No. 5 Florida vs. Ole Miss

 
* When: Saturday, 6 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O’Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (26-4, 13-4) / Ole Miss (21-9, 10-7)
* TV: SEC Network (John Schriffen and Richard Hendrix)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
  (with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) 
* Ticket info

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Projected Starters

Ole Miss	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Malik Dia	F	6-9 / 250	Junior	10.4 pts / 5.5 reb
Dre Davis	G	6-6 / 215	Senior	10.6 pts / 4.6 reb
Matthew Murrell	G	6-4 / 205	Senior	11.0 pts / 3.4 reb
Jaylen Murray	G	5-11 / 165	Senior	10.3 pts / 3.5 ast
Sean Padulla	G	6-1 / 195	Senior	14.9 pts / 3.6 reb / 3.8 ast

The Breakdown

SETUP: Fifth-ranked Florida and Ole Miss will close out their regular seasons, with each looking to build on momentum heading into the Southeastern Conference and NCAA tournaments. … The Gators, who will honor their trio of marquee guards (Walter Clayton Jr., Will Richard and Alijah Martin) in a pregame “Senior Night” ceremony, have won eight of the previous nine and are coming off Wednesday night’s 99-94 road upset of seventh-ranked Alabama. The Rebels have won two in a row and are fresh off a big-time victory, as well, upending No. 4 Tennessee, 78-76, an outcome that brought about a court-storming at Oxford. … UF has clinched second place in the league standings and the No. 2 seed in next week’s SEC Tournament at Nashville, but is looking to solidify its hopes of a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Mississippi, winner of two straight, is in a three-way tie with Missouri and Texas A&M for fifth place in the league, has locked up a first-round SEC bye and is looking like a 6- or 7-seed in the NCAA field. 

SERIES: UF leads 70-49, but it’s been mostly even the last seven years with the Gators winning five of nine. The last meeting was an Ole Miss blowout, a punishing, lopsided 103-85 victory for the home team at Oxford. The date was Jan. 10, 2024, an ugly outcome that got the Gators off to an 0-2 start in SEC play last season. Ole Miss led by just four at halftime, but scored 59 in the second period by shooting — get this — 75.0 percent, led by 28 points from forward Jaemyn Brakefield and 23 from Matthew Murrell, as the Rebels scored 24 points off turnovers and scored 21 points in transition to just five for the visitors. UF converted only 41 percent for the game and had a staggering 15 shots blocked, including nine by 7-5 center Jamarion Sharp. 

ETC: The Gators have a seven-game winning streak against the Rebels at the O’Dome, dating to the 2016 season. 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Ole Miss
84.3	Scoring	77.9
.468	Field-goal percentage	.447
.352	3-point percentage	.347
68.1	Scoring defense	71.0
.397	Field-goal percentage defense	.428
.295	3-point percentage defense	.326
4th	KenPom.com overall ranking	25th
4th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	24th
10th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	28th
67th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	132nd
4th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	27th
25th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	7th

The Gators

They nabbed one of the best road wins of the college basketball season, but still got dinged on the metrics front; defensively, that is. UF dropped from eighth to 10th in defensive efficiency, despite holding the Crimson Tide to 53.2 percent from the 2-point area (Bama was averaging nearly 60 percent) and to nine 3-pointers (Bama was averaging nearly 11 per game). No big deal. The Gators got a huge victory and at fourth and 10th, respectively, are now one of just three teams in the country who rank in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency, along with Duke (2nd and 4th) and Houston (10th and 3rd). UF, one of the most lethal offenses in the country, is actually statting better in 2-point and 3-point percentage defense (16th at 45.7 and 8th at 29.5 nationally) than 2-point and 3-point percentage offense (39th at 55.6 and 101st at 35.2). The Gators, though, are playing exceptional on the glass, particularly in SEC play where they are fourth in defensive rebounding (29.7 percent) and second on the offensive end (35.4). They blasted the Crimson Tide 50-35 in overall boards and had a 16-10 advantage on the offensive end (with a 19-10 edge in second-chance points). UF out-paced the fastest-paced team in the nation for a 22-10 edge in fast-break scoring and turned the ball over only twice in the second half when the Gators flipped a five-point deficit into a 14-point lead and held on by making 12 of 15 free throws over the final 1:29. 

