No. 21 Florida vs Grambling State (Monday, 7 pm)

No. 21 Florida vs. Grambling State

* When: Monday, 7 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (2-0) / Grambling State (1-1)
* TV: SEC Network+ (Kyle Crooks and Mark Wise)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
(with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan)
* Ticket info

Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Alex Condon	F	6-11 / 230	Sophomore	18.0 pts / 3.0 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Sophomore	4.0 pts / 5.- reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Senior	18.0 pts / 5.0 reb
Alijah Martin	G	6-2 / 195	Graduate	14.0 pts / 5.0 reb / 3.5 stl
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Senior	19.0 pts / 3.0 reb / 5.0 ast

Grambling	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Ernest Ross	F	6-9 / 205	Junior	12.5 pts / 7.0 reb
P.J. Eason	F	6-9 / 240	Junior	1.0 pts / 2.0 reb
Antwan Burnett	G/F	6-5 / 205	Junior	12.0 pts / 8.5 reb
Kintavious Dozier	G	6-1 / 195	Senior	15.0 pts / 5.0 reb
Mikale Stevenson	G	6-2 / 175	Junior	13.5 pts / 3.0 reb / 3.5 ast

The Breakdown

Guard **Denzel Aberdeen** flies high during UF's win over Grambling 11 months ago.

SETUP: Florida and Grambling meet for just the second time, but also the second consecutive season. The Gators are coming off Thursday night's 81-60 home victory against Jacksonville, while the Tigers threw a scare Friday night into No. 24 Ole Miss before falling 66-64 at Oxford.

SERIES: UF leads 1-0 by virtue of a 96-57 blowout Dec. 22, 2023 in what was the team's final game before breaking for the holidays. The Gators were led by 17 points from junior wing Will Richard, with forward Tyrese Samuel posting a double-double of 15 points and 10 rebounds, and point guard Zyon Pullin adding 14 points and six assists without a turnover. Florida opened a 17-point lead by hitting nearly 54 percent in the first half and maintained that shooting pace in a game it led by as many as 43 in the second half. Backup sophomore guard Denzel Aberdeen posted career highs of 11 points and five assists over 24 minutes.

ETC: The Gators will look to improve to 3-0 for the first time since 2021.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Grambling
89.5	Scoring	78.0
.525	Field-goal percentage	.496
.240	3-point percentage	.477
71.5	Scoring defense	54.0
.411	Field-goal percentage defense	.305
.392	3-point percentage defense	.200
24th	KenPom.com overall ranking	219th
13th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	279th
51st	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	149th
48th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	266th
N/A	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	N/A
196th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	40th

The Gators

Florida has a couple wins by comfortable final margins, but the Gators have uncharacteristically struggled to rebound the ball and have not shot it well from the 3-point line. Through two games, UF has been stalemated on the glass overall (72-all) and is at minus-six on the offensive end, an area the Gators were ranked eighth nationally a season ago and became one of their calling cards. Florida is shooting 52.5 percent as a team, but 71.8 from the 2-point area. Helping on that front was forward Alex Condon's 7-for-7 performance against the Dolphins and 12-for-13 numbers on the season. But Condon, the No. 9 rebounder in the Southeastern Conference last season at 6.9 per game, has just six rebounds in two games and only one on the offensive end.

Preseason All-SEC first-team Walter Clayton Jr. leads the team in scoring at 19.0 per game, but his two outings have been drastically different relative to the scoring column: 29 against USF and nine against JU. In the latter, however, Clayton also posted seven assists and just one turnover in his 32 minutes and is at 10-to-3 for assist-to-turnover ratio thus far. He's shooting nearly 61 percent overall, despite going only 3-for-11 from the arc.
.
Speaking of wide-ranging numbers, Richard is shooting just shy of 52 percent overall, but the best long-distance shooter on the team is only 3-for-13 from deep (.231). ... Guard Alijah Martin, the transfer from Florida Atlantic, has yet to find his shooting touch from anywhere yet (38.1 overall, 25.0 from distance), but is tied for second on the team in rebounds, second in assists and tops with seven steals (nearly half of the team's 18 steal). ... Reserve forward Sam Alexis, the 6-8 transfer from Tennessee-Chattanooga, is averaging 8.0 points and leads the team in rebounding (6.0 per game) and blocks (2.5) despite playing the eighth-most minutes (15.0 pg).

