No. 4 Florida vs. No. 21 Missouri 

 
* What: Southeastern Conference Tournament
* When: Friday, 7 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Bridgestone Arena / Nashville, Tenn.
* Records: Florida (27-4) / Missouri (22-10) 
* TV: SEC Network (Karl Ravich, Jimmy Dykes and Molly McGrath)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
  (with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) 
* Ticket info

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Projected Starters

Missouri	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Mark Mitchell	F	6-9 / 230	Junior	14.3 pts / 4.7 reb
Josh Gray	F	7-0 / 260	Senior	3.3 pts / 5.2 reb
Tamar Bates	G	6-4 / 200	Senior	12.9 pts / 2.6 reb
Tony Perkins	G	6-4 / 200	Senior	8.2 pts / 2.4 reb
Anthony Robinson	G	6-3 / 180	Sophomore	9.2 pts / 3.2 reb / 3.5 ast

The Breakdown

SETUP: No. 4 Florida and No. 21 Missouri meet in the quarterfinal round of the SEC Tournament, with the 2-seed Gators looking to solidify a likely No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and the 7-seed Tigers looking to improve their NCAA situation. UF has won three straight and nine of the previous 10, most recently Saturday’s 90-71 home defeat of Ole Miss in the regular-season finale. Mizzou had lost three straight and four of the previous five, before defeating 10-seed Mississippi State in Thursday night’s second round to advance into the quarters.  

SERIES: The Gators lead 11-5, but had a run of four consecutive victories snapped — at home, no less — in dominant fashion when the Tigers came to Gainesville on Jan. 14 and left with an 83-82 victory, the lone home loss for the Gators this season. Don’t me fooled by the final score. The game wasn’t close. Mizzou shredded UF for 55% shooting, hitting 14 of its first 22 shots and raining seven of 14 from the 3-point line, and pouncing to a 19-point first half lead. UF fixed some things at halftime, cut deep into the margin in the second period by shooting 55% and defending at 33, and three times got within three points but could never get the big stop needed to catch the Tigers. Guard Caleb Grill scored 22 points, with six 3s (including 4-for-4 in the first half), to lead five Missouri players into double-figure scoring. Walter Clayton Jr. led UF with 28 points. 

ETC: This will be just the second time Florida and Missouri, which joined the league for the 2012-13 season, have played in the SEC Tournament. The two met in the quarterfinals in 2014, when the regular season-champion Gators won 72-49 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta on the way to the program’s last tournament title.

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Missouri
84.5	Scoring	84.5
.469	Field-goal percentage	.487
.352	3-point percentage	.373
68.2	Scoring defense	73.2
.395	Field-goal percentage defense	.440
.296	3-point percentage defense	.338
4th	KenPom.com overall ranking	20th
3rd	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	5th
10th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	74th
68th	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	231st
4th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	21st
25th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	35th

The Gators

They’ve won three straight against opponents ranked in the KenPom.com top 30, including a road upset of seventh-ranked Alabama that vaulted the Gators into the No. 2 seed of this tournament, their highest since 2017. UF is one of three teams in the country ranked in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency at fourth and 10th, respectively, with the other two being top-ranked Duke (2nd & 4th) and second-ranked Houston (10th & 2nd), both of which are locks to be No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament next week. Whether the Gators join them (and Auburn) on the top line may depend on this game. Then again, it may come down to a potential Saturday semifinal with Alabama, if both teams manage to advance. … Last year, UF played out of the 6-seed and won three games over three days to advance to the tournament championship game for just the 14th time and first in 10 years. The Gators lost to Auburn 86-67. … In a league of elite offenses, Florida is fourth in effective field-goal percentage, second in 2-point percentage (55.2) and sixth from the 3-point line (35.8), with the Gators’ offensive rebounding (2nd in the conference, 8th nationally) taking that end to another level with extra possessions. On defense, UF is third nationally in effective field-goal percentage, 10th defending the 2 (45.2%) and eighth at the arc (29.6). … The Gators are 67-33 in three seasons under Golden, giving him the best winning percentage (.670) after 100 games in program history, moving him ahead of Mike White (.650). 

Point guard Walter Clayton Jr. was named to First-Team All-SEC on Monday, then First-Team All-America by The Sporting News on Wednesday, a pair of individual honors capping (for now) his two seasons since transferring from Iona. Clayton, a second-team all-league selection last year, ranks No. 7 in KenPom’s National Player of the Year standings, which is second-best in the league behind Auburn’s Johni Broome (2nd) and just ahead of Alabama’s Mark Sears (8th). He’s making 54.3% of his 2’s and 36.4 of his 3s, after bombing in five in the win over Ole Miss. Against the Rebels, Clayton joined forces with fellow guards Will Richard and Alijah Martin, the fifth-year transfer from Florida Atlantic, for an emotional “Senior Night” tribute too the trio of players with more than 5,300 career points between them. Richard went just 2-for-10 from distance in his final home game, but is still at 37.5% in SEC play this season, as well as a team-best 68.5 from the 2-point area. Martin’s 38.4% from 3 in conference play is tops among starters. 

