Florida Gators

No. 24 Florida vs. Missouri

 
* When: Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (19-8, 9-5) / Missouri (8-19, 0-14)
* TV: SEC Network (Mark Morgan and Mark Wise)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD
              (Sean Kelley and Lee Humphrey) / Stations list
* Ticket info

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Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tyrese Samuel	F	6-10 / 239	Graduate	13.0 pts / 7.8 reb
Micah Handlogten	G	7-1 / 236	Sophomore	6.2 pts / 7.4 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Junior	11.7 pts / 3.8 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Junior	16.9 pts / 3.8 reb
Zyon Pullin	G	6-4 / 206	Graduate	15.0 pts / 3.9 reb / 4.9 ast

Missouri	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Noah Carter	F	6-6 / 235	Senior	11.7 pts / 5.2 reb
Jordan Butler	C	7-0 / 230	Freshman	2.1 pts / 1.9 reb
Tamar Bates	G	6-5 / 195	Junior	13.6 pts / 2.8 reb
Sean East	G	6-3 / 180	Senior	17.0 pts / 3.4 reb / 4.1 ast
Nick Honor	G	5-10 / 200	Senior	10.9 pts / 1.3 reb

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

No. 24 Florida and Missouri meet in the second game of their season series as Southeastern Conference rotating opponents, this time with the Gators having the home floor. ... UF is playing some of the best basketball in the league and is coming off Saturday's 77-64 defeat of Vanderbilt, which marked the Gators' eighth victory in the last 10 games. A win would put the program at 20 in the month of February for only the second time in the last 10 years (2017). Mizzou has lost 14 straight (17 of the previous 18), all of them SEC games, the last an 88-73 setback Saturday at Arkansas. The Tigers are trying to avoid joining Vanderbilt 2019 as the only SEC team to go winless in an 18-game league season. ... Florida leads the all-time series 10-4, with all the games coming since Missouri joined the SEC for the 2012-13 athletic season. The Gators have won three straight, dating to 2022, including the 79-67 victory at Columbia on Jan. 20. In that one, forward Tyrese Samuel scored 17 points and center Micah Handlogten had a double-double of 10 points and 13 rebounds in what was UF's first road victory of the season. All told, the Gators had five players in double-figure scoring after shooting well enough to win at 44.6 percent, but it was their work on the glass that made the biggest difference. UF out-rebounded the Tigers 40-27 overall and 13-4 on the offensive end for a 13-2 edge in second-chance points. Florida led by just four at halftime, but limited Mizzou to 10 second-half field goals and only one 3-pointer, despite an offensive eruption from guard Tamar Bates (read on).

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Missouri
84.8	Scoring	72.0
.453	Field-goal percentage	.439
.335	3-point percentage	.326
77.1	Scoring defense	74.9
.433	Field-goal percentage defense	.439
.325	3-point percentage defense	.341
25th	KenPom.com overall ranking	146th
13th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	129th
84th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	180th
33rd	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	240th
30th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	150th
37th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	49th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They debuted last week in the Associated Press Top 25 for the first time this season and held their spot at No. 24 by splitting a couple games, including the 98-93 midweek overtime loss at 12th-ranked

Alabama. UF is tied with Kentucky for fifth place in the SEC standings, but just a game behind Auburn and South Carolina for third, with a huge road game against the 18th-ranked Gamecocks coming up Saturday. First things first, though, and that means -- as the Gators did in defeating next-to-last Vandy over the weekend -- defending the home floor against an opponent they should handle handily. UF is 12-1 at home this season, including 6-1 in league play, most recently the defeat of the Commodores during which the Gators never trailed, shot 47 percent for the game and hit nine 3s while defending at 36 percent overall and 5-for-22 from distance. For the second consecutive game, however, Florida was out-rebounded, if only marginally. Vandy won the glass 38-37, including 12-10 on the offensive end. That development came three days after first-place Alabama had a plus-10 advantage in an area where UF had been among the best in the country all season. Missouri, by contrast, is a terrible rebounding team, so this is a chance at a get-well card. ... Wing Will Richard, who combined for five 3-pointers (on 20 attempts) the previous four games, hit five treys on nine attempts against the Commodores on his way to a game-high 21 points. He's now at 31.1 in league play and trying to work toward his overall season average of 34.4 and career average of 37 percent. ... Guard Walter Clayton Jr. poured in 19 points with a trio of 3s on seven attempts. UF's scoring leader is averaging 21.6 points over his previous five games, but hitting just 42 percent overall and 30 from deep. ...  Point guard Zyon Pullin had his string of 23 consecutive games in double-figure scoring snapped against Vandy after making just one of eight shots and finishing with just two points, the fewest since his 2019-20 freshman year at California-Riverside. Pullin, though, also had three rebounds, six assists and just one turnover in 34 minutes on his way to a plus-25 on-the-floor line. ... Forward Tyrese Samuel's 15 points equaled his most over six games. He also had six boards and a couple blocks. ... Center Micah Handlogten was mostly a non-factor against undersized Vandy due to foul trouble. He failed to score, grabbed three boards, blocked one shot and fouled out in just under 14 minutes. That left 6-11 freshman forward Alex Condon to pick up the slack on his way to eight points and nine rebounds in 26 minutes off the bench. ... Backup forward Thomas Haugh had seven points and two rebounds while bench mate guard Denzel Aberdeen had three points, two rebounds, one assist and a turnover in 15 minutes. ... Sophomore guard Riley Kugel, for the second straight game, saw limited playing time. After a scoreless less-than-three-minutes at Alabama, Kugel had two points, one rebound and a turnover in six minutes against the Commodores. He did not play in the second half.  
 

