Florida at No. 6 Tennessee (Tuesday, 5 pm)

Florida at No. 6 Tennessee

* When: Tuesday, 5 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Thompson-Boling Arena / Knoxville, Tenn.
* Records: Florida (11-5, 1-2) / Tennessee (12-4, 2-1)
* TV: ESPN2 (Karl Ravech, Jimmy Dykes and Marty Smith)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Sean Kelley and Lee Humphrey) / Stations list
* Ticket info

Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tyrese Samuel	F	6-10 / 239	Graduate	13.6 pts / 8.4 reb
Micah Handlogten	C	7-1 / 236	Sophomore	6.6 pts / 7.6 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Junior	10.8 pts / 3.6 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Junior	15.9 pts / 3.9 reb
Zyon Pullin	G	6-4 / 206	Graduate	15.2 pts / 3.3 reb / 5.0 ast

Tennessee	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Dalton Knecht	F	6-6 / 213	Senior	17.2 pts / 4.2 reb
Jonas Aidoo	F	6-11 / 240	Junior	11.2 pts / 7.4 reb
Josiah-Jordan James	G	6-7 / 220	Senior	10.1 pts / 6.9 reb
Santiago Vescovi	G	6-3 / 196	5th-Senior	7.7 pts / 3.9 reb
Zakai Zeigler	G	5-9 / 171	Junior	10.5 pts / 2.2 reb / 5.0 ast

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and sixth-ranked Tennessee meet in the fourth Southeastern Conference game for both teams, with the game being moved up two hours from its originally scheduled tip-off time (7 p.m.) because of the blizzard conditions that rolled through Knoxville on Monday. ... Both team are coming off impressive victories, though under different circumstances.The Gators defeated Arkansas 90-68 at home Saturday, bouncing back from their 103-85 blowout loss at Ole Miss for their first league win of the young season. The Volunteers did the bounce-back thing, also. After losing at Mississippi State mid-week, UT again was on the road, venturing to Georgia, which opened the conference season with two wins. The Vols trailed by 11 with six minutes to go, but outscored the Bulldogs 19-4 down the stretch and left Athens with an 85-79 victory. ... Tennessee leads the all-time series 80-59, with eight wins in the last 11 and six straight at home. Florida, however, won the last meeting, upsetting the No. 2 Vols 67-54 at Gainesville on Feb. 1, 2023, equaling the highest-ranked foe ever beaten by the Gators at home. Fifth-year senior forward Colin Castleton scored a game-high 20 points, all but four in the second half, grabbed nine rebounds and had three assists to lead a balanced UF offense. The Vols came into the game as the No. 1-ranked team in overall KenPom.com analytics, allowing just 34.5 percent-shooting from the floor, 22 from the 3-point line and 54.5 points per game. The Gators shot nearly 44 percent on the night, made seven 3s at 35 percent and erased a six-point deficit with 10 minutes to play by out-scoring the Vols 29-10 to finish the game. Grad-transfer point guard Kyle Lofton scored 12 of his 14 points in the second half to go with four assists. Fifth-year guard Myreon Jones had nine points, including a clutch second-half 3 during the comeback, and sophomore guard Will Richard added nine points, seven rebounds and a pair of blocks. ... For UF, this will be the first of what figures to be five Quadrant 1 opportunities, per the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET), over the next three weeks. The Gators are just 2-18 in Q1s the last two seasons, including 0-4 in '23-24.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Tennessee
86.4	Scoring	78.7
.466	Field-goal percentage	.442
.332	3-point percentage	.337
76.0	Scoring defense	66.0
.422	Field-goal percentage defense	.380
.338	3-point percentage defense	.308
41st	KenPom.com overall ranking	8th
24th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	20th
80th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	3rd
11th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	80th
48th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	6th
68th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	6th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

By beating Arkansas, they avoided the program's second 0-3 start to conference play in 40 years. Better yet, the Gators looked very good doing so, thanks to 49-percent shooting, with nine

makes from deep, a plus-17 advantage on the glass and five scorers in double figures. Did it come against an opponent that remains winless in SEC play? Sure. But the Razorbacks came to town with the pedigree of reaching the Elite Eight in two of the last three seasons and the Sweet 16 last March, along with an upset in late-November of Duke. ... The biggest story out of the Arkansas win, of course, was the 20-point response from reserve sophomore guard Riley Kugel (11.5 ppg, 3.9 rpg) just three days after playing less than four minutes (none in the second half) of the loss at Mississippi. Kugel, after a heart-to-heart with Coach Todd Golden and his staff, went 8-for-14 from the floor, hit two of three 3s and both his free throws to go with five rebounds, a couple steals and just one turnover in 27 minutes. The Gators need a focused, engaged and productive Kugel to be at their best. Everybody in the building knows that. ... Through the first two SEC games, forward Tyrese Samuel was averaging 7.0 points and 4.5 rebounds -- about half of his averages through non-league play -- following a run of three consecutive double-doubles. Guard Will Richard, who was on a five-game pre-league spree of 17.4 points per game, 50 percent from the floor and 40 from the 3-point line, was at 3.5 points and shooting 2-12 overall and 1-for-9 from distance. Both of those players had much-needed returns to form, with Samuel posting 17 points and 11 boards, while Richard threw in 13 points and a trio of 3s. ... Point guard Zyon Pullin had just seven assists through two SEC games. He tallied 15 points, four rebounds and eight assists (with just one turnover) against the Razorbacks. ... Guard Walter Clayton Jr. is averaging 19.0 points in SEC play, but can expect to be bodied up and harassed by a bevy of Vols. ... Center Micah Handlogten is shooting 61.5 percent and averaging 9.7 rebounds in SEC play. ... Backup 6-11 freshman forward Alex Condon (8.4 ppg, 7.3 rpg) ranks seventh in the SEC in rebounding and is averaging nearly a double-double in league play (9.3 points, 9.3 rebounds). ... Rotations and minutes usually shrink once SEC play begins and that's been the case for freshman forward Thomas Haugh (10.3 mpg) and sophomore guard Denzel Aberdeen (8.0 mpg). If Kugel's last performance was a sign of things to come, the UF rotation may be set at eight.

