Florida Gators

Florida vs. No. 16 Alabama

 
* When: Tuesday, 7 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (20-9, 10-6) / Alabama (20-9, 12-4)
* TV: ESPN (Tom Hart, Jimmy Dykes, and Marty Smith)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD
  (with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) / Stations list
* Ticket info

---

Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Tyrese Samuel	F	6-10 / 239	Graduate	13.5 pts / 7.8 reb
Micah Handlogten	C	7-1 / 236	Sophomore	6.2 pts / 7.5 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Junior	11.0 pts / 3.8 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Junior	16.9 pts / 3.7 reb
Zyon Pullin	G	6-4 / 206	Graduate	15.4 pts / 3.8 reb / 5.0 ast

Alabama	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Grant Nelson	F	6-11 / 230	Senior	11.9 pts / 5.5 reb
Jarin Stevenson	F	6-11 / 210	Freshman	5.3 pts / 2.7 reb
Rylan Griffen	G	6-6 / 190	Sophomore	11.4 pts / 3.7 reb
Aaron Estrada	G	6-3 / 190	Senior	13.3 pts / 5.4 reb / 4.5 ast
Mark Sears	G	6-1 / 185	Senior	20.7 pts / 4.2 reb / 4.1 ast

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and No. 16 Alabama meet in a Southeastern Conference game between two of the upper-echelon teams in the league in what will be a rematch of a hotly contested game less than two weeks ago at Tuscaloosa. The Gators, out of The Associated Press Top 25 for the first time in three weeks (but hanging in at No. 25 in USA Today Coaches poll), are coming off Saturday's 82-76 loss at 18th-ranked South Carolina, a game they led by 10 with 12 minutes to play. The loss dumped UF into sixth place in the SEC standings and was a blow to UF's shot at a top-four seed and double-bye in the SEC Tournament next week at Nashville, Tenn. Later that night, the Crimson Tide was at home to square off against No. 4 Tennessee in a showdown between two teams tied for first in the league. Bama led by seven in the second half and by three inside eight minutes before the Volunteers seized command and handed the Tide an 81-74 defeat, dumping them into a tie with South Carolina for second place. Alabama can still win the conference, but has to beat the Gators for that to happen and hope for some help. ... The Tide lead the all-time series 79-70, including three straight victories, most recently the 98-93 overtime win at Tuscaloosa on Feb. 21. In that one, guard Aaron Estrada put back a missed 3-point shot with seven seconds left and Florida guard Walter Clayton Jr. missed a 3-point attempt that would have tied the game with three seconds remaining. Bama forward Grant Nelson led with 22 points points and eight rebounds, while Mark Sears  totaled 17 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and a very big steal late in the overtime. Estrada had 20 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. The Gators were led by Clayton, who poured in a game-high 27 points to go with eight rebounds and five assists over 40 minutes. ... UF coach Todd Golden is 0-2 in the series, while Bama coach Nate Oats is 3-1. ... The game will mark the first between two ranked teams at the O'Dome in the month of March since the No. 1 Gators faced No. 25 Kentucky in the 2014 regular-season finale. 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Alabama
84.4	Scoring	90.9
.455	Field-goal percentage	.481
.339	3-point percentage	.375
77.2	Scoring defense	79.3
.436	Field-goal percentage defense	.437
.324	3-point percentage defense	.320
31st	KenPom.com overall ranking	8th
15th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	1st
87th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	100th
32nd	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	13th
33rd	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	7th
43rd	Overall strength of schedule ranking	2nd

Team Snapshots

The Gators

They have a chance at another gold-star home victory (as in a Quadrant 1, per the NCAA Evaluation Tool) over a ranked opponent. The Gators are 1-1 in that scenario thus far this season,

having lost the SEC opener against Kentucky in a close game and blowing out Auburn last month. Overall, UF is 2-5 against ranked foes, with three of the losses on the road and one at a neutral site. ... The game will serve as "Senior Night" for two prominent grad transfers, as well as two walk-ons who have done full tours of duty with the program. ... Though the Gators were right there Saturday with a chance to pull out a huge road win at South Carolina, they took a step back on both ends of the floor with their inability to attack the Gamecocks 1-3-1 zone defense coupled with surrendering 58-percent from the floor in the second half. UF also was soft on the glass and fouled too much, sending USC to the line for 31 free throws. If either of those deficiencies (rebounding and fouling) rear themselves against the scoring-juggernaut Tide, the Gators will not win. ... Point guard Zyon Pullin, by way of California-Riverside, and forward Tyrese Samuel, who transferred from Seton Hall, have helped carry the team this season and been a huge part of the program's transition from a losing-record to likely NCAA-bound. They'll be honored in a pre-game ceremony, along with injured wing Julian Rishwain (transfer from San Francisco) and walk-ons Alex Klatsky and Jack May. ... Pullin had another stat-stuffing performance (18 points, 7 assists 4 rebounds) against the Gamecocks. Samuel, after posting a career-high 28 points in a win over Missouri three nights earlier, had just 13 points, four rebounds and never really looked comfortable working from the middle of the zone like he did in the previous outing when the Tigers went with a 2-3 for most of the game. ... Guard Walter Clayton Jr. bombed in six 3-pointers and kept his team very much in the game at Columbia. Unfortunately, he also turned the ball over six times to help keep the Gamecocks in the game. Ball security has been a strength of the team most of the season. More live-ball turnovers against the Tide will end in transition 3-point opportunities the likes of which Bama thrives on. ... Guard Will Richard had a tough shooting day at South Carolina, going 0-for-4 from the floor and failing to score for only the second time in his two UF seasons (only the third time in his three-year career). Richard, who equaled his career high of five 3s a week earlier in a win over Vanderbilt, has just four points in the two games that followed, They'll need his stroke against the high-scoring Tide. ... Also scoreless against the Gamecocks: Micah Handlogten. Not that the Gators depend on him for points, but he only attempted one shot and finished with five rebounds, just one on the offensive end. ... Sophomore guard Riley Kugel played 29 minutes, his most over the past six games, scored 10 points, hit a couple 3s and grabbed five rebounds in his finest performance since scoring 20 against Auburn. ... Backup freshman forward Thomas Haugh had his best outing since that great game at Georgia, with nine points, six rebounds and a couple assists in 12 highly efficient minutes. ... Reserve freshman forward Alex Condon had six and two rebounds in just 14 minutes.
 

The Crimson Tide

No program in the SEC has won more games than Alabama since Oats came into the league for the 2019-20 season. A former high school math teacher who distinguished

himself at the University of Buffalo, Oats is 112-31 in his five seasons, including 61-27 in SEC play, with regular-season and conference tournament championships in both 2021 and '23. A couple of Oats' past Bama teams were positively elite on the defensive end, but the '23-24 Crimson Tide rank No. 1 in the country in offensive efficiency and lead the league in virtually every offensive category. Bama, which at 90.7 points per game is tied for No. 1 nationally, scores at 57.8 percent from the 2-point area (9th nationally), 37.5 percent from the 3-point line (22nd) and knocks down 79.0 percent of its free throws (8th). Defensively, the Tide rate sixth in the SEC, but beating them either will require scoring with them (which the Gators can do) or slow them down (questionable). ... The Tide are also battle-tested, having played the second-toughest schedule in the country. Since defeating Florida, they've dropped two of four. Besides falling to the Vols, the Tide also got smashed at Kentucky 117-95, which speaks to a defense that can be exploited by really good offenses. ... Guard Mark Sears probably will finish second to Tennessee's Dalton Knecht for SEC Player of the Year, but he's had a phenomenal season and certainly (in addition to first-team All-SEC status) will be named to a handful of All-America teams. In his second season since transferring in from Ohio U, Sears is at 22 points per game in conference play, 49.1 percent from the floor, 41.6 from 3 and 91.7 at the free-throw line. On a team that boasts four players with at least 42 makes from distance, Sears tops the squad with 68, while ranking second in assists with 120. He's a pure playmaker. ... Sears scored 22 in the UT loss, but was just 2-for-8 from distance. So was Aaron Estrada, the guy whose putback daggered the Gators in the first meeting. Estrada, the Hofstra transfer, had 16 points, eight rebounds and four assists, but three nights earlier at Ole Miss had a triple-double of 18 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. ... And then there's Rylan Griffen, who is basically a third point guard in the Bama starting lineup. He, too, struggled against Tennessee's elite defense (2-for-11, 1-for-8 from 3), but against the Gators he scored 20 points, made nine of his 15 shots (9-for-11 from 2), grabbed eight rebounds and dished eight assists. ... Stretch-5 forward Grant Nelson, the transfer from North Dakota State, poured in 22 against the Gators on 8-for-11 inside the arc and grabbed eight rebounds. ... The status of 3-point shooting specialist Latrell Wrightsell Jr. (9.0 ppg, 44.5 percent from 3 with 59 makes, 27-for-27 from the free-throw line) remains uncertain. He suffered a concussion during a practice two weeks ago and has missed the last four games. With Wrightsell sidelined, the Tide have opted to play bigger, with Jarin Stevenson in the starting lineup and the backup forward duo of 6-10 senior Nick Pringle (6.5 ppg, 4.6 rpg) and 6-10 freshman Sam Walters, the Florida product who killed the Gators with four 3s off the bench, getting more minutes. ... Speaking of Bama reserves, little-used forward Mohamad Wague should get quite the reception from the Rowdy Reptiles. Wague was suspended for one game for throwing an intentional foreman into Condon's head in the first meeting. The flagrant foul not only went unnoticed during the game, but officials called a foul on Condon on the play. Wague was suspended by the SEC after the fact. He had to sit out the following game against Kentucky.   
 

Numbers of Note

* minus-.12 — Points-per-possession differential for UF's offensive efficiency when facing zone defenses as opposed to man-to-man, based on .99 points per 100 possessions vs. man and .87 vs. zone.  

* 1 — Offensive rebounds grabbed by Florida in the second half of their loss at South Carolina, a digit that flies in the face of this team's identity this season. If the Gators don't offensive rebound, the offense cannot be the efficient scoring machine they've been. 

* 77 — Combined 3-point attempts by Alabama and Tennessee in their game Saturday, including 37 by the Tide. The two teams made just 21 for 27.2 percent. 

* 92.1 — Average score by Alabama opponents in the Tide's nine losses, with the lowest total the 81 scored by Tennessee, which with its top-3 defense thoroughly frustrated Bama in both their meetings. The Tide averaged just 72.5 points in the two losses against the Vols, a minus-18.4 off the Alabama season average. 

* 1992 — The last year the Gators lost a third consecutive game in their series against the Tide, with Bama looking for a fourth straight. From a March 4, 1989 loss at Tuscaloosa to a March 13, 1992 loss in the SEC Tournament at Birmingham, the Gators dropped nine straight in the series, with a combination of Norm Sloan, Don DeVoe and Lon Kruger on the sidelines facing o iconic Bama coach Wimp Sanderson. After Sanderson left following the '92 season, Florida won 29 of the next 39 meetings, including a stretch of 11 straight for 2009-15.
 

Bottom Line

Some weird stuff would have to happen for the Gators to be left out of the NCAA Tournament field, starting with losses in each of their final two regular-season games, followed by an early exit in the NCAA Tournament. A win Tuesday, however, would cement UF's place in the bracket; and probably a solid seed, as well.