Florida vs Arkansas (Saturday, 4 pm)

Florida vs. Arkansas

* When: Saturday, 4 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (10-5, 0-2) / Arkansas (9-6, 0-2)
* TV: ESPN (Tom Hart and Jimmy Dykes)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) / Stations list
* Ticket info

Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tyrese Samuel	F	6-10 / 239	Graduate	13.3 pts / 8.3 reb
Micah Handlogten	C	7-1 / 236	Sophomore	6.7 pts / 7.5 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Junior	10.7 pts / 3.7 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Junior	16.2 pts / 3.9 reb
Zyon Pullin	G	6-4 / 206	Graduate	15.2 pts / 3.3 reb / 4.7 ast

Arkansas	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Trevon Brazile	F	6-10 / 220	Sophomore	9.9 pts / 6.8 reb
Makhi Mitchell	F	6-10 / 240	Senior	5.5 pts / 3.3 reb
Tramon Mark	G	6-6 / 185	Junior	17.0 pts / 3.7 reb
Devonte Davis	G	6-4 / 185	Senior	7.0 pts / 4.5 reb
Keyon Menifield	G	6-1 / 150	Sophomore	11.8 pts / 3.2 reb

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and Arkansas, two of five Southeastern Conference teams winless in league play through the first week, will meet with the winner getting off the conference schneid and into the victory column. ... UF lost its SEC opener 87-85 in a down-to-the-wire dogfight with No. 6 Kentucky last weekend, but Wednesday night was crushed 103-85 at Ole Miss. Arkansas, meanwhile, got blasted 83-51 at home in its SEC opener last weekend, then Wednesday was beaten 76-66 at Georgia. ... The Gators lead the all-time series 26-15, but the Razorbacks have won the previous three meetings, including last season's 84-65 blowout at Fayetteville. That game was UF's first after losing three-time All-SEC forward Colin Castleton to a season-ending broken hand. The game was competitive for a half, with the Hogs coming from five points down and scoring 11 consecutive to take a six-point lead, 37-31, at the break. Arkansas scored 17 of the first 19 points after halftime and that was that. Backup guard Jalen Graham finished with a game- and career-high 26 points by going 12-for-15 from the floor, while guard Ricky Counsel IV had 15 points and seven rebounds. Freshman point guard Anthony Black tallied 15 points and seven rebounds. The Gators got 17 points from freshman guard Riley Kugel, plus eight points and six rebounds from freshman forward Aleks Szymczyk.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Arkansas
86.1	Scoring	79.1
.464	Field-goal percentage	.463
.330	3-point percentage	.329
76.5	Scoring defense	76.8
.425	Field-goal percentage defense	.422
.339	3-point percentage defense	.336
45th	KenPom.com overall ranking	79th
33rd	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	76th
85th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	95th
11th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	72nd
56th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	109th
75th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	55th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

Florida's lack of connection on the defensive end (a polite way to put it) was alarming Wednesday, as Ole Miss shot 75 percent in the second half (21 of 28) and was an astonishing 17-for-19

from the 2-point area on the way to 59 second-half points. Four days earlier, the Gators surrendered 50 points after intermission in the 87-85 home loss to Kentucky, so expect the UF coaches to make some adjustments to their second-half adjustments. In two SEC games, UF has allowed 95.0 points and 52.2 percent from the floor, including 60.6 from 2. Those are all league lows. ... One of these teams will fall to 0-3 in conference play, something the Gators last did in 2022. ... Florida is just 29.2 percent from the 3-point line in its two SEC contests, but that's seventh in the league. A lot of teams are shooting the long ball poorly. ... Going into SEC play, forward Tyrese Samuel and guard Will Richard were two of the most productive players on the team. Samuel was at 14.3 points and 8.8 rebounds while shooting at league-high 64.6 percent. Richard had averaged 17.4 points on 52.5 percent overall and 43 from deep. In the two SEC games, Samuel is at 7.0 points, 4.5 rebounds and 45.5 percent. Richard is at 3.5 points, 25.1 from the floor and just 1-for-9 from the arc. It makes sense those numbers will work their back. It's definitely not a step-up-in-competition thing. Not at all. Samuel played in the Big East last season at Seton Hall, while Richard went through an entire SEC and finished '22-23 as one of the most efficient offensive players in the country. The Gators need both of them to shake their slow starts. ... Guard Walter Clayton Jr. is averaging 23.3 points through two league games (just 31.6 from 3) and point guard Zyon Pullin is at 20.5, but with only 3.5 assists. UF has just 13 assists in the two games after combining for 46 the two games prior to opening SEC play. ... Center Micah Handlogten is at 10.0 rebounds in the two SEC games, with backup 6-11 freshman forward Alex Condon (8.5 ppg, 7.2 rpg) right behind him at 9.5. Against the Rebels, Condon had the second double-double of his career with 11 points and 15 rebounds. His 10 offensive boards were the most in a single game by a UF player this century and paired him alongside Kentucky's Oscar Tshiebwe, the 2022 SEC Player of the Year, as the only players in the league over the last five years to card a double-figure offensive rebound game. ... The minutes situation for sophomore guard Riley Kugel (10.9 ppg, 3.9 rpg) bears watching. After scoring 15 points against Kentucky (his highest total in nearly six weeks), Kugel went scoreless in less than four minutes at Mississippi and did not play in the second half. Meanwhile, sophomore Denzel Aberdeen (4.0 ppg) played just over 12 minutes and scored seven points. ... Freshman forward Thomas Haugh (4.5 ppg, 4.5 rpg) had four points and four rebounds in 14 minutes, and is dealing with some adjustments in the increased physicality of league play. Haugh, however, will remain uncompromising (and unfazed) in his effort level (just like Condon, in that way).

