Florida Gators

No. 6 Florida at No. 1 Auburn

 
* When: Saturday, 4 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Neville Arena / Auburn, Ala.
* Records: Florida (19-3, 6-3) / Auburn (21-1, 9-0)
* TV: ESPN2 (Dan Shulman and Jay Bilas)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
  (with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) 
* Ticket info

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Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Alex Condon	F	6-11 / 230	Sophomore	10.8 pts / 8.0 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Sophomore	5.1 pts / 6.7 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Senior	13.4 pts / 5.0 reb
Alijah Martin	G	6-2 / 195	Graduate	15.3 pts / 4.9 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Senior	17.4 pts / 3.3 reb / 3.8 ast

Auburn	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Johni Broome	F	6-10 / 240	Senior	18.1 pts / 10.9 reb / 3.4 ast
Dylan Cardwell	F	6-11 / 255	Senior	5.7 pts / 5.0 reb
Chad Baker-Mazara	F/G	6-7 / 180	Senior	13.0 pts / 3.5 reb
Miles Kelly	G	6-6 / 190	Senior	10.6 pts / 3.4 reb
Denver Jones	G	6-4 / 205	Senior	10.4 pts / 2.0 reb

The Breakdown

SETUP: No. 6 Florida travels to No. 1 Auburn for the weekend's only game pitting two teams ranked in the top 10 of the latest Associated Press poll. For the Gators, it'll mark a second consecutive Saturday on the road against a top-10 foe, following last weekend's 64-44 defeat at eighth-ranked Tennessee. They bounced back from that lopsided loss Tuesday with an 86-75 home win over Vanderbilt. The Tigers are the lone unbeaten team in Southeastern Conference play and stayed that way by crushing unranked Oklahoma 98-70 at home Tuesday. Auburn, though, has just a one-game lead on second-place and rival Alabama in the league standings, with Florida three games back in a three-way tie for third place alongside Missouri and Texas A&M.   

SERIES: Auburn leads 92-83. Florida had a run of 11 straight victories from 2010-18 (and 21 of 22, dating back to 2001), but the Tigers have a 5-4 edge since 2019, including last season's 86-67 victory in the SEC Tournament championship game at Nashville, Tenn., when they avenged Florida's 81-65 rout of a win in Gainesville from five weeks earlier. In that rematch for the conference title, UF center Micah Handlogten suffered a gruesome compound fracture to his left leg in the game's opening two minutes and the Gators, already physically challenged in playing a fourth game in four days, never recovered from the emotional hit. The Tigers and their league-best defense pounced early, built a 12-point and withstood an early UF run in the second half before pulling away for their second SEC tourney title in five years. All-SEC forward Johni Broome scored 19 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and blocked three shots on his way to being named the tournament's most valuable player. Another seven Auburn players were scattered between seven and 11 points, as the Tigers (27-7) shot 50.8 percent for the game, including 64.3 in their dominant second half, while defending the Gators at 36.4 percent (their second-lowest of the season) and holding UF to its fewest points of the 2023-24 campaign. Fifth-year senior point guard Zyon Pullin led the Gators with 15 points and seven rebounds. Both teams' seasons ended five days later in first-round losses in the NCAA Tournament. UF lost to Colorado, Auburn was upset by 13th-seeded Yale. 

ETC: Florida is 3-17 all-time against No. 1-ranked teams, including the 73-43 throttling of Tennessee on Jan. 7. This will mark the first time UF has faced two different No. 1 teams in the same season. The Gators had lost 10 straight against top-ranked foes before snapping the skid against the Volunteers. 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Auburn
83.4	Scoring	85.1
.466	Field-goal percentage	.488
.339	3-point percentage	.373
65.8	Scoring defense	66.7
.385	Field-goal percentage defense	.394
.280	3-point percentage defense	.302
5th	KenPom.com overall ranking	1st
6th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	1st
14th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	12th
101st	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	130th
5th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	1st
37th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	1st

