Florida Gators

Florida at Wake Forest

 
* What: SEC/ACC Challenge
* When: Wednesday, 7:15 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum / Winston-Salem, N.C.
* Records: Florida (4-2) / Wake Forest (3-3)
* TV: ESPNU (Anish Shroff and Richard Hendrix)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Sean Kelley and Lee Humphrey) / Stations list  
* Ticket info

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Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tyrese Samuel	F	6-10 / 239	Graduate	14.5 pts / 8.3 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Junior	9.7 pts / 2.8 reb
Riley Kugel	G	6-5 / 207	Sophomore	13.7 pts / 4.2 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Junior	16.2 pts / 4.3 reb / 4.3 ast
Zyon Pullin	G	6-4 / 206	Graduate	14.0 pts / 3.0 reb / 5.7 ast

Wake Forest	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Zach Keller	F	6-10 / 228	Sophomore	3.2 pts / 2.5 reb
Andrew Carr	F	6-4 / 220	Senior	15.0 pts / 7.8 reb / 2.3 blk
Hunter Sallis	G	6-5 / 185	Junior	18.3 pts / 3.0 reb
Cameron Hildreth	G	6-4 / 195	Junior	17.8 pts / 4.8 reb
Kevin Miller	G	6-0 / 175	Sophomore	17.3 pts / 2.7 reb / 4.0 ast

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and Wake Forest will meet in the inaugural SEC/ACC Challenge, an ESPN-created event that will pair up all teams from the Southeastern Conference against 14 of the 15 teams (all but Louisville) in the

Atlantic Coast Conference. For the Gators, the annual event replaces the SEC/Big 12 Challenge that went from 2013-2022, with the last seven games played in late-January (on the weekend of the NFL conference championship games) in what was a stroke of genius relative to midseason college basketball exposure. ... The Gators are coming off a second-place finish in the NIT Season Tip-Off, a four-team, two game-event at Barclay's Center in Brooklyn over the Thanksgiving holiday. They defeated Pittsburgh 81-65 in opening-round play, but lost a 95-91 shootout to 13th-ranked and unbeaten Baylor in Friday night's championship game. The Demon Deacons' last outing was a 71-64 home victory Friday against Charleston Southern. ... Wake leads the all-time series 7-5, but Florida has won three of the previous, including two straight. The last time meeting came Dec. 20, 2014 in the Orange Bowl Classic at Sunrise, Fla., where the Gators, in what was Coach Billy Donovan's final season, won 63-50, behind forward Dorian Finney-Smith's 16 points, six rebounds, four assists and four steals. Junior guard Michael Frazier II, after butting heads with a Deac defender and needing 14 stiches to close a gruesome gash, added 12 points. Freshman point guard Chris Chiozza came off the bench to tally eight points, including a couple 3s, three rebounds and a pair of assists. Wake, coached by Danny Manning, was led by 16 points from Codi Miller-McIntyre.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Wake Forest
86.3	Scoring	78.3
.480	Field-goal percentage	.471
.328	3-point percentage	.360
74.7	Scoring defense	73.0
.424	Field-goal percentage defense	.432
.364	3-point percentage defense	.339
28th	KenPom.com overall ranking	81st
16th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	44th
67th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	144th
51st	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	228th
N/A	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	N/A
38th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	286th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They had their chances against Baylor (like two weeks earlier against Virginia), but ultimately the Bears (like the Cavaliers) made the plays and hit the shots down the stretch to

prevent the Gators, yet again, from claiming a quality, resume-building kind of victory. In the case of Baylor, UF fell prey to deadly 3-point shooters, allowing the Bears to bag 14 of 25 attempts (56 percent), a slew of which came during pivotal moments when the Gators needed a stop. Florida is allowing opponents to shoot 36.4 percent from deep (that ranks 282nd nationally), so 3-point line defense (rotations, close-outs, etc.) will be points of emphasis at practice. ... Offensively, the Gators have been awfully good and now rank 16th nationally in efficiency. Big reason: an No. 3 ranking in offensive rebounding percentage (.441), thus creating extra possessions to score. ... The status of sophomore center Micah Handlogten (8.0 ppg, 6.8 rpg, 68 percent from the floor), who suffered an ankle injury just 49 seconds into the opening-round NIT win and was done for the tournament, remains "questionable." Without Handlogten, the Gators split the front court minutes. Starting forward Tyrese Samuel was terrific in both games at Brooklyn in averaging 19.0 points on 84-percent shooting, 8.8 rebounds and 2.5 steals and Monday was named SEC Player of the Week. Reserves Alex Condon (9.0 ppg), the 6-11 center, and Thomas Haugh (4.8 rpg), 6-9 forward, played well in that game off the bench. Against the Bears, with Handlogten sidelined, UF opted to go with a four-guard lineup for most of the game. Point guard Zyon Pullin got his first start as a Gator -- alongside the perimeter trio of Riley Kugel, Will Richard and Walter Clayton Jr. -- and responded with 17 points, five assists and no turnovers. In his three games, Pullin has 17 assists and just two turnovers, with UF averaging 19.3 assists per game versus 15.0 while he sat out the first three games. ... Kugel was outstanding in the game, bouncing back from a tough shooting night against Pitt to post career highs of 25 points and nine rebounds, including 4-for-6 from the 3-point line. ... After erupting for 28 points against Pitt, Clayton fell ill on Thanksgiving Day and was far from 100 percent for the game. Credit him for battling through, though, scoring 11 points, grabbing six rebounds, with six assists, two steals and two blocks over 29 minutes (probably 5-6 too many), but Clayton was 3-for-12 shooting and 1-for-8 from distance. ... Richard also was off. He made just two of eight shots and one of five 3-point tries. Richard's shooting numbers are down from a season ago, but it's early and it makes sense those numbers will start to even out. He's also averaging nearly 31 minutes, which is probably too many and impacting his shooting stroke. ... Reserve guard Denzel Aberdeen was called on to help spell his perimeter partners. Aberdenn played 19 minutes and responded with eight points, three rebounds and more gained trust from the staff. ... Given that Wake likes to play to zone, don't be surprised if fifth-year wing Julian Rishwain, the grad-transfer from San Franciso, doesn't see some minutes. The 6-5 sharp-shooter is 2-for-4 from the arc, but was a DNP the last three games. 
 

