NCAA Tournament: No. 4 Florida vs Norfolk State (Friday, 6:50 pm)

(1) Florida vs. (16) Norfolk State

* What: NCAA West Region / First Round
* When: Friday, 6:50 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Lenovo Center / Raleigh, N.C.
* Records: Florida (30-4) / Norfolk State (24-10)
* TV: TNT (Ian Eagle, Bill Raftery, Grant Hill and Tracy Wolfson)
* 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
Alex Condon	F	6-11 / 230	Sophomore	11.2 pts / 7.9 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Sophomore	6.1 pts / 6.5 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Senior	13.6 pts / 4.5 reb
Alijah Martin	G	6-2 / 195	Graduate	14.5 pts / 4.6 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Senior	17.5 pts / 3.8 reb / 4.3 ast

Norfolk State	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Jalen Myers	F	6-8 / 200	Senior	10.6 pts / 5.4 reb
Kuluel Mading	F	6-11 / 210	Senior	7.4 pts / 4.1 reb
Jaylani Darden	G	6-5 / 175	Senior	6.3 pts / 4.7 reb
Christian Ings	G	6-2 / 180	Senior	11.9 pts / 3.0 ast
Brian Moore	G	6-2 / 185	Senior	18.4 pts / 3.8 reb / 3.0 ast

The Breakdown

Lenovo Center (capacity 20,000), in Raleigh, North Carolina, is home to the NHL Carolina Hurricanes

SETUP: Fourth-ranked Florida and Norfolk State meet in the first-round play of the NCAA Tournament. The Gators are the No. 1 seed in the West Region, the Spartans are the No. 16 seed. The winner will advance to face either two-time defending national champion Connecticut (23-10) or Oklahoma (20-13), the bracket's eighth and ninth seeds, respectively, on Sunday. Those two play in Friday's final game on site, set for around 9:25 p.m. ... UF got here by finishing second in the Southeastern Conference during the regular season and winning the league's tournament last weekend at Nashville, Tennessee, where the Gators defeated No. 21 Missouri, No. 5 Alabama and No. 6 Tennessee in the final, 86-77, winning the three games by an average margin of 15.0 points over 50 hours. Norfolk State won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Tournament on its home floor by beating Maryland Eastern Shore, Morgan State and then South Carolina State, 66-65, in the championship game Saturday.

SERIES: Florida leads 1-0, with the lone meeting coming in the 2012 NCAA Tournament, where the Gators crushed the Spartans 84-50 in second-round play at Omaha, Nebraska. UF was a No. 7-seed in that tournament and opened with a 71-45 win over 10-seed Virginia, while 15-seed Norfolk shocked 2-seed Missouri, 86-84, champions of the Big 12 Tournament (with 30 victories) in one of the biggest upsets in NCAA Tournament history. The Cinderella story lasted less than 48 hours, as UF raced to a 47-19 half-time lead by shooting 53% from the floor and holding NSU to 26%. The Gators were led by junior guard Kenny Boyton's 20 points, plus 15 from senior point guard Erving Walker and freshman Bradley Beal's 14 points, nine rebounds and three assists. The Spartans led 6-4 when the Gators struck for a head-spinning 25-0 run that basically ended the game.

ETC: UF is 10-1 all-time in the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed, with its lone loss coming against UConn in the 2014 Final Four at Arlington, Texas. This will mark the third time (along with 2007, when they won the second of their back-to-back national titles) the Gators have been a No. 1 seed.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Norfolk State
85.4	Scoring	77.3
.473	Field-goal percentage	.489
.355	3-point percentage	.331
69.2	Scoring defense	69.0
.398	Field-goal percentage defense	.413
.296	3-point percentage defense	.335
2nd	KenPom.com overall ranking	180th
1st	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	168th
10th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	217th
59th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	226th
4th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	183rd
14th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	329th

The Gators

The efficiency of their three-game run through the SEC Tournament shot the Gators to No. 1 in KenPom.com's offensive efficiency ratings. UF out-scored and out-shot (from inside and out) what Tennessee and its elite defense was allowing opponents to do on the season. Florida remains one of just three teams in the country in the top 10 in both offense and defense (10th) efficiency, along with Duke (3rd/4th) and Houston (10th/2nd), two of the three other No. 1 seeds in the tournament. The other No. 1 seed, Auburn (2nd/12th), just missed. ... Gators coach Todd Golden is in the tournament for the third time (once with San Francisco, twice with UF) and is looking for his first victory. ... Florida is eighth nationally in offensive rebounding percentage (38.1) and has moved up to seventh in effective field-goal defense (45.3%), eighth in guarding the 3-point line (29.6%) and 15th in defending the 2-point area (45.9).

First-team All-SEC point guard Walter Clayton Jr., with his MVP performance at the SEC Tournament, now ranks third in the KenPom National Player of the Year standings. He averaged 20.6 points, shot nearly 48 percent from the floor and made 13 of 26 from distance (50%) in the three victories. He was once again one-third of UF's elite senior perimeter trio, alongside Will Richard and Alijah Martin, that combined to average 51.7 points, 7.7 treys, 9.3 rebounds and 7.0 assists during the tournament. Richard was 39% from the arc and 15 of 16 from the free-throw line. Martin went 0-for-5 from 3 in the title game, but 14 of 16 from inside the arc (87.5%) during the tourney. ... Third-team All-SEC forward Alex Condon didn't have his best games statistically in the tournament, but maintained his relentless on-court play on the way to averaging 10.0 points and 7.0 rebounds per game. Center Rueben Chinyelu stuck around his season-long numbers in scoring and rebounding, while converting on 10 of his 13 field-goal attempts (77%).

Backup sophomore forward Thomas Haugh (9.4 ppg, 6.0 rpg) was terrific in the tournament setting. He averaged 12.7 points and 5.7 rebounds, shot 50% from the floor, made two of three from deep and sank 18 of 22 free throws in 23.3 minutes. ... Underrated, but not underappreciated (certainly by his team), was the tourney performance from backup guard Denzel Aberdeen (8.0 ppg), who made a couple huge and timely buckets in the Tennessee final, including a very loud 28-foot 3-ball at the halftime buzzer. Aberdeen averaged right at his eight points on 45-percent overall. ... Center Micah Handlogten (2.6 ppg, 5.4 rpg) had a staggering 15 rebounds in 40 minutes. He took four shots and made all of them. He has turned into a valuable, highly efficient and special player off the bench who is a matchup handful for opponents with his ability to keep missed shots alive and skill as a passer from the high and low post. ... Guard Urban Klavzar (3.6 ppg) struggled with UT's physicality and only got one shot off in his six minutes. He had a 3-pointer in both of the other tournament games.

The Spartans

They're coached by Robert Jones, who's in his 12th season with a record of 212-148 that includes a 1-2 mark in the NCAA Tournament, where the Spartans won a play-in game against Appalachian State in 2021, then got pummeled by No. 1 seed Gonzaga two days later. ... NSU has played three high-major opponents this season, losing at Stanford by seven, at Baylor by 25 and at Tennessee by 15, but actually got a Quadrant 2 win by beating James Madison at home, 83-69, on Nov. 9. ... The Spartans went 11-3 in the MEAC and finished in a regular-season tie with South Carolina State for first, then broke that tie by winning the league's tournament and getting the MEAC's automatic NCAA berth. ... NSU played Division II (and reached the Final Four in 1995) until 1999. The Spartans are 2-3 all-time in the Division I tournament.

Norfolk is led by MEAC Player of the Year Brian Moore Jr., who went from junior college to Murray State and transferred into the program last offseason. He shot 56.5% from 2 and 33.9 from 3, but only took 62 attempts. He's a hard-nosed kid from Harlem who gets most of his points on hard drives and mid-range shots, but also by initiating contact. Moore went to the free-throw line 165 times and converted at 81.2 percent. He has 16 consecutive games in double figures, with three games of at least 30 points. ... Guard Christian Ings, in his fourth season at Norfolk, and is a solid scorer from inside (50.8%) and outside the 3-point line (46.9 on just 64 attempts). ... The third starting guard, Jaylani Darden, arrived in 2023 after two seasons at Longwood. He's the Spartans' best defender and likely will draw Clayton. ... Forward Jalen Myers is on his third school. He started at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, then went to Tennessee-Martin and now provides low-post help for the Spartans at 60% inside. He was one of the better defensive rebounders in the MEAC this season. ... Forward Kuluel Mading played two seasons at Buffalo before transferring to Norfolk two years ago. He's the Spartans' best size and converts at nearly 61 percent of his shots at the rim. He'll stray every now and then to the 3-point line (34.6% on 26 attempts), but he's mostly a low-post guy and rim-protector.

Numbers of Note

UF senior point guard **Erving Walker** (11) had 15 points in helping lead the Gators to a 34-point smashing of Norfolk State in the 2012 NCAA Tournament at Omaha, Nebraska.

* 3 — National champions over the last 10 NCAA tournaments who won their respective conference tournament the week before. Those teams were Villanova in 2018, Kansas in 2022 and UConn in 2024.

* 37.6 — Average margin of defeat for Norfolk State in its three NCAA Tournament losses. After the 34-point loss to the Gators in '12, the Spartans were beaten 98-55 (after their play-in victory) in first-round play by Gonzaga in '21, and 85-49 against No. 1-seed Baylor in '22.

* 212th —What Norfolk State was ranked in the KenPom ratings when it shocked second-seeded Missouri. The Spartans remain the lowest-rated team to win a NCAA Tournament game, since KenPom instituted its advanced metrics for the 2001-02 season.

* 1,206 — Richard's career points in three seasons at Florida, placing him 39th on the Florida all-time scoring list after he passed Gator Great (and UF assistant coach) Taurean Green's 1,174 over the weekend.

* 1,212 — Clayton's career points in two seasons at Florida, placing him 38th on the Florida all-time scoring list, eight points behind Dorian Finney-Smith (1,220 points, most ever by a UF transfer), who is next up on the list.

Bottom Line

The regular season was generational, but legacies (and the best history) are made in the postseason. Here we go.

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu

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