No. 2 Florida vs Oklahoma (Tuesday, 7 pm)

No. 2 Florida vs. Oklahoma

* When: Tuesday, 7 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (22-3, 9-3) / Oklahoma (16-9, 3-9)
* TV: ESPN2 (Karl Ravech, Jimmy Dykes and Molly Magrath)
* 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
Thomas Haugh	F	6-9 / 215	Sophomore	8.7 pts / 6.2 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Sophomore	5.5 pts / 6.5 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Senior	13.0 pts / 4.6 reb
Denzel Aberdeen	G	6-5 / 190	Junior	8.6 pts / 2.1 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Senior	17.2 pts / 3.6 reb / 4.3 ast

Oklahoma	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Jalon Moore	F	6-7 / 215	Senior	17.2 pts / 5.8 reb
Sam Goodwin	F	6-10 / 240	Senior	5.8 pts / 5.2 reb
Duke Miles	G	6-2 / 188	Graduate	10.6 pts / 2.6 reb
Brycen Goodine	G	6-4 / 190	Graduate	8.1 pts / 2.3 reb
Jeremiah Fears	G	6-4 / 182	Freshman	15.2 pts / 3.9 reb / 3.8 ast

The Breakdown

SETUP: Second-ranked Florida and Oklahoma meet in a Southeastern Conference game between two teams on opposite ends of the league standings. The Gators, winners of four straight and up a notch in the Associated Press poll with their highest ranking in a decade, are coming off Saturday night's 88-67 defeat of SEC-winless South Carolina, a game that marked the team's first against an opponent outside the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) top 50 since facing the Gamecocks on the road seven games before. The Sooners, meanwhile, have lost four straight (and five of six), most recently an 82-79 home defeat Saturday against LSU, which came to Norman with just one league win on the season. UF currently sits in a two-way tie with Texas A&M for third place in the SEC standings, while OU is alone in 14th place (third from the bottom).

SERIES: Oklahoma leads 3-2, with three consecutive victories, including two neutral-site wins sandwiched around one on its home floor. The two teams last met Dec. 20, 2022 in the inaugural Jumpman Invitational at Charlotte, N.C., where the Sooners took advantage of stone-cold Gators shooting in the second half to claim a 62-53 victory. OU guard Grant Sherfield scored a game-high 22 points and hit four of six shots from the 3-point line. Center Tanner Groves had a double-double of 13 points and 10 rebounds. UF led 31-29 at halftime, but shot just 32 percent in the second and went 0-for-9 from the arc (2 of 22 for the game). UF got 22 points and eight rebounds from fifth-year forward Colin Castleton, but he needed help on the perimeter. There wasn't any.

ETC: This will mark the Sooners' first visit to Gainesville. The two programs were contracted to play a home-and-home several years back. The first of the two games was supposed to bring OU to town, but the Sooners requested delays, then Covid hit. The Gators honored their half of the deal with a trip (and 74-67 loss) to Norman in 2021, but the game was never returned and the contract dissolved after it was announced Oklahoma was joining the SEC.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Oklahoma
83.8	Scoring	77.7
.471	Field-goal percentage	.467
.351	3-point percentage	.359
66.5	Scoring defense	72.5
.390	Field-goal percentage defense	.443
.282	3-point percentage defense	.293
4th	KenPom.com overall ranking	45th
4th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	33rd
9th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	68th
76th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	133rd
4th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	52nd
28th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	50th

The Gators

The four-game winning streak has come despite a flurry of injuries that have forced Coach Todd Golden and his staff into three different starting combinations after starting the same five for the season's first 21 games. The impact, the numbers suggest, has been minimal, as Florida has combined to shoot 53.2 percent overall and 43.2 percent from the 3-point line, while totaling 85 assists and 51 made 3s over those four games. Regarding the former two numbers, that's an average of 21.3 assists and 12.8 treys per. That will win a lot of games. Now, roll in what UF has done defensively over that stretch, allowing just 44.8 percent from the floor and 30.0 from deep, despite the rotation disruption, and there are multiple reasons the Gators have played their way into the No. 1 seed conversation as far as the NCAA Tournament is concerned. ... Sophomore forward Alex Condon (10.6 ppg, 7.8 rpg) will miss his second straight game, as will backup forward Sam Alexis (4.9 ppg, 3.6 rpg), both with ankle injuries. But the surprising late-season addition Friday of 7-1, 255-pound junior center Micah Handlogten, who started 32 games and was one of the best rebounders in the SEC last season, has softened the depth issues up front. Handlogten made his debut against South Carolina and finished with two points, three rebounds, five assists, two blocks and two steals over 20 minutes. He admitted to being winded and a tad out of shape (understandable), but the strength/conditioning staff is working to get him caught up.

The story of the South Carolina game was the performances turned in by guard Denzel Aberdeen and forward Thomas Haugh, two players who were both coming off the bench a couple weeks ago and answered the bell when needed to start. Both players tallied career-high scoring nights, with Aberdeen pouring in a game-high 22 points and draining a career-best five 3s. He finished eight of 12 from the floor, five of seven of the arc, with three assists, a steal and no turnovers in 30 minutes. Aberdeen has averaged 16.3 points and hit 11 3s in his four starts. Haugh, making his first career start for his best buddy Condon, scored 20 points on six of 10 shooting and 3-for-6 from deep, with six rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block in 31 minutes. Condon and Alexis eventually will return, but in the interim the Gators are building -- not just good -- but elite depth in real time. ... Point guard Walter Clayton Jr., who had 19 points in the back-to-back road wins at No. 1 Auburn and No. 22 Mississippi State, scored just 10 against the Gamecocks, but had four rebounds and fell one assist shy of his career high with eight. Since missing the Vanderbilt win with a sprained ankle, Clayton has averaged 7.6 assists in the three games. ... Welcome back, Alijah Martin, who was sidelined for the big road wins with a hip pointer. Martin came off the bench versus USC to score 11 points (4 of 7 from the floor, 3 of 5 from deep), with two rebounds, three assists, a pair of steals and a block in 24 minutes. Golden kept Martin in the game well after the outcome was decided to help get his game legs back. Don't be surprised if Martin is back in the starting lineup against the Sooners, which will not in any way be an indictment of Aberdeen. Just a testament to the aforementioned depth.

Center Rueben Chinyelu had his second straight game of 10 points (5-for-6 from the floor) and six rebounds. If he plays with the bouncy effort and joy he displayed against the Gamecocks, the team will only be better for it in the post when they have Condon back. And Alexis. And a more seasoned Handlogten. ... Golden said after the USC game he would have liked to get sophomore guard Urban Klavzar (3.3 ppg) some more minutes, but the game flow did not provide for it. Klavzar played eight minutes and hit a 3-pointer in his third consecutive game. He's seven of 10 from distance in SEC play.

The Sooners

They're in the fourth season under Porter Moser, who a few years back was one of the hottest coaches in the country after guiding Loyola-Chicago to the 2018 Final Four and (to prove it wasn't a fluke) guiding the team to the 2019 Sweet 16. Moser's name popped up with some of the nation's top openings during the hiring cycle and wound up in Norman, where he's 69-53, has yet to post a winning record in league play and is on pace to continue that trend. The '24-25 Sooners won their first 13 games. They won the Battle 4 Atlantis, beating Arizona and Louisville along the way. They beat Michigan in the Jumpman Invitational and were one of three teams in the country (along with Florida and Tennessee) to go unbeaten in non-conference play, climbing all the way to No. 12 in the rankings. But OU opened SEC play with a 28-point loss at Alabama and has completely cratered since. The Sooners hammered a solid Vanderbilt team by 30 on Feb. 1, but have lost four in a row since by an average of 18.2 points.

With the exception of effective field-goal and 3-point percentage (both decent) and free-throw percentage (exceptional), Oklahoma doesn't do a lot well on offense. The Sooners are near the bottom in the SEC in offensive rebounding (15th) and turnover percentage (14th). Defensively, the Sooners are 14th in effective field-goal percentage and defending the 2-point area (56.1 percent), rarely block shots (9.2 percent, which is 14th) and are one of the most foul-prone teams in the league. ... Jeremiah Fears is a dangerous offensive player (he hung 30 on Michigan in the Jumpman), but also a mistake-prone one, as he's probably playing out of position at point guard (95 assists vs. 92 turnovers). His offensive numbers have also dipped since the start of league play, falling to 12.1 points on 35.9-percent shooting overall and 20.5 from 3. ... OU's most consistent player is guard Jalon Moore, in his second season since transferring from Georgia Tech. Moore, has 20 straight double-figure scoring games, is shooting nearly 54 percent from 2, just shy of 40 from 3 and excels at getting to the line, where he's made 84 percent of his free throws. He does not, however, like to be pressured: 13 assists vs. 46 turnovers.

Forward Brycen Goodine, the Fairfield transfer (by way of Providence and Syracuse), has attempted just 25 shots from the 2-point area, but 99 from the arc, where he's 44.4 percent on the season (53rd nationally). In OU's two games against Texas A&M, Goodine scored 34 and 24, respectively, going 14-for-20 from deep (the Sooners lost both games), so the Gators better know where he is at all times. ... Sam Goodwin, Goodine's starting mate in the front court, has not attempted a 3 this season, but he's No. 12 in the nation in offensive rebouding percentage (16.5). ... Guard Duke Miles is on his third school (three years at Troy, one at High Point) and is an effective offensive player at 59 percent from 2 and 44 from 3. ... One of OU's backup forwards is Mohamed Wague (2.7 ppg), a transfer from Alabama, where he made the Gators (and their fanbase) mad last year when he intentionally elbowed Condon in the head during a loose-ball scrum in Tuscaloosa.

Numbers of Note

**Egor Koulechov** (left) battles for a rebound against Loyola-Chicago's **Marques Townes** (5) in **Porter Moser's** win at the O'Dome in 2017.

* 1.000 — Moser's winning percentage against the Gators, based on a 3-0 record. He beat UF as coach at Loyola-Chicago and twice at Oklahoma.

* 9.0 — Haugh's rebound average over the last six games, based on his 54 caroms.

* 17.3 — Haugh's scoring average the last three games on 53.3-percent shooting from the floor and 43.8 percent from the arc.

* 1922 — The year Missouri defeated Oklahoma 66-22. The result was merely an ungly footnote in OU hoops history until Florida went to the Noble Center in Norman in 2017 and handed OU its worst home loss since that Mizzou blowout 95 years earlier. The Gators atom-bombed the Sooners 84-52 in the Big 12/SEC Challenge, led by sophomore forward Kevarrius Hayes, who came off the bench to score 20 points and grab nine rebounds, both career highs, block three shots and alter a slew more for a defense that stymied the Sooners into 27.7-percent shooting, including 1-for-16 from the 3-point line.

* 2017 — The year Moser brought his Ramblers, of Loyola-Chicago, to the O'Dome and left with a 65-59 upset of the fifth-ranked Gators that turned out to be not much of an upset. The date was Dec. 6. UF was coming off an ugly home loss to rival Florida State just two nights earlier and played like it was dealing with a 48-hour hangover, as LCU forward Aundre Jackson scored 23 points, going 10-for-12 from the floor and 3-for-3 from distance, helping Loyola seize early command. By season's end, the Ramblers had won 32 games and, as a No. 11 seed in the NCAA Tournament, upset 6-seed Miami, 3-seed Tennessee, 7-seed Nevada and 9-seed Kansas State before falling to Michigan in the national semifinals.

Bottom Line

Defend the O'Dome. Defend the ranking. Defend the quest for high postseasons seeds.

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu

Gators Calendar

No. 2 Florida vs Oklahoma (Tuesday, 7 pm)

No. 2 Florida vs. Oklahoma

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Tale of the Tape

The Gators

The Sooners

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Players Mentioned

Denzel Aberdeen

Sam Alexis

Rueben Chinyelu

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Micah Handlogten

Thomas Haugh

Urban Klavzar

Alijah Martin

Will Richard

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No. 2 Florida vs Oklahoma (Tuesday, 7 pm)

No. 2 Florida vs. Oklahoma

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

Tale of the Tape

The Gators

The Sooners

Numbers of Note

Bottom Line

Players Mentioned

Denzel Aberdeen

Sam Alexis

Rueben Chinyelu

Walter Clayton Jr.

Alex Condon

Micah Handlogten

Thomas Haugh

Urban Klavzar

Alijah Martin

Will Richard

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