The ninth sold-out crowd of the season needs to arrive early for the pregame senior tributes to Walter Clayton Jr., Will Richard and Alijah Martin, arguably the best trio of guards in the country. Clayton, after going a career-high 11 consecutive games without reaching 20 points, had 22, five rebounds and eight assists in a terrific performance Wednesday. Richard, who combined for 55 in the previous two games, had eight points, four boards and missed all five of his 3s (his most 3-point attempts without a make in 53 games), but has been a steady threat on both ends throughout his finest collegiate season. Martin, the Florida Atlantic transfer, is coming off a 10-point, 5-rebound game and has been the catalyst behind the program’s leap to become one of the nation’s best defenses. All three are shooting around 36 percent from the 3-point line, where each has made at least 61 this season (led by Clayton’s 79, with at least one in every game this season). Combined, the trio has scored 5,328 points in their collegiate careers, including 2,680 as Gators. 

Forward Alex Condon would appear back from the ankle sprain that cost him four games. Eight days after going 1-for-7 and grabbing three rebounds over 21 minutes in the loss at Georgia, Condon scored a career-high 27 points, made nine of 16 shots, hit two 3s, grabbed 10 rebounds (half on offense) for his sixth double-double of the season, blocked two shots and was a plus-12 in his finest performance as a Gator. He did it back in the starting lineup for the first time since Feb. 11 and alongside center Rueben Chinyelu, who grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds (four on the offensive end) in just 20 minutes. … Sophomore forward Thomas Haugh (9.2 ppg, 6.0 rpg) came off the bench for the first time since Condon went down with his injury at Mississippi State. Haugh was scoreless in the first half, but finished with 12 points and three rebounds in 19 minutes. … Backup 7-1 center Micah Handlogten (2.5 ppg, 5.8 rpg) had two points, four rebounds and a steal in 10 minutes. … Reserve guards Denzel Aberdeen (8.2 ppg) and Urban Klavzar (3.7 ppg) had seven and two points off the bench, respectively. Aberdeen hit a huge second-half 3, his first in four games, and two clutch free throws with 12.4 seconds left to help seal the win. 

The Rebels

They’re 41-21 in the second season under Chris Beard, an outstanding coach with a proven track record for winning big despite his heavy, much-publicized baggage. Beard guided Texas Tech to the 2019 NCAA championship game, losing to Virginia, then bolted for Texas, where he was fired in December of ’22 for a domestic violence incident. Ole Miss came calling that offseason. He went 20-12 last year and now has the Rebels comfortably in the NCAA field, with high-quality wins over Brigham Young on a neutral floor, at Louisville and Alabama, and home against Kentucky and Tennessee. The non-conference losses were to Purdue on a neutral court and at Memphis. Ole Miss went through two three-game SEC losing streaks — the last loss was by 30 at Auburn on Feb. 26 — but has consecutive one-possession home victories (Oklahoma and Tennessee). … Offensively, the Rebels are the No. 1 team in the country in protecting the ball, with just 12.6 percent of possessions ending in turnovers. Their shooting numbers are middling, both nationally and in the SEC: 51.5 percent from 2 (162nd in the country) and 34.7 (128th). Good thing for the Rebels they don’t turn it over a lot because they rarely get extra possessions on offensive rebounds, where their mostly four-guard lineup is the worst in the league on the offensive glass (313th nationally, just 25.3 percent in conference). On defense, Ole Miss is a top-30 team, a sub-par rebounding team, but pretty good at being handsy and causing turnovers (12.3 percent). 
 