The Demon Deacons

Their in the fourth season under Steve Forbes, who has guided the Deacs to a 53-42 record during that time, but has yet to reach the NCAA Tournament. They did make the NIT quarterfinals

in '21-22, finishing 25-10, including fifth place in the ACC. Forbes came to Winston-Salem from East Tennessee State, where he won the Southern Conference in 2017 and reached the NCAA Tournament as a No. 13 seed. The Buccaneers were matched in opening-round play that year against the fourth-seeded and 20th-ranked Gators, who prevailed 80-65 on the way to the Elite Eight. ... Most preseason projections placed Wake in the league's middle of the pack, but so far the Deacs have beaten three mid-majors (Elon, Towson and Charleston Southern) and lost to the three power conference foes (Georgia, Utah and LSU in overtime). ... Forward Hunter Sallis, a 2021 McDonald's All American from Omaha, Neb., was a role player of less than 17 minutes a game the last two years at Gonzaga, but he's been fabulous so far for Wake. As the team's scoring leader, Sallis is shooting 49 percent from the floor (over 55 at home), 44 from distance and 85 at the free-throw line. He's a volume shooter, with nearly 14 attempts per game and scored 22 against LSU, with four 3s. ... Point guard Kevin Miller transferred from Central Michigan, where he averaged just shy of 14 points his first two seasons. He's upped that number mostly with efficiency from the 2-point area (53.4 percent). He went 11-for-17 on his way to 25 points against Georgia and had eight assists versus LSU. ... Guard Cameron Hildreth came from England and is in his third season with the Deacs. He's shooting 53 percent overall, 46 from deep and is 21-for-22 from the free-throw line (95.5 percent). ... Forward Andrew Carr, in his second season since transferring from Delaware, gives Wake four starters averaging at least 15 points per game. He's at 47 percent on the season, but is enough of a threat from the arc (31.6) that he needs to be accounted for. ... Sallis, Miller, Hildreth and Carr have shot 89 of Wake's 109 free-throw attempts this season and combined to convert at 94.8 percent. ... The aforementioned four starters all average double figures, but then the scoring drops to backup freshman guard Parker Friedrichsen, an Oklahoma prep phenom, at 3.3 points per. ... Backup 6-8 forward Marcus Marion (2.3 ppg, 4.7 rpg) is the only Deac beside the four double-digit starters averaging over 20 minutes. ... Backup 7-1 center Matthew Marsha (2.0 ppg, 4.0 rpg) made -- get this -- 83 of his 94 field-goal attempts last season. That's 88.3 percent. ... Wake is anxiously awaiting the return of 6-6, 230-pound forward Damari Monsanto, who averaged 13.3 points and led the ACC in 3s per game in '22-23 when he suffered a season-ending knee injury last February. Monsanto, from Pembroke Pines, Fla. shot 40.5 percent from the arc last season. 
 

Numbers of Note

* .000 — Samuel's shooting percentage from the 3-point line, based on going 0-for-5 thus far on the season. 

* .739 — Samuel's shooting percentage from the 2-point area, based on going 34-for-46 thus far. 

* .826 — Team free-throw shooting for Wake, which ranks eighth in the country and could be a problem for Florida should the game be close and come down to the line. Florida's team percentage is 64.7, which ranks 308th nationally. 

* 6 — Wins for Florida in the defunct SEC/Big 12 Challenge that was played from 2013-23, with Coach Mike White accounting for five victories in the Gators' 6-4 record in that series.

* 2000 — The last year the Gators played at Veteran's Memorial Coliseum, and, boy, was it a memorable one. It was Year 4 under Donovan and the date was March 17. Florida was the No. 5-seed in the NCAA Midwest Region and trailed 12th-seed Butler by a point when Bulldogs guard LaVall Jordan missed two free throws with nine seconds left. UF rebounded the second miss, with Teddy Dupay dribbling into the halfcourt and pitching the ball to sophomore forward Mike Miller on the left wing. Miller drove into the lane, got walled up by a couple Butler defenders and threw in a floater that bounced on the front rim and through the basket for a pulsating 69-68 victory and March Madness buzzer-beater and one of the most famous basketball moments in UF lore. The Gators went on to reach their first NCAA title game -- along the way defeating both top-ranked Duke in the Sweet 16 and North Carolina in the Final Four -- where they lost to Michigan State.
 

Bottom Line

The Gators, with a fourth straight game against a power conference opponent, get an ACC foe on the road, which could possibly mean an eventual Quadrant-1, resume-building opportunity. UF, however, has not been good in these scenarios (2-13 last season, either 0-2 or 1-2 this season, analytics pending), but the Gators were right there against Virginia and Baylor on neutral floors. If they're better than the Deacons (and on paper, they are), they need get a good one on the road.