Florida Gators

Florida vs. Georgia

 
* What: Southeastern Conference Tournament
* When: Thursday, approximately 9:30 p.m. (ET)
  (Tip-off will be 25 minutes after Ole Miss/Texas A&M meet in session's first game)
* Where: Bridgestone Arena / Nashville, Tenn.
* Records: Florida (21-10) / Georgia (17-15)
* TV: SEC Network (Tom Hart, Dane Bradshaw and Alyssa Lang)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD
  (with Sean Kelley,  Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) / Stations list 

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Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tyrese Samuel	F	6-10 / 239	Graduate	11.2 pts / 7.5 reb
Micah Handlogten	G	7-1 / 236	Sophomore	5.9 pts / 7.3 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Junior	11.2 pts / 3.4 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Junior	17.0 pts / 3.6 reb
Zyon Pullin	G	6-4 / 206	Graduate	15.7 pts / 3.8 reb / 5.0 ast

Georgia	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Dylan James	F	6-9 / 207	Freshman	3.9 pts / 2.4 reb
Russel Tchewa	F	7-0 / 275	Senior	7.9 pts / 6.8 reb
Silas Demary	G	6-5 / 190	Freshman	9.7 pts / 3.7 reb
Blue Cain	G	6-5 / 194	Freshman	7.0 pts / 2.2 reb
Noah Thomasson	G	6-4 / 210	Senior	12.8 pts / 2.7 reb

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and Georgia will meet for the third time this season, this time on a neutral floor in second-round play of the Southeastern Conference Tournament. ... The Gators, as the tournament's No. 6 seed, earned a bye into the second round, while the No. 11-seed Bulldogs got here by defeating 14-seed Missouri 64-59 in Wednesday night's late opening-round matchup. The UF-UGA winner will move into the tournament quarterfinals late Friday night against No. 19 Alabama (21-10, 13-5), which finished third in the league standings and earned one of the event's four double byes. ... Florida leads the all-time series 124-103 after sweeping the two games this season. The Gators won in overtime 102-98 in Gainesville on Jan. 27, after the Bulldogs erased a 21-point deficit to force the extra period, and again at Athens with an 88-82 road win on Feb. 17. In that one, junior guard Walter Clayton Jr. had 21 points to lead five teammates into double-figure scoring, but it was freshman forward Thomas Haugh who stole the show with a career-high 17 points, plus seven rebounds, four on the offensive end, including a big one and subsequent free throw to give his team a two-possession advantage inside a minute to play. Clayton made just one of five 3s, but was seven of 13 inside the arc to go with five rebounds and two steals. ... Florida coach Todd Golden, in his second season with the Gators, is 4-0 against Georgia and its second-year coach, Mike White, who was Golden's predecessor at UF. 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Georgia
84.9	Scoring	74.9
.457	Field-goal percentage	.430
.339	3-point percentage	.331
77.6	Scoring defense	74.7
.433	Field-goal percentage defense	.436
.321	3-point percentage defense	.336
30th	KenPom.com overall ranking	93rd
17th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	102nd
81st	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	76th
32nd	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	127th
35th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	101st
48th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	43rd

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They were one game away from playing the entire 2023-24 regular season without a horrible loss. Then came last weekend's trip to Vanderbilt, which ended in a 79-78 setback to a Commodores

team sitting next to last in the SEC standings with just three league victories. The defeat was an eye-opener because the things that went wrong for the Gators -- rebounding and turnovers -- occurred in areas they had mostly excelled all season. The best way to respond, of course, is for the team to use the loss as a five-alarm alert as to what can happen when players go through the motions. The Commodores were tougher and played harder, full stop, which also had to come as a shock to Golden and his staff, who had gotten mostly outstanding effort from their players this season. ... In the last two weeks, Florida has dropped from the No. 2 offensive rebounding team in the nation to No. 4. That doesn't seem like such a big dip, but the way Vanderbilt absolutely mauled the Gators on that end of the floor was disconcerting. The Commodores, who ranked next to last in the SEC in rebounding margin, whipped the Gators on the glass 41-35 overall and pulverized them 20-6 on the offensive end for a 21-6 advantage in second-chance points. Also of concern: UF turned the ball over 16 times leading to 19 Vandy points, with two of those giveaways in the final 20 seconds and proving the difference in the game. ... Point guard Zyon Pullin's remarkable season was rewarded Monday with first-team All-SEC honors. The California-Riverside transfer is shooting 44.5 percent overall, 44.4 from the 3-point line, and 86.2 from the free-throw line. Pullin's strength, though, has been ball security and efficiency, with his 4.38 assist-to-turnover ratio the best in program history, with 140 assists and just 32 turnovers. He had eight assists and one turnover in the Vandy loss. ... Guard Walter Clayton Jr., UF's leading scorer, was tabbed second-team all-league. The Gators' bucket-getter earned it, but definitely was upset with himself over his two late-game turnovers at Vandy. Maybe a trip back to Nashville will be looked at as a shot at redemption. ...  Backup forward Alex Condon (7.5 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 38 blocks) was placed on the Freshman All-SEC Team, the first UF "big" so honored in 14 years. Condon had a very good game against the Commodores with 10 points (4-7 floor, 1-1 arc, 2-2 free-throw line), eight rebounds, two assists (plus two turnovers) and a steal over 23 minutes. ... Forward Tyrese Samuel and center Micah Handlogten, the team's two leading rebounders at 14.8 combined per game, totaled seven between them over 44 minutes at Vandy -- and none on the offensive end. They average 6.5 offensive boards a game combined. How the duo responds in this tournament might be the team's top story line. ... Guard Will Richard, after ripping Alabama for 23 points four nights earlier, made just one of six shots and missed all three of his 3s, but was the Gators' top rebounder of the day with six. He got four of the Gators' six on the offensive glass. ... Sophomore guard Riley Kugel (9.3 ppg, 3.4 rpg) had eight points on 4-for-5 shooting off the bench, plus a couple rebounds and three assists, but also had four turnovers. ... Freshman forward Thomas Haugh and sophomore guard Denzel Aberdeen totaled three points, one rebound and one assist between them over 20 reserve minutes. 
 

