by (get this) a home game next week against Oregon. ... UF leads the all-time series 12-0 in a matchup that dates to 1991. ... The two programs went 13 years without playing until the Rattlers came to town not quite a year ago. Florida and FAMU squared off Nov. 30, 2022, as junior guard Trey Bonham led the Gators with 23 points, four assists and tied former UF standout Matt Walsh's record for the most 3-point attempts without a miss, going 7-for-7 from deep in UF's 102-62 victory. Kowacie Reeves added 19 points, as UF shot 62 percent for the game and nailed 13 of 22 from the arc (59 percent). The Gators, who led 50-31 at halftime, won going away despite a pair of starters, sophomore guard and second-leading scorer Will Richard and fifth-year point guard Kyle Lofton, sitting out with minor injuries. Sophomore forward Alex Fudge had 16 points and 10 rebounds off the bench for his first career double-double.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Florida A&M
81.5	Scoring	54.0
.488	Field-goal percentage	.331
.317	3-point percentage	.185
73.0	Scoring defense	93.0
.453	Field-goal percentage defense	.496
.364	3-point percentage defense	.424
41st	KenPom.com overall ranking	346th
32nd	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	352nd
51st	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	316th
77th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	181st
N/A	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	N/A
3rd	Overall strength of schedule ranking	32nd

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They had a chance at an early season signature victory Friday, but the Gators undercut themselves in the UVA loss with sub-standard shooting (actually poor from the 3-point line) and too

many turnovers to survive a close game against an opponent like the Cavaliers. UF turned it over 16 times, including twice in the final 15 seconds of a one-possession game and failed even to get a shot off with the game on the line. Florida finished at 40 percent for the game and 7-for-25 from distance (28 percent), but did a number on Virginia on the glass, winning the battle of the boards 47-30. ... Grad-transfer point guard Zyon Pullin will sit out once more as part of his three-game penalty for participating in an exposure games at the NBA-sanction Portsmouth Invitational last spring. Pullin, the California-Riverside transfer and 2023 first-team All-Big West selection, is expected to step into the starting rotation Friday against Florida State. He'll not only give the Gators a proven floor general and playmaker, but allow the minutes to be spread out more evenly for UF's top perimeter players, the three of whom all played at least 31 minutes against Virginia. That's too many. ... Guard Riley Kugel leads the team in scoring. He's shooting at a 48.5-percent clip from the floor, but is just 1-for-9 from the 3-point line (11.1 percent). Guard Walter Clayton Jr., who had the two costly late turnovers against the Cavs, is at 35 percent overall and two of eight from the arc. He's also a confounding 5-for-9 from the free-throw line after leading all of Division last season at 95.3 percent. ... Worth noting: A 3-pointer mistakenly credited to Kugel during the UVA game was rightfully changed and rewarded to Clayton after the fact. Also worth noting: Clayton and Kugel have combined for 13 turnovers in two games. Again, too many. ... Center Micah Handlogten not only is averaging a double-double to start the season, but is shooting 77.8 percent from the floor. He had 14 points and 14 boards againts UVA before fouling out with 2:29 to play. ... Forward Tyrese Samuel is just a half-rebound off averaging a double-double, also. He's at 55.6 percent from the floor, but just 50 percent (5 of 10) from the free-throw line. ... Wing Will Richard, after tallying just three points and one rebound in the season-opening win over Loyola Maryland, led the Gators with 16 points against UVA and dropped four of his seven 3-point tries. ... Freshman 6-11 center Alex Condon, after his 13-point debut in the opener, went scoreless with three rebounds and a turnover in just 10 minutes of his second game, but don't worry about him. Facing UVA in a second collegiate game was a tough ask. Great learning experience, too. ... Speaking of freshman, forward Thomas Haugh had one point, four rebounds and an assist in 12 minutes. ... Backup shooting guard Julian Rishwain has a 3-pointer in each of the team's two games. ... UF is shooting just 57.8 percent from the line, as a team.