The Gators

With point guard and scoring leader Walter Clayton Jr. sidelined with an ankle sprain, Coach Todd Golden needed a definitive team effort against Vanderbilt and that's exactly what he got. The Florida bench stepped up for 21 points and backup guard Denzel Aberdeen, in his first career start, played an outstanding floor game in engineering an offense that shot 57.4 percent, including 10 of 21 from the 3-point line (47.6 percent), and tallied 20 assists (UF's most in SEC play this season) versus 10 turnovers, with only three over the last 30 minutes. ... Offensively, the Florida metrics did not miss a beat, but what should have been a size advantage for the Gators on the offensive glass did not materialize against the Commodores, who limited UF to 10 boards on that end and 13 second-chance points. ... Defensively, the Gators slipped four spots after letting Vandy shoot 51 percent for the game, which was second-best by a league foe this season, as they experimented with a 1-through-5 switch scheme they had not tried in league play. It didn't work great, as the Commodores took advantage of some missed assignments. Vandy, though, was limited to just six 3-pointers after averaging eight in its four SEC wins. 

Minus Clayton, the Gators were able to manufacture scoring against Vandy, but doing so -- and doing it well enough -- on the road against the best offensive team in the country (and an outstanding defensive one, as well) is a different conversation. Clayton, who needs just two points to become the 57th player to hit 1,000 for his career as a Gator, is shooting 45.0 percent for the season, nearly 36 from deep and a team-high 86.4 from the free-throw line. ... Will Richard had one of his finest games of the season against Vandy. He hit eight of his 11 field-goal attempts and five of seven from the arc for 21 points to go with seven rebounds, three assists and no turnovers over a career-high 39 minutes. ... Guard Alijah Martin had a tough game in UF's loss at Tennessee last weekend, starting 0-for-9 from the floor. The struggles carried over to the first half against the Commodores, with Martin turning the ball over five times, while also have to leave the game after taking a nasty spill in a scrum. He was much better in the second half, though, finishing with eight points on 4-for-5 shooting, plus four assists and no turnovers after the break. ... Aberdeen (7.4 ppg) scored 13 points, dished three assists, grabbed two rebounds and had no turnovers over his career-high 35 minutes.

Forward Alex Condon, who also had a tough go at Knoxville, was seven of 11 against Vandy, with nine rebounds, four assists and a pair of blocks. ... Center Rueben Chinyelu was limited to 12 minutes, mostly due to foul trouble. Backup forward Sam Alexis (5.0 ppg, 3.8 rpg) had some nice reserve minutes on his way to five points and two assists. Alexis hit his first 3 in SEC play this season. ... Backup forward Thomas Haugh (7.5 ppg, 6.0 rpg) was outstanding again off the bench on his way to eight points, nine rebounds, four assists and two blocks in 28 minutes. Haugh is averaging 10.0 rebounds over his last three games, with 11 against Georgia, 10 at Tennessee and nine against Vanderbilt. ... Sophomore guard Urban Klavzar (2.8 ppg) was three of 16 on the season from the 3-point line going into the game, but hit two gargantuan long ones -- back to back, no less -- in the second half to start a run that allowed the Gators to turn a one-possession game into a double-digit lead. Klavzar surely earned himself some future minutes.

The Tigers

Is Bruce Pearl the best coach in the country? It's a legitimate question. Whether he's the best program-builder is not up for debate. Look at what he did at Tennessee and now what he's done at Auburn, where he's 231-120 over 11 seasons, and has the place continuously buzzing. Over the last seven, the Tigers are 189-64 -- that's a .757 winning percentage -- with two regular-season SEC titles (2018 and '22) and two SEC Tournament titles ('19 and '24). They averaged 24 wins over the previous six and are well on the way to improving that number in the seventh. Pearl's blueprint is speed, athleticism, tenacity and scoring, and he recruits to it spectacularly. Offensively, the Tigers are a fat five-plus points-per-100 possessions better the No. 2 offense in the nation. They're 21st in the country in 2-point percentage (56.9 percent), 40th from the arc (37.3) and are excellent at protecting the ball, giving it away on just 13.6 percent of their possessions (8th nationally). On defense, Auburn's 44.1-percent yield from the 2-point area is 11th in the country. In SEC play, the Tigers give up just 27.9 percent from 3, which tops the league. They also block 21.3 percent of shots taken in SEC play (1st) and steal on 12.3 percent of opponents' possessions (2nd). Auburn, its lone loss coming at Duke in the ACC/SEC Challenge, is a staggering 12-1 in Quadrant 1 games, per the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET), with at least seven more Q1 opportunities on a schedule that already ranks the second-hardest in college basketball. 

Auburn starts five seniors and there's no debating the best of the bunch. Forward Johni Broome is the runaway leader for 2025 SEC Player of the Year honors, a favorite for first-team All American, as well as in the mix for NCAA PoY. The latest KenPom.com individual statistics have Broome, who is shooting 52.0 percent from the floor and is one of just 13 players in Division I averaging a double double, as the No. 2-rated player in the country behind Duke's Cooper Flagg. Broome is also an exceptional passer who leads the Tigers in assists with 64. He had six assists in the rout of Oklahoma and has six games with at least five. ... Wing Chad Baker-Mazara does a lot of everything. He's scoring at 57 percent from 2, nearly 39 from 3 and makes 89.5 percent of his free throws. His 57 assists are third on the team. ... Dylan Cardwell only plays about half the game, but he brings muscle, power and athleticism in the post; a different kind than Broome. He's at 67.5 percent from 2, but is a huge liability at the free-throw line (34.1 on 41 attempts). ... Miles Kelly is in his first season with the Tigers after coming from Georgia Tech. He's one of three perimeter guys at better than 40 percent from the arc (41.2 percent on 119 attempts). Denver Jones (42.3 percent) and backup freshman point guard Tahaad Pettiford, a '24 McDonald's All American and the team's third-leading scorer (11.5 ppg, 40.4 from 3), are the other two.  

Backup forward Chaney Johnson (9.6 ppg, 5.5 rpg) is another senior (albeit via the junior college route) who plays starters minutes (9.6 ppg, 5.5 rpg) and is a career 61.3-percent scorer in the 2-point area. ... Freshman Jahki Howard (5.6 ppg), out of the Atlanta Overtime Elite Academy, was the 2024 high school slam-dunk championship 

Numbers of Note

* .000 —UF's all-time winning percentage against No. 1 teams on the road, based on an 0-8 record. Six of those losses were at Kentucky (1950, '59, '66. '78, '12 and '15), with one each at Michigan State (2015) and Tennessee (2019)

* 4 — Division I teams who rank in the top 20 in both offensive and defensive efficiency, a small room that includes both Florida and Auburn (along with Duke and Houston).

* minus-23.1 — Florida's average margin of defeat in road games against No. 1, with the 58-52 loss at Michigan State on Dec. 12, 2015 the only one that was competitive and decided by single digits. 

* 67.9 — The Gators' free-throw shooting percentage in SEC play, based on 125 of 184 from the line. Only two players, Clayton (81.8) and Haugh (81.1) are above 70 percent halfway through the league season, while three -- Condon (54.3), Chinyelu (53.8) and Alexis (40.0) are under 55 percent. 

* 2021 — The year when Florida last won a game at Auburn. The date was Feb. 23. The final score was 74-57. Sophomore guard Tre Mann scored 19 points, all but three in the first half, and grabbed a career-high 13 rebounds, while sophomore wing Scottie Lewis came off the bench and dropped 14 of his 16 points before the break, as UF built a commanding lead and finished the job. UF trailed for all of 65 seconds. Auburn, minus its star point guard Sharife Cooper due to an ankle injury, hit a 3-pointer barely a minute into the game. The Gators scored the next 11 points and took advantage of eight Tigers turnovers through the first nine minutes to build a 12-point lead that Mann and friends took to 22 by halftime. Thirteen minutes into the game, Mann had twice as many points as Auburn — UF led 25-8 after a Mann jumper gave him his 15th and 16th point of the period with 7:03 remaining — and Lewis scored seven over a late-half 90-second stretch that helped send Florida to the locker room up 44-22. 

Bottom Line

As tough an ask as the Gators will get this season. 

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu