Florida Gators

Florida vs. Colorado

* What: NCAA South Region
* When: Friday, 4:30 p.m. (EST)
* Where: Gainbridge Fieldhouse / Indianapolis
* Records: Florida (24-11) / Colorado (25-10)
* TV: TBS (Kevin Harlan, Dan Bonner, Stan Van Gundy and Andy Katz)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD
  (with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) / Stations list
* Ticket info

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Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tyrese Samuel	F	6-10 / 239	Graduate	14.0 pts / 7.5 reb
Alex Condon	F	6-11 / 230	Freshman	7.7 pts / 6.3 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Junior	11.3 pts / 4.0 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Junior	17.1 pts / 3.6 reb
Zyon Pullin	G	6-4 / 206	Graduate	15.6 pts / 4.0 reb / 4.9 ast

 

Colorado	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Luke O'Brien	F	6-8 / 222	Senior	6.5 pts / 3.8 reb
Eddie Lampkin	F	6-11 / 265	Senior	10.3 pts / 7.1 reb
Tristan da Silva	G	6-8  / 220	Senior	15.9 pts / 5.1 reb
J'Vonne Hadley	G	6-6 / 205	Senior	11.6 pts / 6.0 reb
KJ Simpson	G	6-2 / 189	Junior	19.6 pts / 5.9 reb / 4.8 ast

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and Colorado will meet in first-round play of the NCAA South Region, with the Gators as the No. 7 seed and Buffaloes the No. 10. ... UF earned its at-large berth on the strength of an 11-7 run through the Southeastern Conference regular season (good enough for sixth place), topped off by a dash of three straight victories to the conference tournament last weekend in Nashville, Tenn., before falling in the title game 86-67 to 12th-ranked and fourth-seeded Auburn. ... CU, meanwhile, posted a 13-7 record (third place) in the final season of the Pac-12 Conference, then reached the league tournament title game, only to be upset by Oregon, 75-68, to snap an eight-game winning streak. ... The Gators and Buffaloes have never played in men's basketball. ... Florida is 45-19 all time in the NCAA Tournament, with 11 appearances in the Sweet 16, nine trips to the Elite Eight and five Final Fours, the last in 2014. ... The Buffaloes are 12-17 all time in the NCAA Tournament, with four Sweet 16, six Elite Eights, six Elite Eights and two Final Fours, the last in 1955. 
 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Colorado
85.1	Scoring	78.7
.456	Field-goal percentage	.492
.342	3-point percentage	.391
78.5	Scoring defense	70.7
.436	Field-goal percentage defense	.433
.322	3-point percentage defense	.313
29th	KenPom.com overall ranking	24th
14th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	27th
83rd	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	35th
18th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	184th
29th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	25th
29th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	74th

 

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They're back in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021 and for the 18th time since 1999. The Gators are 16-5 all-time in first-round tournament play, with a run of eight straight trips

to the round of 32. The last time UF failed to advance out of the first round was 2010 when the Gators lost to Brigham Young 99-92 in double-overtime at Oklahoma City. ... Florida will be down a man (a big man) after 7-foot-1 center Micah Handlogten (5.3 ppg, 6.9 rpg) fractured his left leg barely two minutes into the SEC Championship game defeat. The graphic nature of the injury sent an emotional tsunami through the team, but the Gators must either embrace the next-man-up mentality or their return to March Madness will be brief. ... SEC All-Freshman team forward Alex Condon will start in Handlogten's place and will be just fine. He'll also make history, also. Condon will become the first player at Florida to start the first game of his career in the NCAA Tournament. Amazing. In the four SEC Tournament games, Condon shot 53.6 percent from the floor and averaged 9.3 points in a little over 22 minutes per game. The latter number will probably increase up to 25, maybe more. ... Freshman backup forward Thomas Haugh (3.7 ppg, 3.9 rpg) will play a lot more than his 14.5 minutes per game. Haugh has all the fight and Energizer Bunny qualities of Condon. He doesn't always number in the box score, but he's capable of doing so (like his 17 points, 7 rebounds in a win at Georgia). He was called on for 25-plus minutes Sunday (third-most of the season) and finished with 11 points, four rebounds and two blocks. ... Speaking of the front court, forward Tyrese Samuel had an excellent SEC Tournament, even with that 9-for-23 night at the free-throw line in the win over Georgia in the second round (he went 11-for-13 the rest of the way). As the fifth-year grad, Samuel has a lot on his plate, as far as stepping up bigger than ever without Handlogten, who metrically was one of the best offensive rebounders in the country. Samuel shot 56.3 percent from the floor and averaged 2.8 offensive rebounds per game. His 11 double-doubles were the most by a UF player in a season since Al Horford in 2007. ...  All this talk about the front court, but the Gators will go as do their guards, starting with first-team All-SEC point guard Zyon Pullin, who came to UF to experience the NCAA Tournament and now wants to make the most of it. Pullin, who ranks third in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.76), shot 44.5 percent for the season, led the Gators at 44.7 from the 3-point line and was clutch from the free-throw line 84.7 percent as well. He has 158 assists to just 42 turnovers. ... Walter Clayton Jr., named to SEC's second team, is in his second straight NCAA Tournament after guiding Iona to the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament championships in 2023. Clayton scored 15 points and had four assists in his lone NCAA crack, but his tournament was brief, as the Gaels faced eventual national champion Connecticut in Round 1. Iona, though, was the only team during the Huskies' run to the title to be ahead of halftime. Clayton finished this at 42.6 percent overall, 36.3 from 3 (with a team-high 89) and led the team at the free-throw line at 87.6 percent. ... Junior wing Will Richard had a big tournament game against Texas A&M with 19 points, including four 3s. He may be called on this game (and future games, if the Gators are so lucky) to play some at the "4" spot -- or a four-guard lineup -- if the Gators need to steal some possessions and give their diminished rotation of bigs some help. Richard played the "4" almost exclusively last year when forward Colin Castleton's season ended with a broken hand. ... And what about Denzel Aberdeen (3.3 ppg)? Without his stunning performance off the bench in the SEC semifinals against Texas A&M -- 20 points, six of nine from the floor, 4-for-5 from distance, 4-for-4 at the line, plus four steals -- no way the Gators come back from 18 down to win the game. The 6-5, 190-pound sophomore isn't just penciled into the rotation now, he's penned in. ... The situation with Riley Kugel (9.1 ppg, 3.5 rpg) will be a game-time one. Kugel played 21 minutes and went just 1-for-6 in the win over Georgia and went 6-for-6 from the free-throw line to help preserve the victory. The next game, he played 16 minutes and scored four points, with two turnovers against Alabama. He was a DNP/Coach's Decision against A&M and Auburn.  
 

