Elite Eight: (1) Florida vs (3) Texas Tech (Saturday, 6:09 pm ET)

(1) Florida vs. (3) Texas Tech

* What: NCAA West Region / "Elite Eight" round
* When: Saturday, 6:09 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Chase Center / San Francisco
* Records: Florida (33-4) / Texas Tech (28-8)
* TV: TBS/TruTV (Kevin Harlan, Dan Bonner, Stan Van Gundy and Lauren Shehadi)
* 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	10.9 pts / 7.7 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Sophomore	6.2 pts / 6.6 reb
Will Richard	G	6-4 / 206	Senior	13.5 pts / 4.5 reb
Alijah Martin	G	6-2 / 195	Graduate	14.6 pts / 4.5 reb
Walter Clayton Jr.	G	6-2 / 195	Senior	17.7 pts / 3.7 reb / 4.1 ast

Texas Tech	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Darrion Williams	F	6-6 / 225	Junior	14.8 pts / 5.5 reb
JT Toppin	F	6-9 / 225	Sophomore	18.2 pts / 9.3 reb
Kerwin Walton	G	6-5 / 210	Senior	6.0 pts / 1.3 reb
Christian Anderson	G	6-2 / 165	Freshman	10.8 pts / 3.0 reb
Elijah Hawkins	G	5-11 / 160	Senior	9.4 pts / 3.5 reb / 6.6 ast

The Breakdown

UF coach **Todd Golden** will try to become the third coach in program history to guide the Gators to the Final Four.

SETUP: Top-seeded Florida and third-seeded Texas Tech meet in the NCAA West Region championship game, with the winner advancing to the Final Four next weekend at San Antonio, Texas. The Gators got here by defeating 4-seed Maryland, 87-71 in the bracket's first "Sweet 16" round Thursday. The Red Raiders, in the late game, stunned 10-seed Arkansas by rallying from 16 down in the second half -- and a 13-point deficit with five minutes to play in regulation -- to win an 85-83 overtime thriller. This is UF's 10th time in the "Elite Eight" (first since 2017) and the third for Tech (first since 2019). The Gators are seeking a sixth trip to the Final Four, while the Red Raiders' lone appearance came in 2019, when they advanced to the NCAA championship game and lost to Virginia in overtime.

SERIES: Florida leads 2-1, with the Gators winning 79-76 at home in 1960, then 71-69 in overtime at a neutral site in 1962. The two programs went 56 years without playing until their second-round pairing in the 2018 NCAA Tournament, with the Red Raiders claiming a 69-66 victory in what was a virtual home game at Dallas.

ETC: Gators coach Todd Golden entered the 2025 tournament with an 0-2 record in his two previous NCAA tournaments, with a loss each at San Francisco and Florida. He's now 3-2 in tournament play -- and 73-33 overall in his three seasons (.689) -- and has a chance to join Lon Kruger and Billy Donovan as the only UF coaches to lead the program to the Final Four.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Texas Tech
85.5	Scoring	80.9
.473	Field-goal percentage	.467
.357	3-point percentage	.425
69.4	Scoring defense	68.0
.399	Field-goal percentage defense	.367
.293	3-point percentage defense	.322
2nd	KenPom.com overall ranking	9th
2nd	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	5th
9th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	39th
62	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	268th
4th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	7th
12th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	42nd

The Gators

They've won nine in a row (and 15 of 16), with six of those nine coming against teams ranked in the regular season-ending Associated Press Top 25. Two of the others came against Ole Miss, which remained alive in the Sweet 16 as of Friday, and Connecticut, the two-time defending NCAA champion. ... The win over No. 11 Maryland came despite a first half when UF turned the ball over 13 times and lost forward Alex Condon to an ankle injury midway through the first half. The Gators cleaned up their ball-security after halftime, shot 53% from the field against the nation's No. 6 defense and defended the Terrapins at 39% on the way to a 47-point second half and the most points tallied against Maryland this season. ... Florida ranks No. 2 in the nation in offensive efficiency and ninth in defensive efficiency, making the Gators and Duke the only teams remaining in the tournament with top-10 ratings on both ends of the floor. ... UF smashed Maryland on the glass, 42-20, including 15-7 on the offensive end on the way to a 21-9 edge in second-chance points. The Gators are the No. 5 offensive rebounding team in the country, gathering 39% of their misses. They're fifth in effective field-goal percentage defense (45.4), 15th in defending the 2-point area (46.2) and fifth at guarding the 3-point line (29.3). ... Florida's depth overwhelmed Maryland to the tune of a 29-3 advantage in bench scoring and five players finishing with at least four rebounds. Six different UF players, however, had at least two turnovers; three had at least three.

