No. 4 Florida vs. Kentucky

 * What: 2026 Southeastern Conference Tournament
* When: Friday, 1 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Bridgestone Arena / Nashville, Tenn.
* Defending champion: Florida 
* Records: Florida (25-6) / Kentucky (21-12)
* Series/Last meeting: Kentucky leads 111-44. The Gators and Wildcats played twice during the SEC regular season, with Florida sweeping the series for the first time since 2018, capped by Saturday’s 84-77 win at Lexington. UF, led by Thomas Haugh’s 20 points, took an 11-0 lead, shot 64% in the first half and defended UK at 38% to build a 17-point advantage at the break. The margin grew to 20 in the second half, but the Gators got cold and allowed the Wildcats to get as close as five with 19 seconds to go before icing the game at the free-throw line.    
* TV: SEC Network (Karl Ravech, Jimmy Dykes and Alyssa Lang)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
  (with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) 
* Ticket info

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Projected Starters

 

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Alex Condon	F	6-11 / 230	Junior	14.8 pts / 7.6 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Junior	11.7 pts / 11.4 reb
Thomas Haugh	F	6-9 / 215	Junior	17.2 pts / 6.1 reb
Xaivian Lee	G	6-4 / 185	Senior	11.6 pts / 3.8 reb / 4.2 ast
Boogie Fland	G	6-3 / 185	Sophomore	11.6 pts / 2.6 reb

 

Kentucky	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Andrija Jelavic	F	6-11 / 225	Junior	5.9 pts / 3.9 reb
Malachi Moreno	C	7-0 / 250	Junior	8.3 pts / 6.6 reb
Otega Oweh	F	6-4 / 220	Senior	18.2 pts / 4.5 reb
Collin Chandler	G	6-5 / 205	Senior	10.0 pts / 2.9 reb
Denzel Aberdeen	G	6-5 / 195	Sophomore	12.9 pts / 2.5 reb / 3.5 ast

The Setup

Fourth-ranked, top-seed and league champion Florida will take on No. 9-seed Kentucky in quarterfinal play of the 2026 Southeastern Conference Tournament at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The Gators won the SEC title by going 16-2 in league play, finishing three games ahead of second-place Arkansas. Along the way, they swept the Wildcats, winning 94-85 in Gainesville on Feb. 14 and 84-77 at Lexington five six days ago. … UF won the tournament last season for the first time in 11 years to solidify its claim to a No. 1 seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. The Gators are looking to do the same this weekend, with bracket projections slotting UF as the No. 1 seed in the South Region. A loss to Mizzou could drop the Gators to the 2-line. The Wildcats, meanwhile, are on solid NCAA at-large footing after finishing in a three-way tie for seventh place in the league with a 10-8 mark, but can certainly boost their profile with a win over the reigning national champs. … UF coach Todd Golden is 6-2 in his three SEC Tournaments, having reached the finals each of the last two seasons. He’s overall 3-4 against Kentucky. 
 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Kentucky
87.7	Scoring	79.9
.482	Field-goal percentage	.491
.313	3-point percentage	.349
71.7	Scoring defense	753
.406	Field-goal percentage defense	.434
.322	3-point percentage defense	.367
4th	KenPom.com overall ranking	27th
8th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	36th
5th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	31st
24th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	127th
4th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	27th
6th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	7th

The Breakdown

About the Gators: For the first time since 2007, Florida holds SEC, SEC Tournament and NCAA championships at the same time. The Gators also pulled in quite a haul of individual accolades on Monday, including players on all three 2026 All-SEC teams, as well as the coach, sixth man, defensive and scholar-athlete of the year awards. … UF is one of just five teams (along with Duke, Michigan, Arizona and Houston) that finished the regular season ranked in KenPom’s top 20 in both offense and defense efficiency. UF topped the SEC in both categories in league play, as well as finishing No. 1 in 2-point field-goal percentage (58.3%), 2-point defense (45.0%) and defensive rebounding (26.3%). The Gators finished second in offensive rebounding (41.2%). … During the 11-game winning streak, UF has defended opponents at 38.5% from the floor and 30.3% from the 3-point line. During that same span, UF shot 37.6% from the arc to finish SEC play at 33.8%, which ranks 8th in the league. … First-team All-SEC forward Thomas Haugh returned against UK after missing the first game of his career (sore foot) to tally his 20 points on 7-for-14 shooting, three of six from the arc, while falling one rebound shy of a double-double. He also had three assists and three steals. … SEC Defensive Player of the Year and SEC Scholar Athlete of the Year Rueben Chinyelu — who joined Patric Young as the only players in program history to garner those honors in the same season — fell two rebounds shy of his 19th double-double, posting 13 points and eight boards. Chinyelu was placed on the All-SEC second team. … Third-team forward Alex Condon hit six of his eight field-goal attempts at Kentucky on his way to 14 points, five rebounds, four assists, two steals and a couple blocks. He’s made 67% of his shots over the previous five games. … The backcourt of Boogie Fland and Xaivian Lee combined for 27 points, nine rebounds, 11 assists and just four turnovers against UK. They also hit three of their six shots from deep. Lee was a game-high plus-10 while on the floor. … Backup guard Urban Klavzar, voted SEC Sixth Man of the Year, ran his streak of consecutive games with at least one 3-pointer to 21. He shot 43.9 from distance in league play. … Reserve guard Isaiah Brown’s conference numbers are terrific: 6.6 points and 2.6 rebounds; 50.6% from the floor, 41.9 from distance and 76.9 at the free-throw line in just 14.3 minutes per game. … Backup center Micah Handlogten (4.2 ppg, 6.0 rpg) did not score at Kentucky, but had five rebounds and was plus-8 on the floor. Winning player. 

About the Wildcats: The seat only got warmer for Mark Pope last weekend, but beating LSU in the program’s first Wednesday “round of shame” game in the tournament, then upsetting 8th-seed Missouri Thursday certainly calmed Big Blue Nation. For now. The UK favorite son is now 45-27 overall, including 20-16 in league play in his two seasons since coming from BYU. … It’ll be a tough ask to keep up with the high-tempo Gators in a third game over 50 hours. To do so, the Wildcats will have to shoot better than 39.4% to and get someone other first-team All-SEC guard Otega Oweh, who was terrific in defeat, to pitch in with some efficiency. Oweh was eight of 21 from the floor, but 4-for-8 from the arc and 8-for-8 at the free-throw line on the way to 28 points. He had 21 points in the win Thursday. He’s a three-level scorer who excels at drawing fouls. … Point guard Denzel Aberdeen, the UF transfer who won a national championship last season, is 12 of 34 from the floor (35.3%) and two of 12 from the arc (16.7%) in the two games against his former team, mostly working against Fland and Lee on the perimeter. He had 16 points against the Tigers, with a huge bucket late and free throws late. . … Guard Collin Chander is one of the best 3-point shooters in the country at 43% (including 45.7 in SEC play). He hurt the Gators in Gainesville with five makes, but UF held him without a 3 for the first time in 10 games last weekend. … Center Malachi Moreno, the lone 2025 McDonald’s All American on the team, is at 69.5% from the floor on the season. He had a double double of 11 points and 11 rebounds when the teams met the first time, but had trouble with UF’s size Saturday on his way to just six points, six rebounds and four turnovers. … Forward Andrija Jelavic has started the last 16 games in place of Mouhamed Dioubate (8.5 ppg, 5.5 rpg), the Alabama transfer, in the first unit. The two basically rotate minutes in the post alongside Moreno. Dioubate doesn’t shoot many 3s, but is very active on the offensive glass. Jelavic is at 35.7% from deep. … Backup big Brandon Garrison (4.4 ppg, 4.0 rpg) gave his team some solid minutes off the bench against the Gators and was huge against LSU with a pair of 3s (after coming into the with two on the entire season).

 

Numbers of Note 

* 5 — All-time SEC Tournament championships by the Gators, who won the event three consecutive times, from 2005-07, again in 2014, and 2025.

* 74 — UF record for points scored in a single SEC Tournament, set over four games by Walter Clayton Jr. in 2024. 

* 153 — Total career points scored in the SEC Tournament by UF center Dametri Hill, the most in program history. “DaMeat Hook” amassed his total over 11 games from 1993-96. The most single-game points scored by a Gator in the event is 35 by Anthony Roberson in 2004 against Vanderbilt, a 91-69 victory at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. 

 

Bottom Line

Back to where the magic truly started for the Gators last year. Can they repeat it?

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