Zyon Pullin, a first-team All-West Conference Conference honoree in 2023, averaged nearly 15 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.3 assists over 33 minutes a game during each of the last three seasons at UC-Riverside.
Transfer Pullin to Miss First Three Games
Friday, September 29, 2023 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Fifth-year senior point guard Zyon Pullin will miss the first three games of the 2023-24 Florida basketball season for participating in the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament as part of the NBA Draft evaluation process in the spring. Zyon Pullin
The development, first reported Friday via X by CBS Sports college basketball insider Jon Rothstein, came as no surprise to Coach Todd Golden and his staff. Precedent was set last year when Arizona guard Courtney Ramey was hit with a similar suspension; three games of his college season as a penalty for playing in three games at Portsmouth, which the NCAA considers a non-sanctioned event.
"We assumed he was going to miss some games," Golden said Friday afternoon.
Pullin, the 6-foot-4, 206-pound transfer, was a late withdraw from the draft pool after starring for four seasons at California-Riverside, where he averaged 12 points per game over the last four seasons, including a career-high 18.3 (plus 4.2 assists and 3.9 rebounds) during his 2023 first-team All-West Conference senior year. Pullin, who goes by "ZP," shot 48.6 percent from the floor, 39.4 from 3-point range and 77.1 at the free-throw line, with 12 games of least 20 points and a career-high of 30 against San Diego.
His Florida role was looking very much like that of the starting point guard, but he'll have to wait at least through the Nov. 6 season opener against Loyola Marymount at Exactech Arena, the Nov. 10 neutral-site meeting with Virginia at Charlotte and a Nov. 14 home game against Florida A&M.
The Gators will be OK minus Pullin, with Iona transfer Walter Clayton Jr, the 2023 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Player of the Year, expected to be on the ball, likely sharing some of those playmaking duties with returning sophomore star Riley Kugel. Clayton, like Kugel, is more of a combo guard but did average 3.2 assists per game for a league champion last season.
"We will miss him in those games, but this gives others an opportunity to step up," Golden said.
Such as Denzel Aberdeen. The 6-5 guard played limited minutes (just 40 in 12 games) as a '22-23 freshman but has drawn rave reviews for the staff for his work ethic and improvement during the offseason. Freshman Kajus Kublickas, the 6-2 freshman who arrived in August from Lithuania, could get some early reps, too.