The Tigers

Coach Dennis Gates led the Tigers to the 2023 NCAA Tournament (and won a game) in his first season, but is now just 33-29 overall and 11-21 in SEC play over his two seasons. It probably

should have been an early indicator when the Tigers lost 73-72 to Jackson State in the fifth game of the season. Then again, Missouri beat Pittsburgh on the road in the ACC/SEC Challenge in late-November and stood at 8-5 heading into SEC play. The Tigers have come close a few times in their 14 league losses (by two in overtime against South Carolina, by six at Texas A&M, by three at Ole Miss, jjust five last week against Tennessee, which is now tied for first), so there's a case to be made they're due. In Saturday's loss at Arkansas, they were tied with about 10 minutes to go when the Razorbacks finished on a 38-23 tear to win by 15. After losing to the Volunteers the game before, Gates threw his team under the bus with a profane post-game session where he criticized their toughness and inability (read: unwillingness) to draw fouls. ... Missouri is the second-worst defensive rebounding team among the nation's so-called power conference programs. That's an obvious area the Gators should be able to exploit, as in the first meeting. ... Wing Sean East II is in his second season after transferring from Bradley (and Massachusetts before that) and has outstanding offensive numbers. He's at 52.4 percent from the floor and 47 percent from the 3-point line, which would lead the league if he had more attempts. East's 85.3 percent from the free-throw line is among the SEC leaders. In the Arkansas loss, East ripped the Hogs for 33 points on 9-for-14 shooting (without attempting a 3) and went 15-for-16 from the line. He's averaged 27.3 points over the previous three games, so he's coming in feeling it. ... While East tops the the Tigers in most offensive categories, guard Tamar Bates, the Indiana transfer, definitely will be top of mind for the Gators after he hung a career-high 36 in the first meeting. East knocked down 13 of his 21 shots, just one of four 3s, but all nine of his free throws. ... Guard Nick Honor was the only Tiger besides Bates to hit double-figure scoring in the last UF game with 10 points. Honor is a short and stocky guy who nonetheless has managed to launch more 3s than anyone on his team (162) and banged them at 39.5 percent. ... Forward Noah Carter, who Coach Todd Golden and his staff had portal conversations with when they first got to UF, will play as hard as anyone on the floor. He's the team's rebounding leader with 140 on the season, with the next closest Tiger (East) way back at just 85. ... 7-foot freshman Jordan Butler has worked his way into the starting lineup, replacing 7-5 Connor Vanover, but is still very much finding his way and only playing about 11 minutes a game. Butler is at 38 percent from the floor, only 4-for-24 from distance and 56 percent from the free-throw line. Vanover (3.6 ppg, 2.5 rpg), by way of California, Arkansas and Oral Roberts, is coming off the bench now. He had his hands full with Handlogten last game.  
 

Numbers of Note

* 4 — SEC players to score at least 36 points in a game this season: Khalif Battle (42 vs Missouri); Texas A&M's Wade Taylor IV (41 vs Arkansas), Tennessee's Dalton Knecht (three times, high of 39) and Bates (36). The latter two did so against the Gators.

* plus-13.8 — Combined difference of Florida's season rebounding margin (plus-7.9) versus Missouri's season rebounding margin (minus-5.9), which the Gators hope shows up on the glass.

* 41.1 — Combined 3-point shooting of East, Bates and Honor on the season, based on 124 makes on 302 attempts. The Gators do not want that trio (or even two of them) to get comfortable in their building.

* 353rd — Where the Tigers rank in defensive rebounding among the nation's 362 Division I teams. The only teams yielding more than Missouri's 35.0 percent of offensive rebounds are Merrimack, Mississippi, Chicago State, Mississippi Valley State, Cleveland State, Detroit Mercy, Florida International, Coppin State and Morgan State. 

* 2012 — The last year the Gators had a player score at least 20 points in 10 games, as Clayton has done this season. That player was junior guard Kenny Boynton, who did it 13 times for a UF squad that advanced to the Elite Eight for a second straight season. Clayton's 10 games of at least 20 points rank sixth this century, one behind Anthony Roberson's 11 in 2004-05. 
 

Bottom Line

Any comment here would just state the obvious.