The Razorbacks

It's their fifth season under Eric Musselman, having averaged nearly 24 wins the first four, with two of them ending in the Elite Eight and last year in the Sweet 16. Musselman is 104-

48 at Arkansas and 214-82 overall. He's won at least 20 games in every season as a college head coach (the first four at Nevada) and has been to six consecutive NCAA tournaments. He's also had six players drafted by the NBA, including three first-round draft picks (two in 2023). ... The Hogs' loss at Georgia was their first true road game of the season. After the game, the team flew to Gainesville and has practiced in the UF facility the last two days. ... Arkansas opened the season with four straight at home, winning the first three, but losing the fourth to UNC Greensboro. The Hogs lost two of three at the Battle 4 Atlantis (beating Stanford, falling to Memphis and North Carolina), but returned home and upset 11th-ranked Duke at home in the ACC/SEC Challenge. They lost 10 days later against Oklahoma at Oklahoma City. ... The Razorbacks are athletic and will take chances on defense, but both their offense and defense has been poor to open SEC play and they're turning the ball over too much (30 in the two conference games). ... Guard Tramon Mark was one of the big prizes out of the transfer portal last offseason, having put together three solid years for an outstanding Houston program. The No. 6 scorer in the league, Mark is making nearly 54 percent from the floor and 39 from 3. ... Forward Trevon Brazile, a prototype stretch-4, transferred from Missouri in '22, but blew out a knee nine games into last season. What a difference he might have made with that loaded Arkansas squad a year ago. He's at 50 percent from the floor and 38 from 3. ... Defensive Devonte Davis (aka "Devo"), a two-time All-SEC Defensive Team selection, has been something of a Gatorkiller the last three seasons, with 18 points in the Hogs' win in '21 and 19 in 22. Though Arkansas is not a high-assist team, Davis leads with 38. ... Backup guard Khalif Battle (12.9 ppg, 2.7 rpg) is the Hogs' second-leading scorer. He's on his third school, having played the three previous seasons at Temple, where he was an All-Atlantic 10 performer, and before that one season at Butler, where he got three minutes in a win over the Gators at Indianapolis. He's only shooting 37 percent from the floor, but nearly 41 from 3, where he leads the team with 25 makes. ... Point guard Keyon Menifield transferred from Washington, where he averaged 10.0 points and 3.1 assists as a freshman last season. He was supposed to red-shirt during '23-24, but became eligible with the NCAA-wide court injunction transfer ruling and in his third game as a Hog poured in 32 points against UNC Wilmington and went to the free-throw line 17 times. ... Jalen Graham, in his second season since transferring from Arizona State and only averaging 6.5 points per game, will have the Gators' attention after that 26-point eruption a year ago. ... Makhi Mitchell is no longer playing alongside his 6-10, 240-pound brother Makhei, both of whom transferred from Rhode Island in '22. He won't post big numbers, but he's physical presence inside.

Numbers of Note

**Patric Young** (4) and the 2011-12 Gators held the record for largest margin of victory by a road team at Arkansas until Auburn broke it last weekend.

* 5 — Consecutive wins for Arkansas to start the series with Florida after the Hogs joined the SEC for the 1991-92 athletic calendar. The Gators' first win came in the '97 league opener, a 75-62 victory at the O'Dome. That was Billy Donovan's first SEC game coaching the Gators and he beat the legendary national-champion coach Nolan Richardson.

* 6 — Points needed by Pullin to reach 1,500 for his career, with his first four seasons at California-Riverside, where he tallied 1,312.

* 32 — Margin of defeat in the Razorbacks' home loss last weekend against Auburn, which broke the 12-year-old Bud Walton Arena record previously held by Florida from its 98-68 bludgeoning on Feb. 18, 2012, behind a career-high 31 points (on 5-for-6 from the arc) by senior point guard Erving Walker.

* 121.8 — Points per 100 possessions surrendered by the Florida defense in SEC play, which ranks next to last in the SEC in defensive efficiency (behind only Ole Miss, actually).

* 2020 — The last year Florida defeated Arkansas. The Gators won 73-59 on Feb. 18 at the O'Dome behind sophomore forward Keyontae Johnson's 24 points (on 15-for-17 from the free-throw line) and 10 rebounds. Sophomore point guard Andrew Nembhard pitched in 17 points, seven rebounds and four assists. UF led by just seven at the half, but shot 63 percent (12 of 19) in the second half on the way to a third straight win the series (and 16th in the previous 18 meetings, dating to the 2009 season).

Bottom Line

This bottom line is easy: Gators need a win. That is all.

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