The Bulldogs

They started 4-2 in the league, including a road win at South Carolina (before anyone knew how good the Gamecocks were), but the Bulldogs fell off into a nasty tailspin of six straight losses

(eventually nine of 10) that began, oddly enough, when they rallied from 21 down in the second half and took the Gators into overtime game at the O'Dome. The sixth consecutive loss also came against Florida, at home, and prompted White into an uncharacteristic criticism of his team. The win Wednesday over Missouri was just the third over the previous 11 games, but also guaranteed a winning record for the Bulldogs, which is a far cry from where the program sat when White took over. ... Georgia is rated in the bottom third of just about every relevant category, offense and defense. The Bulldogs will put up a fight, however, and as the Gators learned in January they will not quit, which always has been a calling card of White's teams. Against Mizzou, the Bulldogs led by 12 in the first half, then trailed by eight in the second, but fought back to stick around in the tourney, despite shooting just 40 percent from the floor and getting out-rebounded 42-32. The difference? UGA hit 12 from the 3-point line to Mizzou's 4-for-21. ... Late in the season, UGA has leaned more on playing time for a trio of freshmen, likely taking an early look at what the program hopes to have back in '24-25. Those three freshmen have been accompanied mostly by seniors Noah Thomasson, the Niagara transfer point guard who lit up the Gators for 25 in the last meeting, and massive center Russel Tchewa, the South Florida transfer who did a good job of carving out low-post space in the previous meetings against UF. Thomasson is at 41 percent overall and 34.4 from deep, with a 5-for-6 outing from the arc in the last matchup. Tchewa is at 55 percent for the season (with only one 3-point attempt) and averaged 15.0 points 7.5 rebounds in the two UF games. ... Guard Silas Demary Jr. is one of those freshman building blocks, but has been in that role all season. He's started all but one game, is second behind only Thomasson in minutes per game and is finding his groove as both a driver (team-high 144 free throws) and 3-pointer shooter (his 104 rank second on the team). Good defender too, with a team-best 44 steals. ... Senior Jabri Abdur-Rahim (12.2 ppg, 3.5 rpg), the Bulldogs' second-leading scorer, remains the team's best 3-point shooter by percentage at 35.6, but missed his third straight game Wednesday with a foot injury. ... Since ripping Florida for a career-high 35 points on 13-for-19 shooting and six of 10 from distance, reserve forward RJ Melendez, the Illinois transfer, has just two double-figure scoring games over the last 11. ... Senior guard Justin Hill (8.9 ppg), in his second season since coming from Longwood, is not the ball-dominant point guard or scorer that Thomasson is, but leads the team in assists with 102. He's also capable enough from outside (34 percent, with three 3s Wednesday) that defenses need to close out. ... Guard Blue Cain is third on the team in 3s made with 43 at 35 percent, including 5-for-9 on his way to a team-high 14 points Wednesday. UF fans will recall (or may not want to) how he scored the last seven points of regulation to send that one into overtime. 
 

Numbers of Note

* 0 — Sub-.500 seasons for White over his 13-year career. White had four winning seasons at Louisiana Tech, seven at Florida and is one game over .500 through two seasons at Georgia after taking over a program that went 6-26, including 1-17 in SEC play, in its final season under Tom Crean. 

* .469 — UF's all-time winning percentage in 56 SEC Tournaments, based on a 46-52 record. 

* 4 — SEC Tournament championships for the Florida program (2004, '06, '07 and '14). 

* 35 — Most points by a Gator in a SEC Tournament game, courtesy of Anthony Roberson in a 91-69 defeat of Vanderbilt on March 13, 2004 at Atlanta. 

* 153 — Career points scored by center Dametri Hill (1993-96) in 11 SEC Tournament games, a program record. 
 

Bottom Line

Just one appearance in the tournament semifinals for the Gators over the last nine seasons. Is this the year they make a run?