No. 12 Florida at Ole Miss

 
* When: Saturday, noon (ET)
* Where: SJB Pavilion at Ole Miss / Oxford, Miss.
* Records: Florida (20-6, 11-2) / Ole Miss (11-15, 3-10)
* Series/Last meeting: Florida leads 71-49. The Gators defeated the Rebels 90-71 on March 8, 2025 at Gainesville in what was the final game of the regular season and “Senior Night” for the UF trio of Walter Clayton Jr., Will Richard and Alijah Martin. It was Clayton, with a game-high 23 points, five 3-pointers, five rebounds and eight assists, leading the way. Martin added 13 points, five rebounds and three steals, while Richard threw in 10 points in what made for a rowdy and victorious send-off into the postseason. 
* TV: ESPN (Richard Cross and Chris Spatola)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
  (with Sean Kelley, Brian Hogan and Steve Egan) 
* Ticket info

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Projected Starters

 

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Alex Condon	F	6-11 / 230	Junior	13.6 pts / 8.1 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Junior	11.8 pts / 12.0 reb
Thomas Haugh	F	6-9 / 215	Junior	17.2 pts / 6.1 reb
Xaivian Lee	G	6-4 / 185	Senior	11.3 pts / 3.7 reb / 3.6 ast
Boogie Fland	G	6-3 / 185	Sophomore	11. pts / 2.5 reb / 3.6 ast

Ole Miss	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Malik Dia	F	6-9 / 250	Senior	13.5 pts / 6.0 reb
James Scott	F	6-10 / 225	Junior	3.2 pts / 3.9 reb
Travis Perry	G	6-5 /185	Senior	10.6 pts / 3.3 reb / 3.8 ast
Patton Pinkins	G	6-5 / 200	Freshman	8.7 pts / 1.8 reb
Ilias Kamardine	G	6-1 / 185	Sophomore	10.6 pts / 3.3 reb / 3.8 ast

The Setup

No. 12 Florida and Ole Miss meet in a Southeastern Conference game between two teams on opposite ends of the league standings and headed in very different directions. … The Gators sit in first place, two games up on Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama, and have won a season-high six in a row, most recently Tuesday night’s 76-62 defeat of last-place South Carolina at Gainesville. UF has won five straight road games, matching the longest road win streak since 2017. A sixth straight Saturday would mark the longest road SEC streak since the Gators won 10 straight over the 2014 and ’15 league seasons. … The Rebels have lost a league-worst eight in a row, following Wednesday night’s 80-77 setback at Texas A&M. …  UF has lost four straight at Oxford, dating to the 2018 season. … Gators coach Todd Golden, who Saturday took over sole possession of seventh place for all-time win at UF with 96, is 2-1 vs Ole Miss, including 0-1 on the road. 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Ole Miss
86.1	Scoring	74.2
.469	Field-goal percentage	.439
.294	3-point percentage	.336
71.1	Scoring defense	73.9
.404	Field-goal percentage defense	.432
.325	3-point percentage defense	.333
6th	KenPom.com overall ranking	79th
16th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	92nd
4th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	75th
41st	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	282nd
9th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	92nd
5th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	16th

The Breakdown 

About the Gators: The third week of UF’s six-game winning streak brought home wins against 25th-ranked Kentucky and South Carolina. Neither victory, frankly, resembled the one-side thrashings over the previous two weeks, but counted all the same in the win column, what with the other teams floating near the top of the SEC standings taking losses. The Gators remain alone atop the the conference, but now have a two-game cushion with five to go. UF holds the head-to-head tiebreaker on both second-place Alabama and Tennessee (good for SEC Tournament seeding), and plays the Razorbacks at home next Saturday. The Gators have not won a SEC regular-season title since 2014. … Florida front court horses Rueben Chinyelu and Alex Condon each posted double doubles in the win over South Carolina; Chinyelu had 15 points and 17 rebounds for his league-best 16th double double, while Condon went for 20 and 10 for his seventh. UF is 16-0 when Chinyelu (aka “Big Freaky”) doubles. “Condo” had six turnovers, giving him seven games this season with at least four, but still has an 89-to-64 assist-to-turnover ratio, which is outstanding for a big. … The Gators were never really threatened by the Gamecocks despite forward Thomas Haugh totaling just 10 points and one rebound. He went 3-for-5 from deep and is at 36% in league play. … Xaivian Lee, the reigning SEC Player of the Week after averaging 20 points, five assists and one turnover the week before, had nine points, seven assists and an uncharacteristic five turnovers against the Gamecocks. … Point guard Boogie Fland is shooting just 13% from the 3-point line (just 5 of 41 in SEC play) after making 34% at Arkansas last season. One of these days, he’s going to break out, right? Fland is 55.5 from the 2-point area, however, and has 93 assists vs. 43 turnovers. … Backup guard Urban Klavzar is up to 10.9 points per game in SEC play, giving the Gators six players averaging in double figures. He’s shooting 41.3% from deep against the league. … Backup 7-1 center Micah Handlogten had nine rebounds in 15 minutes against the Gamecocks, with five on the offensive end. … Backup guard Isaiah Brown (6.0 ppg in SEC play) gave his team a nice lift in his first rotation with five consecutive points, including an old-time 3-point play. 

About the Rebels: They’re in the third season under Chris Beard, who built Texas Tech into a national power (and 2019 NCAA Tournament runner-up) and moved to rival Texas, only to be fired early in his second season following an ugly domestic violence incident. Beard resurrected his career and the Rebels with back-to-back 20-win seasons and in 2025 guided the program to the Sweet 16 (with upset wins over North Carolina and Iowa State) before losing to Michigan. His three-season record will the Rebels is 55-39, including 20-29 in league play. … After starting SEC play with two losses, Mississippi defeated Missouri at home, then Georgia and rival Mississippi State on the road, then went into their current spiral of eight consecutive losses; five have been by double digits, three of them at home. … Ole Miss shot a season-high 53% Wednesday, but still blew a 10-point lead with 12 minutes left in the loss at A&M after being beaten on the glass 37-25 and allowing 50 points in the paint… Their in-conference offense and defensive numbers sit near the bottom of the rankings. What the Rebels do very well is take the care of the ball (No. 1 in league play, No. 25 nationally). … Leading scoring AJ Storr (14.8 ppg, 3.4 rpg) has come off the bench the last 12 games (he started the first 14). Storr, a “portal slam” guy with four schools in four years (St. John’s, Wisconsin, Kansas, Mississippi), takes nearly a third of his team’s shots. He poured in 27 in a loss to Alabama and is at 38% from deep. … Malik Dia, who went 10 of 14 from the floor at A&M, shot 34.5 from 3 last season, but is down 10 percentage points (24.5). He’s outstanding at drawing fouls at 6.0 per 40 minutes (89th nationally). … Storr and Dia each have scored at least 20 points the last two games. … Patton Pinkins, a freshman guard with Gainesville roots, has had a very good rookie season. He’s the son of Mississippi (and former UF) assistant Al Pinkins, and has started 11 of the last 12 games. Pinkins had 25 points and four 3s in the SEC-opening loss at Oklahoma and threw in a buzzer-beating putback to upset Georgia on the road in overtime on Jan. 14. 

 

Numbers of Note 

* 14.3 — Average margin of defeat in the four consecutive losses at Oxford, with the closest being the Gators’ six-point defeat in 2018.

* 21 —Points needed by Haugh to become the 59th player in program history to reach the 1,000-point milestone, with Condon joining that exclusive club (now with 1,008 points) last game. 

* 2016 — The last year the Gators won at Oxford. The date was Jan. 16 and it marked the first SEC game at the sparkling new Pavilion, as well as the return of UF coach Mike White to the campus where he started for four years as a point guard in the mid-1990s. Gators freshman guard KeVaughn Allen scorched the Rebels for 27 points, hitting nine of his 11 shots from the floor and a ridiculous 6-for-7 from the 3-point line to go with six rebounds. Senior forward Dorian Finney-Smith scored 17 points, as UF snapped a seven-game road SEC losing streak dating to the season before. 

 

Bottom Line

Be where your feet are, Gators. They’ve put themselves in position for so many down-the-line possibilities, but the only thing that matters is this game. 

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