The Volunteers

Coach Rick Barnes is in his ninth season in Knoxville and has built one of the most consistently solid programs in the league, what with five consecutive NCAA tournament berths. No surprise

there. All told, Barnes has been at it for 37 seasons -- at George Mason (1 season), Providence (6), Clemson (4), Texas (17) and now Tennessee (9), with a record of 791-410, including 187-96 at UT to go with the 2018 regular-season SEC title and 2022 SEC Tournament crown. ... The Vols, once again, have one of the most devastating defenses in college basketball. They're No. 3 overall in defensive efficiency, sixth in effective field-goal percentage and ninth in 2-point defense, allowing just 42.7 percent inside the arc. UT is also first in the SEC in free-throw percentage (77.0). ... After losing consecutive games against No. 2 Purdue, No. 1 Kansas and No. 17 North Carolina, the Vols reeled off seven straight victories, including a 90-64 home thrashing of Ole Miss, before losing at Mississippi State 77-72 Wednesday night, then staging the big rally at Georgia over the weekend. ... UT hit the portal lottery with Northern Colorado grad-transfer forward Dalton Knecht, who is among the SEC's scoring leaders and is shooting 48 percent overall, 40 from 3 and nearly 79 percent on a team-high 71 free throws. Knecht is long, athletic, can put the ball on the floor and run all day. In Saturday's win, he had 36 points and went 5-for-8 from distance. ... Point guard Zakai Zeigler went down with a season-ending knee injury last February, which dashed the Vols' hopes of making a deep tournament run in March, as their season ended in a Sweet 16 loss to Florida Atlantic. Zeigler doesn't shoot at a high percentage, but he's a disrupter and havoc-creator on defense; in other words, perfect for Barnes. ... Forward Jonas Aidoo is UT's top inside presence on both ends, with 52-percent shooting and a team-best 26 blocks. ... Fifth-year guard Santiago Vescovi is still around and will play in his 131st game Tuesday. Vescovi is a crafty guard with deep range and is a master at drawing fouls. Really good defender too. ... Guard Josiah-Jordan James arrived in 2019 as a McDonald's All-America freshman who everyone had pegged as a one-and-done. Now a fifth-year, James has 1,130 career points and is having a career season on the glass. ... Guards Jordan Gainey (7.6 ppg), by way of South Carolina-Upstate, and Jahmai Mashack (5.3 ppg, 3.1 rpg) are UT's top reserves on the perimeter, with 6-8, 250-pound enforcer Tobe Awaka (5.4 ppg, 5.0 rpg) the top low-post backup.

Numbers of Note

Senior guard **Scottie Wilbekin** led the Gators to a 67-58 road win at Knoxville en route to the Final Four in 2014, the last time UF defeated UT on the road.

* .257 — UF's all-time winning percentage at Knoxville, based on a 17-49 record, which is the Gators' lowest at any road SEC venue other than Kentucky (.166).

* minus-8.6 — Average UF margin of defeat in the last six games at Thompson-Boling. Though only two of the losses were decided by double-digits, the Gators fell behind by 30 in the 2016 loss and by 19 in '20 before making those games cosmetically close.

* 6 — Players in Tennessee's regular rotation who shoot at least 75.0 percent from the free-throw line, with half of them at 82 percent or higher.

* 16 — Where Barnes ranks, with his 791 career wins, on the NCAA all-time victory list, having passed Lou Henson, Lute Olsen and Lefty Driesell this season and now behind only John Calipari (802) and Bill Self (801) among active coaches.

* 2014 — The last year the Gators defeated the Vols on the road. Senior point guard Scottie Wilbekin, the 2014 SEC Player of the Year, scored 14 of his then-career high 21 points after halftime, putting those numbers alongside six assists, four steals and zero turnovers to lead the third-ranked Gators to a rugged 67-58 come-from-behind beating of the Vols. It was UF's 16th straight victory -- and the 11th of what became a perfect 18-0 run through the league -- and just the third in the previous 12 visits to Thompson-Boling.

Bottom Line

Not only will the Gators not play at a more difficult venue this season, but they also can expect a tough whistle against one of the most (annually) physical and aggressive teams in the country.

Gators Calendar

Florida at No. 6 Tennessee (Tuesday, 5 pm)

Florida at No. 6 Tennessee

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Tale of the Tape

Team Snapshots

The Gators

The Volunteers

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Players Mentioned

Denzel Aberdeen

Colin Castleton

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Micah Handlogten

Thomas Haugh

Myreon Jones

Riley Kugel

Kyle Lofton

Zyon Pullin

Will Richard

Tyrese Samuel

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Upcoming Event: Men's Basketball versus Merrimack on Nov. 21, 2025 at TBA

Florida at No. 6 Tennessee (Tuesday, 5 pm)

Florida at No. 6 Tennessee

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Tale of the Tape

Team Snapshots

The Gators

The Volunteers

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Players Mentioned

Denzel Aberdeen

Colin Castleton

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Micah Handlogten

Thomas Haugh

Myreon Jones

Riley Kugel

Kyle Lofton

Zyon Pullin

Will Richard

Tyrese Samuel

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