Florida vs Georgia (Saturday, noon)

Florida vs. Georgia

* When: Saturday, noon (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (13-6, 3-3) / Georgia (14-5, 4-2)
* TV: ESPN2 (Roy Philpott and Brooke Weisbrod)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD
(with Sean Kelley and Lee Humphrey) / Stations list
* Ticket info

Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tyrese Samuel	F	6-10 / 239	Graduate	13.5 pts / 8.3 reb
Micah Handlogtren	C	7-1 / 236	Sophomore	6.5 pts / 7.4 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Junior	111.4 pts / 3.8 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Junior	15.9 pts / 3.8 reb
Zyon Pullin	G	6-4 / 206	Graduate	14.6 pts / 3.4 reb / 4.6 ast

Georgia	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Jabri Abdur-Rahim	F	6-8 / 215	Senior	13.7 pts / 3.6 reb
Russel Tchewa	C	7-0 / 275	Senior	6.7 pts / 6.6 reb
RJ Sunahara	G	6-8 / 205	Senior	2.1 pts / 1.8 reb
Noah Thomasson	G	6-4 / 210	Senior	12.1 pts / 3.1 reb
Silas Demary Jr.	G	6-5 / 190	Freshman	10.2 pts / 4.5 reb / 2.6 ast

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and Georgia meet in a rivalry game at the sold-out O'Dome, featuring two teams smack in a crowded middle of the Southeastern Conference standings... The Gators have won two straight (and three of four), most recently Wednesday night's 79-70 home victory over Mississippi State. The Bulldogs defeated LSU 68-66 at home Wednesday on a last-second shot for their second win in three games. ... Florida leads the all-time series 122-103, with eight straight wins dating to the 2020 season, including a sweep of last year's matchup that pitted former UF coach Mike White against Todd Golden, his Gators successor. Florida won 82-75 in Gainesville on Jan. 7, 2022, then completed the sweep with a 77-67 victory at Athens on Feb. 28. Sophomore wing Will Richard, playing 90 minutes from his hometown of Fairburn, Ga., scored a career-high 24 points, sinking a career-best five 3s, and the Gators shot 54 percent as a team. Freshman guard Riley Kugel pitched in 19 points with his seventh straight double-figure scoring game and fifth-year senior Myreon Jones played a fabulous all-around floor game with 14 points, a career-high 12 rebounds, four assists, two steals and just one turnover. Defensively, Florida held Georgia to just 33 percent for the game, including 4-for-22 from the 3-point line.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Georgia
84.5	Scoring	76.2
.454	Field-goal percentage	.428
.330	3-point percentage	.347
75.7	Scoring defense	71.6
.425	Field-goal percentage defense	.421
.324	3-point percentage defense	.314
35th	KenPom.com overall ranking	70th
18th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	93rd
81st	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	49th
20th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	87th
43rd	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	78th
40th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	60th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They're looking to secure just the second three-game SEC winning streak in Golden's two seasons. UF is currently two games ahead of the 11-8 record of Golden's first campaign. The Gators go

into the game in a four-way tie (with LSU, Ole Miss and Texas A&M) for seventh place in the conference standings and have a chance to move up with a head-to-head win against the Bulldogs, who sit in a three-way tie for fourth (with Kentucky and South Carolina). ... It would seem the Gators have settled on a seven-man core rotation in SEC play, with those chosen players at now less than 20.8 minutes and the next two down on the bench at 7.7. ... Florida had some timely 3-point makes the other night, but the Gators still rank 203rd nationally in 3-point shooting percentage (33.3) and ninth in SEC play (31.7). Defensively, UF is surrendering 3-pointers at just 28.7 percent, which is second in the league, but allowing teams to make 54 percent of their 2s, which is next to last. The Gators haven't forced a lot of turnovers (12.5 percent is 14th in the SEC), but they also have turned it over just 15 times the last two games. ... Guard Will Richard had a phenomenal performance in the Mississippi State victory. He made eight of 15 shots, including four of seven 3s (a couple at critical times), and pulled a career-high nine rebounds, four on the offensive end. Richard's 35-plus minutes were the second-most logged in his two SEC seasons. ... Guard Walter Clayton Jr. is averaging 17.2 points and shooting 87.5 from the free-throw line in the six conference games. His shooting percentages, however, aren't great (38.2 from the floor, 32.6 from distance), but he made some key buckets against Mississippi State, including a pair of 3s in the second half. ... Point guard Zyon Pullin is at 15.5 points in league play, with 24 assists and just four turnovers (none the last two games) despite being the ball-dominant player on offense. He's also at 85.3 from the free-throw line. ... Center Micah Handlogten, after posting a double-double in the road win at Missouri last weekend, had just six points and three boards against the Bulldogs, but in his 22-plus minutes showed some of his best low-post defense in bodying up on MSU standpoint power forward Tolu Smith III and limiting the two-time All-SEC star to just 10 points. ... Forward Tyrese Samuel's scoring and rebounding numbers are down somewhat in league play (that's not unusual), though he's still at 52 percent from the floor and at 27.5 minutes. ... Backup sophomore guard Riley Kugel (10.9 ppg, 3.8 rpg) only scored four points and attempted just four shots over 19 minutes, but finished the game with a team-high plus-10. ... Backup freshman forward Alex Condon (7.8 ppg, 7.0 rpg), who made four huge late free throws in Wednesday's win, is at 69.6 percent from the line in SEC play, but is 10-for-12 over the last four games (83.3 percent). ... Reserve freshman forward Thomas Haugh (3.6 ppg, 3.7 rpg), one of those 7.7-minute subs, has attempted just five shots (with one make) in six conference games.

