No. 18 Florida vs. No. 5 Connecticut

 
* When: Tuesday, 9 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Madison Square Garden / New York City
* Records: Florida (5-3) / Connecticut (8-1)
* Series/Last meeting: Connecticut leads 5-2. The Gators and Huskies famously met last on March 23, 2025 at Raleigh, North Carolina, where UF rallied from a six-point second-half deficit to end UConn’s two-year national-championship reign with a 77-75 win in second-round play of the NCAA Tournament. Senior guard Walter Clayton Jr., the first-team All-American, scored eight of his game-high 23 points in the final three-plus minutes, including a pair of dagger 3-pointers that helped build an eight-point cushion that was enough for the East Region’s No. 1-seed to close out and clinch the program’s first “Sweet 16” berth since 2017. Fifth-year guard Alijah Martin scored 18 points, including four late to build that lead of eight, while senior guard Will Richard had 15 points, six rebounds, two assists and three steals. 
* TV: ESPN (Dan Shulman, Jay Bilas and Kris Budden)
* 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	15.1 pts / 9.0 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Junior	10.2 pts / 11.2 reb
Thomas Haugh	F	6-9 / 215	Junior	18.6 pts / 7.6 reb
Xaivian Lee	G	6-4 / 185	Senior	8.4 pts / 4.8 reb / 4.1 ast
Boogie Fland	G	6-3 / 185	Sophomore	12.5 pts / 2.2 reb

UConn	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Alex Karaban	F	6-8 / 230	Senior	13.4 pts / 5.8 reb
Eric Reibe	C	7-1 / 260	Freshman	9.7 pts / 4.9 reb
Jaylin Stewart	G	6-7 / 225	Junior	6.3 pts / 4.0 reb
Solo Ball	G	6-4 / 200	Junior	14.6 pts / 3.6 reb
Silas Demary Jr.	G	6-4 / 190	Junior	10.4 pts / 4.7 reb / 5.6 ast

The Setup

No. 18 Florida and No. 5 Connecticut, who have combined to win the last three NCAA championships, face off for a much-hyped meeting in the annual Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden. The game figures to be a virtual road contest for the Gators, with New York City a major hub for UConn hoops fans. It’ll also mark UF’s third game in nine this season against teams currently ranked in the Associated Press Top 5. … Florida is coming off Tuesday night’s gut-punch 67-66 loss at unbeaten and fourth-ranked Duke in the ACC/SEC Challenge. In that one, the Gators came from a 15-point deficit to take the lead with 32 seconds, only to give it back on a 3-pointer with 21 seconds to go, then give it away on a turnover with four seconds remaining with a chance to retake the lead. UConn’s last outing was an 83-59 buy-game blast of East Texas A&M, but the Huskies’ five games before that included wins over BYU, Illinois and Kansas, as well as a four-point loss to 13th-ranked Arizona (now No. 1, by the way), the only common opponent the two teams share. … The game will serve as the nightcap of a double-header, with No. 10 Brigham Young, led by superstar (and possible No. 1 overall NBA pick) A.J. Dybantsa, taking on Clemson in the opener at 6:30 p.m.
 

Tale of the Tape

 

Florida	Statistics	UConn
83.4	Scoring	80.1
.432	Field-goal percentage	.491
.274	3-point percentage	.333
71.9	Scoring defense	60.4
.388	Field-goal percentage defense	.374
.262	3-point percentage defense	.268
12th	KenPom.com overall ranking	7th
27th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	18th
9th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	7th
37th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	324th
26th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	9th
15th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	119th

The Breakdown 

About the Gators: They came incredibly close to ringing up what would have held as one of the best road victories in the nation this season. Instead, point guard Boogie Fland’s go-ahead 3-pointer was canceled out by Duke guard Isaiah Evans’ 3, which proved the difference in a one-point loss. UF, however, showed some mettle in the second half, by shooting 47% at Cameron Indoor Stadium, while holding the Blue Devils to 38 and out-scoring the home team 42-31 for the period. The Gators also showed a lot of poise in taking care of the ball (five turnovers after halftime), although Fland’s giveaway in the closing seconds was a killer. Clearly, though, Fland has upped his aggressiveness on offense, scoring 15.0 points per game on a team-high 42 field-goal attempts the last three games. The tradeoff: Fland is at five assists (none at Duke) and nine turnovers in that span, with the Gators at a minus-4 in assists-to-turnovers. … UF ranks dead-last among the nation’s power conference teams in 3-point shooter at 27.4%. Thomas Haugh, who had 24 points and six boards at Duke, is one of two UF rotational players players making at least 30%. He’s at 31.8. … Center Rueben Chinyelu, who was sensational both on the glass (14 boards) and defensively in the post against the Blue Devils, is on an early pace that could make him the first Gator in more than 50 years to average double-figure rebounds. The last to do so was Bob Smyth, who cleared 12.7 per game during the 1975-76 season. … Forward Alex Condon had his fourth double-double of the season with 12 points, 10 rebounds. … Shooting guard Xaivian Lee, after breaking out with 20 points against Providence in the Thanksgiving tournament at San Diego, went 1-for-10 overall and just one of six from deep. He’s 24.7% from the floor and has hit just 12 of his team-high 57 attempts from 3 (21.1%) on the season. He does lead the team with 29 assists. … Backup guard Urban Klavzar tops the team at 36.7 from distance and is perfect on his 16 free-throw attempts. … Reserve center Micah Handlogten was averaging 10.0 points,10.3 rebounds and playing some of the best basketball of his career before suffering a concussion Nov. 16 against Miami. Since returning to action, he’s been tentative over the three games and combined for just two points and 10 rebounds in 51 minutes. He needs to regain his early season confidence and aggressiveness if the Gators are to be the outstanding frontcourt they foresee.

About the Huskies: It’s the eighth season under Dan Hurley (173-70, with five straight NCAA berths and two national titles), but the first since ’22-23 when they’re not defending a NCAA championship. That charge (and pressure) was wrested away by Florida, so UConn and its rabid fan base certainly will want to exact some morsel of revenge with a win at MSG. … They’ve been without 6-11, 265-pound starting center Tarris Reed Jr. (15.5 ppg, 8.3 rpg), the 2025 Big East Sixth Man of the Year, the previous five games due to a sprained ankle. Reed started the season’s first four games, converted 68% from the floor and blocked two shots per game. His availability will be a game-day call. Backup rookie Eric Reibe has filled in admirably in starting the last five games, but he’ll be going against UF’s battle-tested veterans in the post. … Forward Alex Karaban, a second-team All-Big East selection in ’25, has started all but one game of the 123 he’s played during his four seasons at UConn (a rarity for such an outstanding player in this transfer and turn-pro era). He’s in his second season captaining the Huskies and was an instrumental performer during their back-to-back titles. His scoring numbers are down a couple points, but Karaban is a 47% career shooter overall and 37% from the 3-point line. … Guard Solo Ball is a talented scorer, but his 3-point shooting is down at 27.9% this season, with maybe the Gators having something to do with it after he went 2-for-9 from deep (2-11 overall) in the tournament loss. He came into that game at 41.4% for the season. … UF knows point guard Silas Demary Jr. very well after the last two seasons at Georgia. When the Gators last saw Demary, he was scoring 21 points and banging four of six from deep in the Bulldogs’ upset, court-storming win at Athens (UF’s final loss of ‘the 24-25 campaign). He’s an excellent defender and facilitator, at No. 31 nationally in assist rate. … Backups Malachi Smith (6.2 ppg) and Jayden Ross (5.9) have combined to make 17 of 43 from the arc off the bench. 

 

Numbers of Note 

* 3 — Times Golden and Hurley have squared off the last four seasons. The Huskies came to Gainesville on Dec. 7, 2022 — Hurley’s fifth season at UConn and Golden’s first at UF — and handed the Gators a 74-54 home humbling that marked the program’s worst loss at the O’Dome 25 years. That was UConn’s 10th straight win to the open the season and the team, despite a run of five losses in six games early in the conference season, went on to claim the program’s first NCAA title since 2014 (when the Huskies knocked the top-seeded Gators from the Final Four, by the way and ended UF’s program-record 30-game winning streak).

* 287 — Games since the last time the Gators posted fewer assists than the four they carded at Duke, a run that spans the last 10 seasons. UF had just three assists in a 70-63 home win against Vermont on Nov. 19, 2017 and only once since it had as few as four (in a 73-67 defeat of Marshall on Nov. 29, 2019). 

* 2018 — UF’s last trip to Madison Square Garden. The date was Dec. 4. Senior guard KeVaughn Allen scored 19 points, while fourth-year junior forward Keith Stone added nine points, eight rebounds and a trio of steals in a 66-56 defeat of West Virginia in the Jimmy V Classic. It was the Gators defense, though, that set the tone against a Mountaineers squad that came in averaging better than 86 points a game and ranked 19th in the country in offensive efficiency. WVU shot just 29.7 percent (including 7-for-23 from the 3-point line), 55 percent from the free-throw line, and turned the ball over a season-high 21 times. 

 

Bottom Line

The Gators — after coming close against Arizona, then coming even closer at Duke — need to capitalize on one of these marquee pre-SEC match-ups. This will be as tough an ask as either of the other two.

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