The Rebels celebrated their seniors in grand fashion Wednesday. Matthew Murrell and Jaemyn Brakefield both are four-year Ole Miss guys with more 3,000 points between them. Murrell, who was recruited heavily by the former UF staff, has played 147 games, with 113 starts and averaged nearly 12 points per game for his career. He’s at 52 percent from 2 and 32.4 from 3, but is capable of going off like he did for 24 in the win over Kentucky (or against the Gators last season). The 6-8, 225-pound Brakefield (11.3 ppg, 4.5 rpg) started every game last season, but has come off the bench in all 30 this season. He’s a solid passer in the front court, a very good defender and capable of stuffing the box score, mostly while working from inside the arc. … Forward Malik Dia, the lone big in the starting lineup, is a guy who can beast inside (52 percent from 2), but also rain 3s, where his 23 makes from deep rank fourth on the squad. Dia had a ridiculous 23 points and 19 rebounds in the win over Alabama. He came from Belmont (and before that Vanderbilt, where he played just 11 minutes a game) and is riding a five-game streak of double-digit scoring.

Point guard Sean Padulla averaged 12.1 points and 3.2 assists over his three previous seasons at Virginia Tech, where he was one of the best 3-point shooters in the Atlantic Coast Conference at 35.5 percent. He’s at 39.9 this season with a team high 73 makes and has seven games with at least four 3s, including five against Oklahoma last week on his way to 26 points. … Guard Jaylen Murray, another senior, is in his second season with the Rebels after transferring from Saint Francis, where he was part of the 15-seed that knocked Kentucky out of the first round of the ’22 NCAA Tournament and Cinderella’ed its way to a regional final. He’s undersized, so can do only so much in the interior, but he’s making 39 percent from distance and knows how to penetrate locate shooters. … Dre Davis is a fifth-year grad transfer with two years at Seton Hall and two at Louisville before that. Davis went for 20 points in the win over the Cards back in November. … Guard Davon Barnes (5.1 ppg, 3.6 rpg) and forward Mikeal Brown-Jones (4.1 ppg) provide depth.

Numbers of Note

* 5 — Division I players this century with at least 27 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks in a top-10 road victory, something Condon achieved at Bama. The others: Johnny Davis (Wisconsin), Cade Cunningham (Oklahoma State), Erik Mika (BYU) and Tyler Hansbrough (North Carolina). Three of those four were first-round NBA draft picks. 

* 5 — Top 25 wins for the Gators this season, the second-most for the program over the last decade, behind the six of 2017-18. Those victories are: No. 1 Tennessee, at No. 1 Auburn, at No. 22 Mississippi State, No. 12 Texas A&M and at No. 7 Alabama.

* 66 — UF’s total wins in three seasons under Todd Golden, which is the most all-time for a Florida coach in his first 100 games. Golden moved ahead of, in order, Mike White (65), Tommy Bartlett and Sam McAllister (62), and Billy Donovan (58). 

* 1974 — The last year the Gators won back-to-back games against teams ranked in the Associated Press top 12, as this team did in defeating No. 12 Texas A&M and No. 7 Alabama. That UF team of 52 years ago beat No. 7 Bama and No. 5 Vanderbilt in consecutive games. 

* 2015 —The last year Ole Miss beat Florida at the O’Dome. The date was Feb. 12. The final score was 62-61, with the gut-punch coming on Rebels’ guard Stefan Moody’s logo 3-pointer with 2.7 seconds left. UF had one more chance, but Jake Kurtz’s length-of-court pass for Dorian Finney-Smith was batted away as time expired. The defeat came just three weeks after Mississippi’s Jarvis Summers sank two free throws with 3.5 seconds left for a 72-71 win at Oxford. And it came a month before UF finished its first losing season in 17 years and Donovan coached his final game with the Gators. Donovan left for the NBA Oklahoma City Thunder that offseason. 

Bottom Line

What an incredible year. Look for the Rowdy Reptiles and adoring O’Dome crowd to give these guys the postseason send-off they deserve.

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu