GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Scandiano is a city in Italy of about 30,000 people that sits on the base of the gorgeous Apennine Mountains. France is about 250 miles to the west. Switzerland 300 or so miles to the north. 

And then there’s Gainesville, which is about 5,000 miles away, but Caterina Piatti, who hails from Scandiano, says the University of Florida — specifically, the Gator head logo — is very well known in her homeland.

 

“Very famous, yes,” Piatti said through her broken-but-getting-better English. “If you are a [regular] person, maybe you do not know. But if you are a player or athlete, yes, you know about Florida.” 

Those who run in her Scandiano circles will know about it even more in the coming months. Piatti gained notoriety as a 6-foot-4 basketball player for Italy’s FIBA U18 and U20 teams, including the 2024 squad that took home the bronze medal in the 2024 Women’s EuroBasket Championships. After years of wearing Italy’s green, white and red color scheme, Piatti will be wearing the orange and blue of the Gators this season after making the jump across the pond to play in the Southeastern Conference. 

She may still be adapting to her American surroundings, but the basketball transition — specifically, her skills, feel and savvy in the post — has been just fine, with Piatti already laying claim to UF’s starting center spot as the ’25-26 Gators work toward their Nov. 3 season opener against North Florida at Exactech Arena/O’Connell Center. 

 

On that front, the language barrier has not been a problem. 

“Basketball is a different language in itself,” Florida coach Kelly Rae Finley said. 

And that’s a good thing for the ’25-26 UF squad, with a 12-player roster that is dotted by seven international players, with representation spanning seven countries and four continents, making for a virtual melting pot of Gators from around the globe.

“We say the United Nations is right here,” UF assistant coach Jackie Moore said. “We have all kinds of flags and all kinds of languages and accents.” 

Charting the Gators: UF’s 2025-26 international players

Player	Pos / Ht / Class	From	Etc.
Emilija “Mills” Dakic	Guard / 5-10 / Freshman	Australia	Attended Australia Centre of Excellence, same basketball program that produced Alex Condon. Won ’24 gold medal with U18 FIBA Asia Cup team.
Sarah Deng	Guard / 5-10 / Junior	Canada	Transfer from Eastern Arizona Community College after helping team to national JuCo semifinals. Defensive PoY in her conference.
Alexia Dizeko	Forward / 5-11 / Grad	Switzerland	2023 national two-year player of year at South Georgia Technical; averaged 5.0 pts, 1.9 reb pg.
Gift Ezekiel	Center / Freshman / 6-1	Nigeria	Will provide additional depth in the post.
Daviane Mindoudi Ongbakahoumb	G / Sophomore / 6-1	Spain	Late addition to ’24-25 squad, averaged 6.2 minutes in 23 games. Will play bigger role this season.
Caterina Piatti	C / Freshman / 6-4	Italy	Considered one of the top forward prospects in Europe. Will start at center.
Nyadieng “Nidi” Yiech	Forward / Freshman / 6-3	Canada	Top 75-ranked prospect in her class.

Having a roster with international flavor is hardly unique in this college landscape. This is Finley’s fifth season leading the Gators and her previous four rosters have had no fewer than two and as many as five. So Finley and her staff are no strangers to bridging cultural gaps. 

Case in point: Take last year, for example, when they had to (first) inform and (later) remind then-freshman guard Daviane Mindoudi Ongbakahoumb, by way of Spain, that her normal siesta time was actually practice time.

“We’re around teammates who are in the same boat,” said freshman guard Emilija “Mills” Dakic, who hails from Australia. “We’re able to lean on each other when you need to because you have so many teammates going through the same thing.”

What’s a little different about this group is that all 12 Gators have only been on campus and together since the start of the fall semester because the bulk of the overseas members were either still back home or playing with their respective national teams over a busy summer. There’s a lot of positives to that (the experience of taking part in outstanding competition), but obvious drawbacks relative to building chemistry on and off the court.   

On the latter, Finley and her staff have tried to be proactive in playing catch-up. 

“It’s really important, every day, to do something to create a common language because everybody’s experience the last 18 years of their life has been unique and different,” Finley said. “What something looks like in Minnesota is not the same as what it looks like in Italy, and what it looks like in Italy is not going to look the same in Nigeria. The time we’ve invested in has been well spent and our chemistry is going to be built through that time. In our practices, you’ll see a lot of up and down, you’ll see mistakes, but also a lot of learning each other in what we do.” 

Florida returns five players, including a trio of starters, from a team that went 19-18 last season and reached the semifinals of the WBIT in Indianapolis. Point guard Liv McGill made good on her resume as the highest-rated recruit in program history by scoring the most points by a freshman in program history on the way to averaging 16.5 points, 5.2 assists and garnering SEC All-Freshman Team honors. Junior guard Laila Reynolds (10.3 ppg, 3.6 rpg) and grad forward Alexia Dizeko (5.0 ppg) round out the returning starters, with 6-4 sophomore Me’Arah O’Neal (4.8 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 13.8 minutes pg) is looking to take a step forward as a starter in her second season. 

 

That leaves Piatti as a big factor in the Gators’ equation. Literally. 

Ra Shaya Kyle, UF’s starting center the better part of the last three seasons, took her 12.1 points and 7.8 rebounds and transferred to Miami last spring. That left a gaping void in the post that the Gators are banking on Piatti to fill as a collegiate rookie less than three months stateside. 

“She’s a different type of player [than Kyle],” Moore said. “We can move her around. Cat is a really good passer, knows the game and has a basketball IQ that is off the charts. You show her something once and she gets it.”

Moore tapped into her international recruiting pipeline to find Piatti about 18 months ago. Finley then went to Italy to watch their prospect in person. She liked what she saw on the floor and really liked that both Piatti’s parents were former basketball players. Her father, eventually, coached Cat for a bit, so she plays like a coach’s kid.

“I define myself as a forward who can play under the basket and face the basket,” said Piatti, who last year worked hard to develop her back-to-the-bucket skills to make her more of an all-around threat. “Before, I would be more confident to stay out at 3-point line, but I feel more comfortable with my footwork and feel I can do both.” 

 

Her teammates do, also. 

“It’s going to be different for her because she’s not been put in those situations before, but I think Cat is going to do great,” Dakic said. “She’s strong, she’s got a really good spin move and she’s smart. We’re going to continue to believe in her and help her lift up her game.”

Meanwhile, back in Scandiano, they’ll be watching and looking for that Gator logo. The folks back home saw a lot of it last spring when the guys on the other side of the Hugh Hathcock Basketball Complex put on a global show of their own. 

“All the people who know I came here, they see the men’s basketball team and they were like, ‘You going there too,’ ” Piatti said. “Yes, they know about the Gators.” 

Email senior writer Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu Find his story archives here.