First-team All-America point guard Walter Clayton Jr. wasn't at his best against the Terps, finishing with a postseason-low 13 points over his 32 minutes. Clayton, though, didn't force shots (he only took nine), but ran an offense that had five other players finish in double-figure scoring as well. ... Guard Will Richard led UF with 15 points on 6-for-9 from the floor and three of six from the 3-point line. He also had four rebounds and three assists. Guard Alijah Martin went for 14 points, with a couple 3s, and seven rebounds. Backup guard Denzel Aberdeen was excellent off the bench, with 12 points on 5-for-7 shooting and a couple 3s, in 19 minutes.

Condon went down with his ankle injury -- the same ankle he sprained Feb. 11 at Mississippi State that cost him four games during the regular season -- at the 12:15 mark of the first half and went to the locker room for the balance of the period. X-rays were negative. Condon returned to the court for second-half warm-ups and eventually checked into the game with 13:26 to go and played nine of the game's final minutes to finish with six points and four rebounds. He's gotten around-the-clock treatment on the ankle and will continue to do so, with his availability a game-time situation (and his effectiveness based on the pain, obviously). If Condon does not start, sophomore Thomas Haugh (9.5 ppg, 6.0 rpg) will do just fine as a step-in, as he did while Condon was injured during the regular season. Haugh was great off the bench Thursday, finishing with 13 points, a team-high nine rebounds (five on the offensive end), four assists and two steals in 32 minutes. ... Center Rueben Chinyelu got off to a slow start against Maryland's two bigs, but reset for a really strong second half on the way to 10 points and eight rebounds. Chinyelu hit all three of his field-goal attempts in the second half, all in succession, during a key second-half UF surge. ... Center Micah Handlogten got in first-half foul trouble with three and finished with two points and three rebounds.

The Red Raiders

They're in the second season under Grant McCasland, whose been one of the winningest coaches in the country over the last four seasons. McCasland came from North Texas, where he averaged better than 22 wins over his six seasons in the Sun Belt Conference and went to one NCAA Tournament. His last two years there, the Eagles won 56 games. His first two years in Lubbock, the Red Raiders have won 51 and gone to the NCAA Tournament as a 6- and 3-seed, respectively. That's an average of 26.8 wins the last four years. ... McCasland is off the Scott Drew Baylor tree and his hallmark is offense. Tech ranks No. 6 in KenPom in efficiency, with top-50 numbers in 2-point (54.8) and 3-point percentage (36.7), effective field-goal percentage (54.9) and turnover percentage (14.3, which is 20th). The Red Raiders don't make a lot of mistakes with the ball, with their steal percentage offense at 8.7% and non-steal turnover percentage at 5.7 (10th nationally). ... Against Arkansas, they trailed 61-45 with just over 10 minutes to play, but outscored the Razorbacks 27-11 the rest of the way in regulation and went 5-for-6 from the floor in overtime, with guard Darrion Williams posting up for a game-winning bucket with just under seven seconds to play.

Texas Tech has some similarities to Maryland, relative to depth, as the Red Raiders had five players log at least 37 minutes -- including two with at least 44 -- in the overtime win against Arkansas. Whether the Red Raiders will have guard Chance McMillian, one of the nation's best 3-point shooters at 43.4%, will be a game-time call. McMillian, the San Francisco native who has been out since March 30 when he suffered an oblique injury in the team's Big 12 Tournament win over Baylor, went through Thursday's shoot-around and was expected to play against Arkansas, but was a surprising game-time scratch. The Raiders managed to win a third NCAA Tournament game without him. McMillian has made 225 3-pointers over his five seasons (three at Grand Canyon, two at Tech). ... Forward JT Toppin, the transfer from New Mexico, is their go-to guy. Toppin, who is scoring at a dizzing 70% from the 2-point area and will occasionally step out to the 3-point line (16 makes at 31%), is one of the nation's best rebounders at both ends of the floor (46th on the offensive end at 13.8% and 24th on the defensive end at 26%). He had 20 points, nine boards and five blocks against Arkansas. He checks in fifth in the KenPom National Player of the Year rankings, behind only Duke's Cooper Flagg, Auburn's Johni Broome, Clayton and Kansas' Hunter Dickinson. ... Williams is an undersized forward, but is a load in back-downs when he gets in mismatches, as the Hogs learned in crunch time. He's at 48% from 2, 34% from 3 and made 90 of his 107 free throws. He scored a season-high 28 points (plus five assists) in the team's second-round win over Drake, one of the best defensive teams in the country. Williams was 10 of 14 from the 2-point area in that one.

Point guard Elijah Hawkins, who played all 45 minutes of the overtime game Thursday, has assisted on 32.6% of his team's baskets. That's 44th in the country. He's an excellent free-throw shooter as well (84%) and hits 3s at 31.5%. ... If McMillian can't go, the Red Raiders still have long-range firepower. Christian Anderson (38.4%) was great in scoring a team-high 22 points in 44 minutes against the Hogs. Guard Kerwin Walton (39.7) only played 10 minutes and went scoreless, but backup guard Kevin Overton (7.9 ppg, 3.7 rpg), the transfer from Drake, came off the bench to score 12 points, hit two 3s and grab seven rebounds in 37 minutes.

Numbers of Note

UF point guard **Chris Chiozza** leaves the court for the final time as a Gator following Texas Tech's 69-66 defeat of the Gators in the 2018 NCAA Tournament at Dallas.

* 1 — Teams that defeated Big 12 champion Houston, the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Midwest Region, on the road this season. That lone team, of course, was Texas Tech, which went to Ferttita Center and shot 43% and bombed in a dozen 3s against the top-rated defense in the country, coming away with an 82-81 overtime victory that ranked as arguably the best road win in college basketball during the 2024-25 season. The Cougars went 16-1 at home with a margin of victory of 23.2 points. Tech also had a trio of Quadrant 2 losses (against St. Joseph's, at Central Florida and at Texas Christian).

* 2 — NCAA Tournament games when the Gators have put at least six players in double-figure scoring, as they did against Maryland. The only previous time came in UF's 112-69 blowout of Jackson State in opening-round play of the 2007 tournament at Jacksonville on the way to a second straight national championship. In that one, Corey Brewer scored 21, Joakim Noah and Chris Richard had 17, forward Marreese Speights 16, forward Al Horford 15 and guard Lee Humphrey 12, as the Gators shot 59% and set a team record for points in NCAA play.

* 49.9 — Clayton's 3-point percentage in the six postseason games, based on 24-for-49 from the arc. Clayton's streak of consecutive games with at least one 3-pointer stands at 59 and he now has 201 in just two UF seasons, making him the 10th player in program history to reach at least 200 for their career.

* 50.2 — Combined per-game average for the senior trio of Clayton, Richard and Martin in the postseason.

* 2018 —The year the Gators last faced the Red Raiders. The date was March 18. The place was American Airlines Arena in Dallas. Florida trailed by eight with less than eight minutes to go, but stormed back to tie the game inside three minutes to play. Tech guard Keenan Evans hit a go-ahead 3-point shot with 2:31 remaining for 69-66 lead. The Gators twice had 3-point looks for the tie, one by Egor Koulechov, then by KeVaughn Allen as time expired, and the Red Raiders escaped with the win. The loss ended the career of UF's first-team All-SEC point guard first-team Chris Chiozza, the program's all-time assist leader. Chiozza, saddled with foul trouble the entire second half, signed off with 11 points, three assists and three steals in 27 minutes. Tech went on to reach the Elite Eight, but lost to eventual national-champion Villanova 71-59 in the regional title game.

Bottom Line

What a season ... and it ain't over, yet.

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu

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