No. 8 Florida vs. No. 1 Tennessee

 
* When: Tuesday, 7 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O’Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (13-1, 0-1) / Tennessee (14-0, 1-0)
* TV: ESPN2 (Karl Ravech and Jimmy Dykes)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
  (with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) 
* Ticket info

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

SETUP: No. 8 Florida and top-ranked Tennessee meet in the Southeastern Conference home opener for the Gators. UF, which fell two spots in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll, is coming off Saturday’s 106-100 loss at 10th-ranked Kentucky, while the Volunteers further cemented their No. 1 ranking by smashing No. 23 Arkansas 76-52 at home, leaving them (with the losses by both UF and Oklahoma) as the lone unbeaten team in Division I. 

SERIES: Tennessee leads 81-59, including wins in eight of the last 10 meetings dating to 2018, with six of those games played at Knoxville. That’s where the two faced off in the lone meeting of ’24, in a game that was moved up two hours to a Tuesday afternoon tip-off due to a pending blizzard. The Gators had no answer for fifth-year grad-transfer forward Dalton Knecht, who poured in a career-high 39 points on an array of offensive moves and shots while also grabbing eight rebounds as the sixth-ranked Vols won going away, 85-66, last Jan. 16. Knecht, the transfer from Northern Colorado, went 13 of 23 from the floor, dropped four of his six 3-pointers and made all nine of his free throws over 32 minutes. His performance paired with UT’s trademark defense, which held UF to just 29.4 percent for the game and five of 22 from the 3-point line. The Gators’ 66 points were a season-low for the nation’s 24th-ranked offense.  

ETC: Florida is 2-17 all-time against No. 1 teams, including 0-5 at home. Not surprisingly, Kentucky was the last No. 1-ranked SEC team to play at Gainesville, back on Feb. 7, 2015. Those Wildcats — featuring Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker and Willie Cauley-Stein — came in with a perfect record through 22 games on the way to winning their first 38 before being upset in the Final Four semifinals by Wisconsin. In that one, the Gators actually had a second-half lead behind the hot shooting of Michael Frazier II, and trailed by just two with three minutes to go. Frazier, though, left the game with an ankle injury and UF faded down the stretch in a 68-61 defeat. The last No. 1 SEC team Florida faced was Tennessee, led by SEC Player of the Year Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield, in what was a 73-61 on Feb. 9, 2019 at Knoxville. 

Tale of the Tape

The Gators

They went to Kentucky with the nation’s No. 8 offense and No. 12 defense. The Gators improved on the former number, rising to No. 3, but UK’s 58-percent overall shooting and 14 made 3s on 29 attempts sent UF tumbling all the way to 36th on defense. To be fair, the Wildcats are elite and creative with the ball, but to be real the Gators have to be much, much better at defending if they want to seriously contend in the SEC. They also need to be better at the free-throw line than going 22 of 35 (62.9 percent), especially in a two-possession game. Eight of those misses were by their top two scorers, Walter Clayton Jr. and Alijah Martin, who went into the game at 90.9 and 81.6, respectively, but went a combined 12-for-20 (60 percent). That is not to put the defeat on their shoulders, however, as the duo also combined for 59 of UF’s 100 points. Clayton scored 33 points on 9-for-15 from the floor and six of 12 from deep, while Martin had 26, going nine of 17 and 5-for-12. Clayton is now shooting 38.4 percent from the 3-point line on the season. Guard Will Richard scored nine points in what his first single-digit game after a four-game run when he averaged 20.3 points per. 

Florida only turned the ball over nine times in the hostile environment that is Rupp, but Kentucky made the Gators pay with 20 points off those turnovers. Clayton had a team-high five of them.

Center Rueben Chinyelu hit all four of his field-goal attempts (60.3 percent on the season) on his way to 10 points and eight rebounds against the Wildcats. He was the only UF frontcourt player that was able to match UK’s physicality in the post, as each of his fellow forwards got banged around and backed down on occasion. Tennessee will use the same tactic, to be sure, but Chinyelu needs to demonstrate the same fortitude on the road. He helped the Gators out-rebound the Wildcats 38-30. … Forward Alex Condon had seven points, 10 rebounds and three assists in the game. He’s at 49.5 percent. … Backup forwards Thomas Haugh (7.8 ppg, 5.6 rpg) and Sam Alexis (6.2 ppg, 4.8 rpg) had two different experiences at Rupp. Haugh had 11 points but only one rebound in his 21 minutes, while Alexis went scoreless and rebound-less in his five brief minutes. … Denzel Aberdeen (6.9 ppg) had four points off the bench in 15 minutes and — like the rest of his teammates — had a couple lapses on defense that need to be cleaned up. 

 

The Volunteers

It’s their 10th season under Rick Barnes, whose record with the Vols is 214-101, with two regular-season SEC championships (including 2024), as well as a pair of conference tournament titles. Barnes, a future Hall-of-Famer has 818 career victories — tied for third among D1 active coaches behind only John Calipari (Arkansas) and Bill Self (Kansas) — in stops at George Mason, Providence, Clemson and Texas over a 38-year head-coaching career. That career, however, includes just one Final Four (2003 with Texas). He’s taken the Vols to six consecutive NCAA tournaments and last year lost to top-seeded Purdue in the Elite Eight, with four key rotational players back from that team. Barnes’ teams always play elite defense and this one not only is no different, but rates No. 1 nationally in defensive efficiency, as well as No. 2 in effective field-goal percentage, No. 28 in 2-point percentage (44.9) and No. 1 in 3-point percentage (24.3). What’s taken the Vols to the top of the polls this season, though, has been a vastly improved offense that rates 20th nationally, per KenPom.com, after posting ranks of 28th, 64th, 85th and 96th the last four seasons. UT, though, was not so on point offensively in the win over Arkansas. The Vols shot just 39 percent for the game, but did bang 10 3s. Defensively, of course, they were great, limiting the Razorbacks to just 37.7 percent, including 6-for-29 from deep (20.7 percent), and forced 15 turnovers. 

Point guard Zakai Zeigler, the reigning SEC Defensive Player of the Year, figures to be the guy assigned to Clayton. Zeigler has been terrific in running the Vols offense, with his 8.0 assists per game more than two better than the next closest conference playmaker. He had 15 assists against Middle Tennessee and 10 against Miami last month. Though Zeigler, second in SEC in minutes at 33.7 per, is capable of scoring, it’s not what he’s looking to do; not at 38.5 percent from the floor at 29.6 from 3. He’s looking to distribute and he’s got plenty of options, starting with shooting guard Chaz Lanier, the transfer from North Florida currently leading the SEC in scoring at 20.2 points per game and second only to Saturday’s Gator-killer, Kentucky’s Koby Brea, in 3-point percentage at 46.7 on a league-high 120 attempts. Lanier is averaging four makes from deep per game. He had five on nine attempts against Arkansas on the way to 29 points.

Forward Igor Milicic, who started his career at Virginia but broke through the last two seasons at Charlotte, has been a tremendous addition at nearly nine rebounds a game. He had twice that (18) against the Hogs, plus five assists. … Guard Jahmai Mashak is an ideal sidekick to Zeigler, especially with how they can harass opposing guards. He’s averaged just 3.8 points over his four-year career, but this season is at 2.4 steals per game, which is third in the league. … Backup guard Jordan Gainey (11.4 ppg, 3.4 rpg) is the team’s third-leading scorer and plays starter’s minutes at 26.5. He’s at 47 percent from the nearly 36 from deep. … Felix Okpara, the transfer from Ohio State, is at 61 percent for the season and like backup big Cade Phillips (6.5 ppg, 4.4 rpg) has yet to attempt a 3-pointer.  

 

Numbers of Note

* 5 — Where Lanier currently ranks in KenPom’s Player of the Year rankings. The only D1 players above him are Auburn’s Johni Broome, Duke’s Cooper Flagg, Marquette’s Kam Jones and Kansas’s Hunter Dickinson. 

* 26.6 — Percent the Gators allowed from the 3-point line in their 13 non-conference games (all victories).

* 48.3 — Percent the Gators allowed from the 3-point line — on 29 attempts — in their SEC opener at Kentucky (loss). 

* 1923 —The last year Tennessee began a season with 14 consecutive victories. That UT team, a member of the Southern Conference at the time, finished 15-2.

* 2020 —The last year a No. 1-ranked team played the Gators at the O’Dome. The date was Jan. 25. The event was the Big 12/SEC Challenge. The opponent was Baylor. MaCio Teague and Devonte Bandoo scored 16 points apiece and Baylor extended its winning steak to 16 with a 72-61 victory. UF, with six losses, was actually a two-point favorite in the game, but the Bears stifled the Gators into 44-percent shooting, including just 23.5 from the 3-point line. 

 

Bottom Line

The Gators will either make history Tuesday night or be in an early season SEC hole.  

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu