No. 19 Florida at No. 10 Vanderbilt

 
* When: Saturday, 2 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Memorial Gymnasium / Nashville, Tenn.
* Records: Florida (12-5, 3-1) / Vanderbilt (16-1, 3-1)
* Series/Last meeting: UF leads 75-74. The Gators defeated the Commodores 86-75 at home in their lone meeting of 2025. With leading scorer Walter Clayton Jr. sidelined with an ankle sprain, senior guard Will Richard stepped up by pouring in 21 points, including five 3s, and grabbed seven rebounds in a career-high 39 minutes. Sophomore forward Alex Condon had 19 points, nine rebounds, four assists and two blocks. Junior guard Denzel Aberdeen, in replacing Clayton in the first start of his career, scored 13 points, dished three assists and did not turn the ball over in his career-high 35 minutes. Vandy led 50-49 inside 14 minutes to play when the Gators got 3-pointers from reserve forward Sam Alexis, Richard and a pair from seldom-used sophomore guard Urban Klavzar, who entered the game 3-for-18 on the season from distance, to take out a lead they easily held the rest of the way. 
* TV: ESPN2 and ESPNU (Karl Ravech and Jimmy Dykes)
* 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	14.2 pts / 8.3 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Junior	11.4 pts / 10.7 reb
Thomas Haugh	F	6-9 / 215	Junior	17.4 pts / 6.6 reb
Xaivian Lee	G	6-4 / 185	Senior	11.2 pts / 4.2 reb
Boogie Fland	G	6-3 / 185	Sophomore	11.8 pts / 2.5 reb / 3.5 ast

Vanderbilt	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Devin McGlockton	F	6-7 / 230	Senior	10.4 pts / 7.4 reb
AK Okereke	F	6-7 / 244	Senior	8.2 pts / 3.6 reb
Tyler Nickel	G	6-7 / 220	Senior	14.7 pts / 3.5 reb
Duke Miles	G	6-2 / 180	Senior	17.5 pts / 2.8 reb
Tyler Tanner	G	6-0 / 173	Sophomore	17.2 pts / 3.6 reb / 5.2 ast

The Setup

No. 19 Florida and No. 10 Vanderbilt square off in an early heavyweight Southeastern Conference game between the preseason favorite to win the league and the conference’s hottest team to start the season. … The Gators have won seven of eight, including three straight in league play, following up two lopsided home wins last week over ranked opponents (No. 18 Georgia and No. 21 Tennessee) with Tuesday night’s 96-79 stomping of Oklahoma on the road. This will be a fifth consecutive Quadrant 1 opportunity for UF’s NCAA Evaluation Tool resume, which currently shows a No. 16 overall ranking and 3-5 record in Q1s. The Commodores, who equaled the best start in program history with 16 straight wins to start the season, suffered their first defeat Wednesday night with an 80-64 loss at unranked Texas, reducing the number of unbeaten teams in the nation to just three (Arizona, Nebraska and Miami-Ohio). … Vandy is 4-1 in Q1s and 9-1 in combined Q1 and Q2 games. … The Commodores’ loss threw the SEC into a five-way tie — Vandy, Florida, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Missouri — for first place, with seven teams a game back in second. … Florida coach Todd Golden is 2-3 against Vanderbilt, including a 0-2 mark on the road.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Vanderbilt
85.8	Scoring	91.3
.463	Field-goal percentage	.496
.279	3-point percentage	.368
71.4	Scoring defense	72.5
.409	Field-goal percentage defense	.402
.334	3-point percentage defense	.283
10th	KenPom.com overall ranking	11th
19th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	10th
9th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	13th
57th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	40th
16th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	11th
11th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	38th

The Breakdown 

About the Gators: Despite another dominant performance on the glass, UF lasted just one game as the nation’s No. 1 offensive rebounding team, losing the top spot once again to Tennessee, which the Gators obliterated on the boards last weekend. Not that a statistical category matters, especially after they so thoroughly beat up on Oklahoma by shooting 65.3% from the 2-point area and by scoring 60 of their 96 points in the paint. The performance was a good enough offensively to bump UF up to the top 20 in overall efficiency. That the Gators had a season-low seven turnovers on the road certainly helped the metrics. … UF’s nation-leading plus-15.7 rebound margin is three boards per better than second-place Tennessee and more than nine per game better than Vandy. … Florida remains dead-last among power conference teams in 3-point shooting percentage at 27.9, with 11 of 17 games under 30%. The Gators have actually been worse in their four SEC games at 26.9%, ahead of only Mississippi State (25.0). … Center Rueben Chinyelu in his last two games has made 15 of his 23 field-goal attempts and averaged 18 points and 14 rebounds. He will soon be in conversations for SEC Defensive Player of the Year, given the team now rates ninth nationally — best in the league — on that side of the ball in overall efficiency. … Point guard Boogie Fland averaged 19 points on 12-for-18 from the 2-point area, to go with 4.5 rebounds, 6.0 assists, 3.0 steals and just 1.5 turnovers in the last two games. He had another tough 3-point outing, going 1-for-5 — as did backcourt mate Xaivian Lee at 0-for-6 — but Fland definitely is getting a handle on organizing the Florida offense. … Thomas Haugh had 21 points, seven rebounds and two steals. He also went three of five from distance and is up to 34.8 from the arc on the season. … Backup guard Urban Klavzar (9.4 ppg) had his third consecutive double-figure scoring game at OU and did it hitting just one 3-pointer. In addition to leading the team in percentage from deep (36.0), Klavzar also leads in free-throw shooting at 94.4%. … Backup center Micah Handlogten (4.9 ppg, 6.7 rpg) had eight rebounds and two blocks in 11 minutes. … Backup guard Isaiah Brown (4.0 ppg, 2.5 rpg), who had two DNPs in December, has scored in eight straight games. 

About the Commodores: They’re in the second season under Mark Byington, who arrived by way of James Madison and flipped the program from a 9-23 record in ’23-24 (and seven consecutive missed NCAA tournaments) to a 20-13 mark in ’24-25 and first-round loss in the NCAA field. … Their 16-0 start equaled the same school-record run that opened the 2007-08 season under Kevin Stallings and included road wins over UCF, Memphis and Wake Forest, as well as winning the Battle 4 Atlantis with victories against Western Kentucky, Saint Mary’s and SMU. The Commodores three SEC wins to date came against against South Carolina on the road and home against LSU (those two are a combined 1-5 in league play), as well as rousing 96-90 defeat of 18th-ranked Alabama last week at Memorial Gym. … Vandy runs some great offense, especially with play-making guards Tyler Tanner and Duke Miles getting into the defense and averaging a combined 10 assists per game. Both players are also elite defenders who rank in the nation’s top 25 in steal percentage; both players have spent time in the KenPom Player of the Year rankings. Tanner is shooting 39.2% from 3, with Miles, the transfer from Oklahoma, at 36.6. … The Commodores are at 60% from the 2-point area and 36.8 on more than 28 attempts per game, which is the fourth-most attempts in the league. … Vandy’s biggest weakness — size — was exposed against Texas. Forward Devin McGlockton is a solid and efficient player on the glass, but the Commodores have just one rotational player taller than 6-7 in backup 6-10 forward Jalen Washington (9.5 ppg, 5.1 rpg). The Longhorns won the glass 42-24, but don’t expect Vandy to shoot so poorly (37% from 3) in its own gym. … Forward Tyler Nickel is the league’s second-best 3-point shooter at 47.2%. … One of Vandy’s best and most utilized reserves, TCU transfer guard Frankie Collins (7.8 ppg, 4.2 rpg, 4.7 apg, 2.4 spg), suffered a knee injury in December and will be out deep into the season. 

 

Numbers of Note 

* .236 — Combined 3-point shooting percentage of the Lee/Fland starting backcourt, based on 43-for-182 from deep. And the Gators still are averaging nearly 86 points per game. Think what this offense could be if that number was just 5 or 6 points higher.

* 4 — Games against NET Top 10 teams the Gators will have played after this one. UF already has played (and been beaten by) No. 2 Arizona on a semi-neutral floor in Las Vegas, No. 3 Duke on the road and No. 7 Connecticut on a semi-neutral floor at New York City. In comparison, Florida will be the Commodores’ highest-ranked NET opponent and fifth in the top 35.

* 2022 — The last year the Gators won at Vandy. The date was March 1. The circumstances were crazy. UF trailed by eight with just over four minutes to play, only to score 14 of the game’s final 16 points to steal an 82-78 road win after grad-transfer guard Phlandrous Fleming swished a go-ahead, late-shot clock 3-pointer with 6.3 seconds to play. The Commodores had a chance to tie the game, but All-SEC guard Scotty Pippin Jr., already with 29 points, bounced the front end of a one-and-one with 2.3 seconds to go. UF center Colin Castleton grabbed the rebound and sank both is free throws at the other end to ice the victory. Castleton finished with team highs of 19 points and seven rebounds, with Fleming posting 16 points, four rebounds, six assists, three steals and two blocks in the team’s 19th win of the season. Eleven days later, following a first-round loss to Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament, UF coach Mike White resigned to take the vacant Georgia job, setting in motion the events that led to the hiring of Golden.

 

Bottom Line

For the Gators, a chance to make a season-defining statement. For the Commodores, a chance to bounce back and reignite their historic start. 

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