The Rattlers

FAMU is in its third season as a member of the Southwestern Athletic Conference after leaving (along with rival Bethune-Cookman) the Mideastern Athletic Conference following the 2020-21

season, thus ending a 43-year association with the MEAC. ... The Rattlers are coached by Robert McCullum, a familiar face to longtime UF fans. McCullum was the Gators' associate head coach alongside Lon Kruger for six seasons (1990-96), including the program's first run to a Final Four in 1994. McCullum came to FAMU after stops at Western Michigan (44-45 over three seasons, with a NIT bid) and South Florida (40-76 over four years, without a winning season), with his Rattlers tenure beginning in the fall of 2017. He is 61-112 without a winning season over his seven campaigns, including a 7-22 mark in '22-23. ... Most preseason projections had FAMU picked to finish 11th among 12 teams in the SWAC. ... Last year's team ranked 362nd in offensive efficiency, which was next to last in all of Division I. The Rattlers turned the ball over on 24.2 percent of their possessions, which was 363rd (last). They've cut down considerably on giveaways -- almost in half, actually -- at 13.9 percent this season, but the offense has been so bad (352nd in overall efficiency and 344th in effective field-goal percentage) it has not made much of a difference on the floor. The Rattlers lost by 51 at Creighton and 27 at Nebraska. ... Guard K'Jei Parker is the team's scoring leader, but he's hit just 30.6 percent of his field-goal attempts, including one of seven 3s. ... The Rattlers have two players, guard Morrell Schramm (5.0 ppg, 2.0 rpg) and forward Ja'Derryos Eatmon (6.0 ppg, 3.5 rpg), who are shooting over 50 percent on the season, but both are reserves playing about 16 minutes per game. ... Senior reserve Dimingus Stevens, the lone returnee from last year's rotation, has yet to play this season. Stevens transferred two years ago from Seton Hall, where he was a teammate of UF's Samuel for two seasons.

Numbers of Note

The late **Major Parker** (right) had a career-high 18 points in Florida's 125-50 trouncing of FAMU in 2000 that set a record for the largest margin of victory in UF basketball history.

* 3 — Florida players in the last decade who grabbed at least eight offensive rebounds in a game, as Handlogten did against Virginia. The others were Colin Castleton (8 in a win over Florida State on Nov. 14, 2021) and Dorian Finney-Smith (9 in an overtime win at Arkansas on Jan. 11, 2014).

* 8th — Where the Gators rank nationally in average height at 78.7 inches (or nearly 6-6 per player). That's the second tallest roster in the Southeastern Conference, behind Ole Miss.

* plus-17 — UF's rebounding margin against UVA, which was the best performance on that end of the glass by the Gators since posting a plus-21 in an 87-62 win over Stony Brook on Dec. 22, 2021.

* 33.2 — Average margin for the Gators during their 12-game domination of the series against the Rattlers, with the closest contest being a 76-66 UF victory in the first meeting on Nov. 23, 1991. The teams also played two 15-point games, including a 72-57 win in Tampa when the Gators were reigning NCAA champions and on the way to becoming the first program since Duke in '91-92 to win back-to-back national titles.

* 75 — The largest margin of victory in the UF-FAMU series. The Gators pulverized the Rattlers 125-50 on Dec. 10, 2000 behind career highs of 22 points from guard Brett Nelson and 18 from forward Major Parker. The 75-point margin remains the largest by a Florida team in the program's 107-year history.

Bottom Line

FAMU is many universes from UVA. Everyone understands that. Still, for the Gators, this one will about sharpening, fine-tuning and taking steps toward addressing the things that went wrong (starting with ball security) in the loss to the Cavaliers.

Gators Calendar

Florida vs Florida A&M (Tuesday, 7 pm on SEC+)

Florida vs. Florida A&M

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Tale of the Tape

Team Snapshots

The Gators

The Rattlers

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Players Mentioned

Trey Bonham

Colin Castleton

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Alex Fudge

Micah Handlogten

Thomas Haugh

Riley Kugel

Kyle Lofton

Zyon Pullin

Kowacie Reeves

Will Richard

Julian Rishwain

Tyrese Samuel

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Florida vs Florida A&M (Tuesday, 7 pm on SEC+)

Florida vs. Florida A&M

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Tale of the Tape

Team Snapshots

The Gators

The Rattlers

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Players Mentioned

Trey Bonham

Colin Castleton

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Alex Fudge

Micah Handlogten

Thomas Haugh

Riley Kugel

Kyle Lofton

Zyon Pullin

Kowacie Reeves

Will Richard

Julian Rishwain

Tyrese Samuel

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