The Buffaloes

They're in the 14th season under Coach Tad Boyle, a native of Greeley, Colo. He played at Kansas, then returned to the Rocky Mountain State to be a high school coach before embarking on

an assistant's journey that took him to Oregon, Tennessee, Jacksonville State and Wichita State before landing his first head coach job at Northern Colorado. Though he had a losing record there, his last team went 25-8 and got him the job in Boulder, where he's gone 297-192, with nine 20-win seasons, seven NCAA berths and four NITs. The '24-25 team has produced the most wins of Boyle's CU tenure and finished 5-5 in Quadrant 1 games, 11-10 in Q1 and Q2s and 14-0 in Q3-4 (no bad losses, in other words). Boyle's philosophy is rooted in defense, rebounding and controlling tempo, but the Buffaloes will run when the opportunity presents. Efficiency-wise, the Buffs are very, very solid on both ends (five players averaging in double figures; seven shot at least 38 percent from the 3-point line; four averaging at least five rebounds per game). Teamwise, they're No. 20 in the country in effective field-goal percentage (55.1), No. 8 in 3-point percentage (39.1), 55th in 2-point percentage (53.6) and 13th at the free-throw line (78.1). On the other end, CU protects the defensive glass (No. 29 nationally, allowing just 24.9 offensive rebounds), which matches against a season-long UF strength (one severely impacted, however, by the injury to Handlogten). ... The Buffs close out on 3-point shooters also, allowing just 41 percent. ... ... Guard KJ Simpson has been one of the most efficient players in the country this season (No. 10 individually on KenPom). He's at 47.4 percent overall, 44.6 from deep and 87.6 at the line, with 205 rebounds and another 169 assists. Simpson is a ball-dominant guard who is the head of the CU snake. He will try to put the Gators in defensive dilemmas in ball-screen coverage. He didn't have a great night shooting against Boise State, going six of 18 and just one of six from deep, but still ended up with 19 points, 11 rebounds and four assists. ... Forward Tristan da Silva is a four-year CU player from Munich, Germany. He's at 48.7 percent, 38.2 from deep and another high-percentage guy at the line (83.5). ... Freshman Cody Williams (12.0 ppg, 3.2 rpg) has been banged up most of the season and has come off the bench the last eight games, but the 6-8, 190-pound freshman is considered the team's best NBA prospect because of his length, athleticism and ability to guard. ... Guard J'Vonne Hadley, in his second season since transferring from Northeastern, is another highly efficient two-way player; over 54 percent shooting, nearly 42 from deep, 84 at the line and second on the team in steals. ... Forward Eddie Lampkin Jr. is an absolute load and probably checks in, scale-wise, a few dozen pounds more than his listed 265. He gets where he wants in the post, doesn't stray from there (zero 3-point attempts this season) and about a third of his team-high 159 rebounds have come on the offensive end. ... Four-year Buff Luke O'Brien is a long guard with a nice 3-point stroke (38.5 percent). ... Julian Hammond III is a reserve guard who comes in with his 3-point trigger loaded (40 percent). 
 

Numbers of Note

* .730 — UF's all-time tournament winning percentage, based on that 42-19 record.

* 4 — Active Division I players with at least 1,800 points, 550 rebounds and 550 assists. Pullin is one of them, along with Baylor Scheierman (Creighton), Tristen Newton (UConn) and RayJ Dennis (Baylor).

* 37 — Points scored by BYU guard Jimmer Fredette in the Gators' 99-92 double-OT loss in the 2010 NCAA Tournament at Oklahoma City, the most ever scored against UF in a tournament game. Fredette went 13 of 26 from the floor, 3-for-8 from the 3-point arc, hit eight of 10 free throws and dished three assists in 46 minutes. UF got 27 from freshman guard Kenny Boynton and a 20/10 double-double from junior forward Chandler Parsons. 

* 500 — The Gators have a chance to have three different players hit the 500-point milestone in a season for the first time in program history. Clayton is already there with 600 points. Pullin (499) needs one point and Samuel (489) needs 11.  

* 1955 — The last year Colorado was in the Final Four, where the Buffs lost to San Francisco, led by Bill Russell. CU also reached the Final Four in 1942. 
 

Bottom Line

Time to dance.