The Tigers

Grambling guard **Kintavious Dozier** (00) tries on Purdue's 2023 NCAA Player of the Year Zack Edey (15) during their NCAA Tournament first-round loss last March.

Grambling was an NAIA and Division II program for decades before moving to D-1 in 1985. It took nearly four decades to finally reach the NCAA Tournament, as the Tigers beat Texas Southern in the 2024 Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament title game to reach the "Big Dance" for the first time in program history. Grambling beat Montana State in their 16-seed play-in game at Dayton, Ohio, then two nights later fell to No. 1 overall seed Purdue 78-50 at Indianapolis.

The Tigers are in their eighth season under Donte Jackson. His record is 121-103, but Jackson has guided the program to back-to-back 20-win seasons, including their historic March Madness run. The team went 24-9 in '23, only to be upset in the SWAC Tournament, but bounced back last season to go 21-15, including that lopsided loss to the Gators in December.

Grambling returns three starters from last season, including guard and scoring leader Kintavious Dozier, who was held to just one point at the O'Dome 11 months ago, but tallied 15 in the loss at Ole Miss three nights ago. ... Point guard Mikale Stevenson is shooting 47.6 percent from the floor, but has nine turnovers versus seven assists in the two games. ... Guard Antwan Burnett is at 64.3 percent thus far and dropped five of his six 3s. ... Backup guard James Flippin went 4-for-4 from the 3-point line against Ole Miss, helping the Tigers build an eight-point lead at the half. ... Forward Ernest Ross is a transfer from North Carolina State, but he'll have good representation in the house. Ross starred at nearby Alachua (Fla.) Santa Fe High, where helped guide his team to the Class 4A state title game in 2021. ... Grambling out-rebounded Ole Miss 39-33, so don't think that hasn't come up in the UF scout.

Numbers of Note

NBA Hall-of-Famer Willis Reed, who helped guide the 1970 New York Knicks to NBA titles in 1970 and '73, is the greatest player in Grambling basketball history.

* 1 —Wins UF coach Todd Golden needs to reach 100 for his career, including his three seasons (1920-22) as head coach coach at San Francisco.

* 14 —Games on the UF schedule against opponents who made the '24 NCAA Tournament, starting with this one. They are: Grambling, Virginia, North Carolina, Stetson, Kentucky, Tennessee (twice), Texas, South Carolina (twice), Auburn, Mississippi State, Texas A&M and Alabama.

* 25 —Consecutive games by Clayton with at least one made 3-pointer, the seventh-longest streak in program history. He made just one last game.

* 50 —The number worn by Willis Reed during his career (1961-64) at Grambling, where he scored 2,280 career points and averaged 26.6 points and 21.3 rebounds as a senior in '63-64.

* 92.3 —Condon's field-goal percentage on the season, based on his 12-for-13 from the floor that includes two of three from deep.

Bottom Line

The Gators need to make the most of their last tune-up before heading west Friday for the annual showdown against Florida State.

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu

Gators Calendar

No. 21 Florida vs Grambling State (Monday, 7 pm)

No. 21 Florida vs. Grambling State

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Tale of the Tape

The Gators

The Tigers

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Players Mentioned

Denzel Aberdeen

Sam Alexis

Rueben Chinyelu

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Alijah Martin

Zyon Pullin

Will Richard

Tyrese Samuel

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No. 21 Florida vs Grambling State (Monday, 7 pm)

No. 21 Florida vs. Grambling State

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Tale of the Tape

The Gators

The Tigers

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Players Mentioned

Denzel Aberdeen

Sam Alexis

Rueben Chinyelu

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Alijah Martin

Zyon Pullin

Will Richard

Tyrese Samuel

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