Forward Alex Condon was named to All-SEC third team after completing a week when he averaged 22.0 points, 12.5 rebounds and made four of seven from the 3-point line in two big victories. The wildly athletic and hard-playing Australian has caught the attention of NBA scouts and is now showing up on draft boards, with a couple showcase tournaments to further his individual cause. As for the team, “Condo” just needs to keep doing what he’s doing (half of his rebounds against conference opponents have come on the offensive end), but also improve on his 57.1% at the free throw line in SEC play, where he’s visited a team-high 70 times. … Center Rueben Chinyelu, who grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds in the win at Alabama, is shooting 59.8% against SEC teams. … In the two games since Condon returned to the starting lineup, sophomore forward Thomas Haugh (9.0 ppg, 6.1 rpg) has scored 19 points, made all his 2s, gone three of seven from 3, grabbed eight rebounds and dished seven assists. … The tournament will probably provide an extra emotional jolt for reserve 7-1 center Micah Handlogten (2.4 ppg, 5.6 rpg), whose outstanding ’23-24 season ended with a broken leg in the first two minutes of the championship game. In his seven games since foregoing his medical redshirt season, Handlogten is rebounding at 21% on the defensive end and 17.7 on the offensive end in his 14.6 minutes per game. … Junior backup guard Denzel Aberdeen (8.0 ppg) only hit one shot against Ole Miss, but it was a 3. When Aberdeen makes a 3, the Gators are 19-0. When he doesn’t make one, the team is 7-4. … Since finding his way into the regular rotation (if only for limited minutes), reserve guard Urban Klavzar (3.8 ppg) has a field goal in all 10 games and a 3-pointer in eight of them. He’s at 46.2 from deep in SEC play. 

 

The Tigers 

They’re in the third season under Dennis Gates, the former Leonard Hamilton protege who was among a short list of candidates who interviewed for the vacant Florida job that eventually went to Golden in 2022. Gates is 54-44 with the Tigers, but that record is heavily tilted toward last season’s 8-24 campaign that included 19 losses (18 in the regular season, one in the SEC Tournament) against league foes. In Gates’ first season, Mizzou went 25-10 and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers won six of their first eight in league play in ’25 (and eight of their first 11), but lost six of the last 10, including the three-game skid to end the season with losses at Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, then home against UK. 

Despite the losing streak, Mizzou has remained elite on offense, shooting 54.3% from 2 (that’s fifth in the SEC) and 37.9 from the arc (3rd). Its 84.5 points per game ranks fourth in the league. The Tigers’ problems are on defense, where they’ve given up an average of 94.0 points in their last four losses by allowing opponents to shoot better than 59% from the 2-point area. Defensively, they’re 13th in the SEC in effective field-goal percentage, 12th at defending the 2-point area (54.2) and 10th vs. the 3 (34.1). 

Missouri is a pretty balanced bunch on offense. Though only three players average in double-figure scoring, their next five average between 9.2 and 5.6 points per game. … Forward Mark Mitchell is the Tigers’ best front-court player. He’s at 51% for the season, but his 13 makes from 3 rank eighth on the team. Mitchell excels at drawing fouls, with 208 attempts (second-most in the SEC) on the season. … Backup guard Calelb Grill (14.8 ppg, 3.8 rpg), the transfer from Iowa State, was named SEC Sixth Man of the Year, beating out the likes of UF’s Haugh and Auburn guard Tahaad Pettiford. Grill has come off the bench for all but one game and done so with his shooting hand cocked. He’s made nearly 50% of his shots for the season and 42.3 from distance, with a team-high 74 makes (8th-best in SEC). … … Tamar Bates (50.9% overall, 39.7 from 3) has hit double figures in 21 games. He had 29 in Mizzou’s upset of then-No. 1 Kansas back in December and last year scored a career-high 38 in a loss to the Gators at Columbia. … Point guard Anthony Robinson, out of Tallahassee Florida State High, makes the high-octane offense go. He can score at all three levels and has a better than 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio, but he’s also an all-league defender. … A trio of reserves, guard Marques Warrick (6.9 ppg), plus forwards Trent Pierce (4.8 ppg) and Jacob Crews (5.6 ppg), all have at least 30 makes from 3. 

 

Numbers of Note

* .476 — UF’s all-time winning percentage in the SEC Tournament, based on a 49-54 record. 

* 4 — Times the Gators have won the SEC Tournament (2005, ’06, ’07 and ’14)

* 31 — Times Kentucky has won the SEC Tournament (too many years to list here), though the Wildcats have not won the event since 2018. Alabama has the second-most conference tournament titles with eight. The tournament was contested from 1933 to 1952, discontinued for 27 years, then resumed in 1979.  

* 31 — Points scored by UF sophomore guard Kenyan Weaks in a first-round 68-64 SEC tournament win over Auburn in 1998, the most points ever scored by a Gator in the event. Sophomore guard Tre Mann came close by scoring 30 in a quarterfinal loss to Tennessee in 2021. The all-time single-game SEC Tournament scoring record is 42 points by Kentucky center Melvin Turpin against Georgia in 1984.

* 2014 — The year of Florida’s last SEC Tournament title. The date was March 16. The place was the Georgia Dome. The top-ranked Gators, riding a 25-game winning streak after becoming the first team in conference history to go 18-0 in league play, built a 15-point second-half lead on No. 25 Kentucky, but then had to withstand a furious comeback by the Wildcats in a wild one that came down to the final possession. UK inbounded the ball with less than 10 seconds remaining, but guard James Young, attempting to drive the lane against Defensive Player of the Year Scottie Wilbekin, slipped to the floor, with Wilbekin tapping the ball to mid-court as time expired for a 61-60 UF victory. 

 

Bottom Line

Survive & Advance, Part I. 

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu