No. 5 Florida vs. Mississippi State

 
* When: Tuesday, 7 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O’Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (23-6, 14-2) / Mississippi State (13-16, 5-11)
* Series/Last meeting: UF leads 69-53. The two last met Feb. 11, 2025 at Starkville, where the short-handed Gators got elite performances from a pair of usual reserves in guard Denzel Aberdeen and forward Thomas Haugh on the way to an 81-68 road defeat of the 22nd-ranked Bulldogs. Already without starting guard Alijah Martin, UF lost forward Alex Condon to an ankle injury just 30 seconds into the game. UF trailed by a point at the half, but shot 55% in the second, including eight of 16 from the 3-point line, for the comeback. Aberdeen, in his third career start, equaled his career-high of 20 points, while Haugh stepped into Condon’s spot and messed around with a triple-double, finishing with 16 points, nine rebounds, a career-high eight assists and two blocks over 37 minutes. Point guard Walter Clayton Jr. was superb as well with 19 points, six rebounds, six assists and just one turnover in 37 minutes. 
* TV: SEC Network (Matt Schumacker and Richard Hendrix)
* 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	14.4 pts / 7.8 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Junior	11.3 pts / 11.7 reb
Thomas Haugh	F	6-9 / 215	Junior	17.1 pts / 6.0 reb
Xaivian Lee	G	6-4 / 185	Senior	11.4 pts / 3.7 reb / 4.1 ast
Boogie Fland	G	6-3 / 185	Sophomore	11.6 pts / 2.6 reb

Mississippi State	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Achor Achor	F	6-9 / 230	Senior	6.2 pts / 6.4 reb
Quincy Ballard	C	7-0 / 260	Senior	6.5 pts / 6.1 reb
Shawn Jones Jr.	G	6-6 / 205	Senior	5.5 pts / 4.1 reb
Jayden Epps	G	6-2 / 190	Senior	13.7 pts / 2.4 reb
Josh Hubbard	G	6-0 / 190	Junior	21.4 pts / 2.5 reb / 3.6 ast

The Setup

Fifth-ranked Florida, up two spots in the Associated Press and ranked higher than at any time since the season’s opening week, will play host to Mississippi State in the team’s regular-season home finale and with a chance to claim the 2026 Southeastern Conference championship all to themselves. … The Gators, winners of nine straight, clinched no worse than a share of the crown, along the top seed in next week’s SEC Tournament at Nashville, Tennessee, by clubbing No. 20 Arkansas 111-77 Saturday night, but they want the program’s first title since 2014 all to themselves. They also have put themselves at least in conversations for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, providing the winning continues and they get some help elsewhere. … The game will serve as “Senior Night” for both 7-1 reserve center Micah Handlogten and starting guard Xaivian Lee, the transfer from Princeton. It also may represent (unofficially) the final home game for some very popular players, but those are conversations for a later time. … The Bulldogs, tied for 12th in the league standings, have lost three straight, most recently a humbling 88-64 home defeat at the hands of Missouri. MSU will be playing in the SEC Tournament’s Wednesday first round. … Florida has won the last two (and four of the previous five) against Mississippi State and is 2-1 in the series under Coach Todd Golden. … UF is 13-1 at home this season. 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Mississippi State
87.1	Scoring	77.7
.479	Field-goal percentage	.447
.308	3-point percentage	.323
71.4	Scoring defense	80.3
.405	Field-goal percentage defense	.437
.320	3-point percentage defense	.328
4th	KenPom.com overall ranking	96th
11th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	109th
4th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	95th
24th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	80th
4th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	105th
4th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	25th

The Breakdown 

About the Gators: Since winning their last SEC title in 2014, six other schools from the conference — Kentucky (2015, ’16, ’17, ’20); Auburn (2018, ’22, ’25); Tennessee (2018, ’24); LSU (2019) and Texas A&M (2016) — had won at least a share of the league crown. Now, the Gators are back on top and looking for more. Last week, the they surged past the likes of Illinois, Houston, Iowa State, Purdue and Gonzaga to wedge themselves in as the highest No. 2 seed in the country in most bracket projections, relative to the NCAA Tournament. To be truly in the 1-seed conversation, Connecticut or (maybe) Arizona, needs to suffer one, perhaps even two, losses the next couple weeks. Bottom line: UF’s metrics, especially over the last month, are as high as anyone in the country. … Florida has moved up to No. 1 in the SEC in both offensive and defensive efficiency, in great part because of the improved 3-point shooting that now has the Gators at 33.2% in league play. Over the last six games, they’ve shot 39.4%. Over the previous 12 games, they’re at 35.8 (so the samples of the increase are not small). Backup guard Urban Klavzar, who nailed his first four against Arkansas, is at 40.9% for the season and 44.6 in SEC play. Point guard Boogie Fland, after an unfathomable cold streak from deep, is six of his last 11 (54.5%) over the previous three games. Even reserve wing Isaiah Brown, who’s provided fantastic minutes the last month, is six of his last 10 over the previous half-dozen games. … Thomas Haugh had season-low five points and no rebounds in UF’s win Wednesday at Texas, but bounced back with a team-hight 22 points, five boards, two assists and a block over 30 minutes against the Hogs. He also went 7-for-7 at the free-throw line. … Rueben Chinyelu increased his league-best double-double tally to 17 with 12 points and 16 rebounds. He also made all six of his free throws and is now at 76.8% at the line in league play. … Forward Alex Condon, with 17 points on 7-for-14 from the floor against the Hogs, is at 61.7% from the 2-point area on the season. He’s averaged 21.0 points over the last four games. … Guard Xaivian Lee is on a run of four straight games when he’s led the team in assists and averaged 7.0 per game. He’s turned it over a little more lately (4.0 over the games), but he’s also made 28 of his last 38 shots (73.7%) from the 2-point area over the previous seven games. … Brown (6.4 ppg, 2.4 rpg) is shooting 51.4% overall, 44.0 from deep and 78.3% at the free-throw line in SEC play. … Micah Handlogten isn’t “stat-ing” very much in the box score these days, but his defense and disruption in the paint has been outstanding during the winning streak. And he’s rebounding at nearly 21% on both ends of the floor.  

About the Bulldogs: It’s their fourth season under Chris Jans (76-56 overall, 29-41 SEC) and shaping up like his first without a NCAA Tournament berth. MSU went 8-10 in league in each of Jans’ first three seasons, so not only will the Bulldogs not achieve that mark, but it’ll take a magical run to a title in Nashville to get them into “March Madness.” … MSU lost five games during a weak non-conference slate, then opened the SEC with a win at Texas (the highest-rated victory on the Bulldogs’ resume to date) and home against Oklahoma before spinning into a losing skid of five straight and eight of nine. Among their five league wins is a home defeat of Auburn (which is something the Gators could not do), so there’s that. … In the home loss Saturday against Missouri, State trailed 26-8 after 10 minutes and 54-23 at halftime, while turning the ball over 18 times in a game that never was close. … Statistically, the Bulldogs stand out at nothing, ranking near the bottom or bottom half of the league in offense and defensive efficiency, offensive and defensive turnover percentage and offensive rebounding. … Point guard Josh Hubbard, the SEC’s No. 2 scorer, is one of the biggest gunners in the conference, and despite attempting more 3s than anyone in the league his efficiency is down from years past. He’s at 34.4% overall and 32.9 in league play. That’s not to say he can’t go off on a given night, evidenced by a three-game run just a couple weeks ago of 31 in a home loss to Tennessee, 32 in a win at Ole Miss and 46 in the win over Auburn, when he dropped 35 (get this) in the first half. Hubbard also hung 38 on Texas in the SEC opener. … The front court tandem of Quincy Ballard and Achor Achor (no relation to Texas A&M forward Federicko Federicko) each average a team-best six-plus rebounds a game. The Gators have four guys who average 5.9 or better, so the battle underneath could be a lopsided one.  

 

Numbers of Note 

* .933 — Florida’s combined home winning percentage the last three seasons, based on a 42-3 record that is the second-best three-season run in program history behind the 46-2 mark — that’s .958 — the Gators strung together under Billy Donovan from the start of the 2011-12 season to the end of ’13-14. 

* 14 — Games this season the Gators have scored at least 90 points, breaking the program record of 13 by the 2012-13 team. The team’s current average of 87.1 points per game is on pace to break the record of 85.6 set during the ’23-24 season. 

* 139 — Number of games Golden has coached at Florida after Tuesday’s game at MSU. Should the Gators beat the Bulldogs and give Golden his 100th victory at UF, he would trump by 15 games (or nearly half aseason) the 154 it took Donovan to get there from 1996-2001. In SEC history, only John Calipari at Kentucky (123) and Tubby Smith at Kentucky (110) have won more through their first four seasons than Golden. 

 

Bottom Line

Look for Gators to be both great (as in on the floor) and greedy (with no intent on sharing the SEC title). 

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