The Bulldogs

White is 30-21 in his two seasons at UGA and needs just two wins to equal his win total from the '22-23 season when he took over a program that was an abject disaster after going 6-26

overall -- 1-17 in league play -- and guiding it to a 16-16 record. The Bulldogs are 3-1 on the road, with wins at Florida State, Missouri and South Carolina (which just undressed Kentucky in Columbia). They also beat Wake Forest, which handed the Gators an 11-point loss in the ACC/SEC Challenge on Nov. 29. ... Offensively, Georgia ranks next-to-last in the league in effective field-goal percentage, but third in 3-point percentage (35.2) and first in percentage of free throws vs field-goal attempts (44.5), meaning the Bulldogs get to the line, where they convert at 77.7 percent. That's fifth in league play. UGA's conference losses came at home against Tennessee, a game the Bulldogs led until the final minutes, and last week at Kentucky. ... Forward Jabri Abdur-Rahim, in his third year since transferring from Virginia, is having his best season and doing vintage "stretch-4" things. Adbur-Rahim, who poured in a career-high 34 in the loss to Kentucky a week ago, is shooting 40.5 from the 3-point line, with 47 makes. He's also the team's best free-throw shooter at nearly 88 percent. ... Guard Noah Thomasson transferred from Niagara, where he was a first-team All-Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference selection last season alongside Clayton. Thomasson, who in '22-23 ranked 34th nationally in scoring at 19.5 per game, is connecting at 42 percent overall and nearly 35 from 3. ... Center Russel Tchewa, who played at South Florida last season, had the game-winning, old-time 3-point play Wednesday with two seconds left to beat LSU. He's at 51 percent on the season and not a threat from outside. ... Freshman Silas Dembary gets the start at point guard (his 50 assists is second on the team) and splits time there with Justin Hill (9.1 ppg, 3.7 apg, the senior in his second year by way of Longwood who plays starters minutes. ... Backup forward RJ Menendez (9.8 ppg, 4.4 rpg), by way of Illinois, gets in the game early at the wing for RJ Sunahara, who has started all 18 games and averages just 11 minutes. Menendez is a 3-point threat at 41 percent. ... Backup freshman shooting guard Blue Cain (6.6 ppg) was a top-50 prospect out of Knoxville who signed in the summer (and made an official visit to UF). He's at 35.8 percent from the arc, wtih his 24 makes third-best on the team. He dropped in a win over Georgia Tech.

Numbers of Note

UF guard **Will Richard** (5) bombed five 3-pointers in the win at UGA last February.

* .727 — Richard's shooting percentage in UF's win at Athens last February, based on his 8-for-11 marksmanship that included 5-for-8 from distance.

* .777 — UF free-throw percentage over the last five games, based on 73-for-94 from the line.

* 0 — Scholarship players on the Florida roster that played for White, who left after the 2021-22 season.

* 0 — Losing seasons for White during his 10-plus seasons as head coach at Louisiana Tech (2012-15), Florida (2015-22) and Georgia (2022-present). His career record is 273-149 for a winning percentage of .647.

* 1968 — The last year the Gators won a ninth consecutive game in their series against Georgia. The current eight-game winning streak is UF's third-longest in the series, with a chance to equal the nine in a row from 1964-68. Florida's longest run in the series is 11 games, which occurred under Coach Billy Donovan from 2004-09.

Bottom Line

The goal of defending the home floor, especially for teams that harbor postseason aspirations in this brutally difficult conference, cannot be emphasized enough (and especially with two difficult road dates next week).

Gators Calendar

Florida vs Georgia (Saturday, noon)

Florida vs. Georgia

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Tale of the Tape

Team Snapshots

The Gators

The Bulldogs

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Players Mentioned

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Micah Handlogten

Thomas Haugh

Myreon Jones

Riley Kugel

Zyon Pullin

Will Richard

Tyrese Samuel

Footer

Upcoming Events

Upcoming Event: Men's Basketball versus Florida State on Nov. 11, 2025 at 7 PM

Upcoming Event: Men's Basketball versus Miami on Nov. 16, 2025 at 8:30 PM

Upcoming Event: Men's Basketball versus Merrimack on Nov. 21, 2025 at 7 PM

Upcoming Event: Men's Basketball versus TCU on Nov. 27, 2025 at 3 PM

Upcoming Event: Men's Basketball versus Providence/Wisconsin on Nov. 28, 2025 at 3 or 5:30 PM

Florida vs Georgia (Saturday, noon)

Florida vs. Georgia

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Tale of the Tape

Team Snapshots

The Gators

The Bulldogs

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Related News

Players Mentioned

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Micah Handlogten

Thomas Haugh

Myreon Jones

Riley Kugel

Zyon Pullin

Will Richard

Tyrese Samuel

Related Videos

Footer