No. 16 Florida vs. Auburn 

 
* When: Saturday, 4 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O’Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (14-5, 5-1) / Auburn (12-7, 3-3)
* Series/Last meeting: Auburn leads 92-85, but the Gators famously won both meetings last season, first with an 90-81 triumph at top-ranked Auburn on Feb. 8 — marking the first time in program history UF defeated the nation’s No. 1 team on the road — then 79-73 in the Final Four at San Antonio to clinch a spot in the NCAA title game. In both games, senior guard Walter Clayton Jr. was spectacular. He hit four 3-pointers on his way to 19 points and nine assists in the regular-season matchup. Two months later, Clayton poured in 34 points, on 11-for-18 from the floor, including five 3s, as UF rallied from nine down in the second half for one of its three second comebacks in the NCAA tournament.  
* TV: ESPN (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	14.1 pts / 8.1 reb
Rueben Chinyelu	C	6-10 / 255	Junior	12.0 pts / 11.2 reb
Thomas Haugh	F	6-9 / 215	Junior	16.9 pts / 6.5 reb
Xaivian Lee	G	6-4 / 185	Senior	11.4 pts / 4.1 reb
Boogie Fland	G	6-3 / 185	Sophomore	11.4 pts / 2.3 reb / 3.5 ast

Auburn	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Keyshawn Hall	F	6-7 / 240	Senior	20.1 pts / 7.6 reb
KeShawn Murphy	F	6-10 / 230	Senior	10.5 pts / 6.5 reb
Sebastian Williams-Adams	G	6-8 / 230	Freshman	7.7 pts / 3.7 reb
Elyjah Freeman	G	6-8 / 185	Sophomore	9.9 pts / 4.9 reb
Tahaad Pettiford	G	6-1 / 170	Freshman	13.9 pts / 2.8 reb / 3.2 ast

The Setup

No. 16 Florida and Auburn meet in a pivotal Southeastern Conference game for both teams that will double as a rematch of their showdown last April 5 in the 2025 Final Four at San Antonio, a game the Gators won 79-73 in their penultimate step to the program’s third national championship. … UF has won five in a row and sits in a tie with Texas A&M for first place in the SEC standings, with three teams (Arkansas, Kentucky and Georgia) one game back. … The Gators’ current streak includes three wins over ranked teams, but most recently Tuesday night’s 79-61 home defeat of unranked LSU. The Tigers, after starting the league schedule with two losses, have won three of four, including two in a row, after Tuesday night’s 78-66 win at Ole Miss. … The game is sold out. … UF has won 16 consecutive home games, with 10 straight in SEC play. The Gators are 38-2 at the O’Dome over the last three seasons. They also — get this — have not lost to the Tigers at the O’Dome since 1996, a run of 15 straight games. … Florida is 3-2 vs. Auburn under Coach Todd Golden, whose first high-major coaching job came when, after joining the Tigers staff by way of Columbia, he was promoted from director of basketball operations to assistant coach under Bruce Pearl. 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Auburn
86.1	Scoring	85.4
.463	Field-goal percentage	.467
.286	3-point percentage	.326
72.0	Scoring defense	78.0
.416	Field-goal percentage defense	.449
.334	3-point percentage defense	.349
10th	KenPom.com overall ranking	30th
11th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	15th
11th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	78th
59th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	158
14th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	34th
4th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	3rd

The Breakdown 

About the Gators: Their current five game winning streak has been rooted in rebounding, defense and a recent trend of better ball security. The Gators lead the nation in rebounding margin at plus-18, with their most recent demolition job on the glass a 50-30 pummeling of LSU that included a 24-7 advantage on the offensive glass that led to 21 second-chance points. The rebounding margin is plus-13 in SEC games, though UF still ranks second to Tennessee in the national offensive rebounding category (44.0%), but third in defensive rebounding (23.1%). Defensively, UF has allowed at least 80 points in just one conference game, while scoring at least 91 in four, and committed 10 or fewer turnovers each of the last four. … The Gators remain the worst 3-point shooting team among the nation’s 79 power conference teams at 28.6%, but they’re 14th in SEC play at 29.7 and went 18-for-51 the last two games combined for a 35.3%, a figure that — if maintained — would make this team incredibly difficult to beat. … Speaking of rebounding: Rueben Chinyelu. A day after being named SEC Player of the Week for averaging 19.5 points and 11.5 rebounds in UF’s wins at Oklahoma and No. 10 Vanderbilt last week, the UF center overpowered LSU for a fourth-straight double-double, this one of 15 points and a career-high 21 rebounds in just 23 minutes. Chinyelu, a 62.4% career free-throw shooter, had an amazing run 15 straight over four games snapped in going 5-for-10, but currently ranks seventh and ninth, respectively, in defensive and offensive rebounding nationally, while shooting 64% from the floor. … Backup guard Urban Klavzar (9.5 ppg), on his way to a game-best 18 points Tuesday, hit five 3s, the first to do so for the Gators since Clayton against Auburn in the Final Four. Klavzar is at 37.3% from deep on the season. … Forward Thomas Haugh was limited to just seven points, his second-fewest of the season, on 2-for-11 shooting and only three rebounds, yet the team won going away. Look for a bounce back. … Forward Alex Condon had 10 points and is on a run of nine straight double-figure scoring games. … Point guard Boogie Fland has just five turnovers the last five games. … UF outscored LSU 30-12 off the bench, mostly because of Klavzar, but guard Isaiah Brown (4.9 ppg, 2.7 rpg) and center Micah Handlogten (4.6 ppg, 6.4 rpg) combined for 12 points and 13 rebounds, including nine on the offensive end. In SEC play, Brown is averaging 6.5 points, 3.2 rebounds, shooting 48% from the floor and 4-for-10 from the 3-point line at 13.3 minutes per. … Guard Xaivian Lee has at least one 3-pointer in 12 of the last 13 games. 

About the Tigers: It’s their first year under Steven Pearl, the son of Bruce Pearl, who was handed the job after his father surprisingly stepped down last summer — well after the coaching-change cycle — and was promoted from his associate head coach post. The elder Pearl, of course, guided the program to its greatest heights, as in four SEC titles and two Final Fours over his 11 seasons. The younger Pearl, with zero head-coaching experience at any level before this season, already has more losses on his resume than the Tigers took all last season, including a tough 1-3 start to SEC play, but they’ve won three of the last four, including a rout of 15th-ranked Arkansas two weeks ago, and played first-place Texas A&M basically even at home until losing by two. … Like the Gators, they played a brutal non-conference schedule and lost to a foursome of top-10 teams (Houston, Michigan, Arizona and Purdue). … The Tigers are not an overly deep team, with six averaging at least 24 minutes and four at 27 per game. They’re a top-10 offensive rebounding team, rank first in the country at drawing fouls and don’t beat themselves with turnovers. Auburn has just two 3-point makes in each of the last two games and is a combined 4-for-36 (11.1%) in that short span. … Forward Keyshawn Hall is a SEC Player of the Year candidate, currently third in the league in scoring. Apparently, Hall has found a place to his liking, given he started at UNLV, transferred to George Mason, then to UCF and now at Auburn for the “portal slam.” He’s one of the best players in the country at drawing fouls and when he gets to line shoots nearly 87%. He’s also a 40% guy from downtown. … Tahaad Pettiford was supposed to be a one-and-done McDonald’s All-America guy. He’s now a second-round NBA grade who is struggling from the field (47.4%) and 3-point line (27.0), but more than capable of breaking out big any game. Pettiford dropped 27 in a win over against St. John’s on the road, 30 (with five 3s) against Arizona and 25 in the loss to Georgia. … Forward KeShawn Murphy, the transfer from Mississippi State and No. 6 rebounder in the SEC, is a solid big with very good rebounding numbers, but he hasn’t faced a collective front court like Florida’s. … Sebastian Williams-Allen is another outstanding foul-drawer. He’s averaged 34.5 minutes the last two games and played 42 in OT against Georgia. He has three straight double-figure scoring games. … Kevin Overton (12.2 ppg, 3.5 rpg) was at Drake two years ago, lost to the Gators in the Elite Eight at Texas Tech last season and had started all but one game in his first Auburn season until coming off the bench Tuesday against Ole Miss. He played 24 minutes, but only scored two points and missed all five of his shots. Overton, though, has nine double-digit scoring games this season, including 29 in win over NC State. He shoots 37.5% from distance.

 

Numbers of Note 

* 38.8 — What Auburn’s opponents have shot from the 3-point line SEC play, which ranks last in the league. Can the Gators take advantage? 

* 51.9 —UF’s free-throw percentage in the win against LSU, a season low. That poor performance was not a factor in the outcome, as the Gators led the entire second half by double figures, but another such display in a close game — with Condon (65.5%) and Chinyelu (67.6%) combining to go 9-for-18 — could spell trouble.

* 1985 — The year a Florida last strung together five consecutive double doubles, as Chinyelu has a chance to do Saturday. That player was Eugene McDowell, who averaged 14.2 points and 9.1 rebounds during his ’84-85 season season. McDowell, who passed away in 1995 at just 31 years old due to a rare heart condition, remains the No. 13 scorer in UF history with 1,565 points and is one just two Gators (alongside Neal Walk) with at least 1,000 career rebounds (1,063). There was a reason they called him “Eugene the Dunking Machine.”

 

Bottom Line

This is the second (following the Tennessee showdown of two weeks ago) in a run of five fantastic Saturday SEC games at the O’Dome. The environment should be elite. Again.

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