(1) Florida vs. (8) Connecticut

 
* What: NCAA Tournament / 2nd round
* When: Sunday, 12:10 pm (ET)
* Where: Lenovo Center / Raleigh, N.C.
* Records: Florida (31-4) / Connecticut (24-10)
* TV: CBS (Ian Eagle, Bill Raftery, Grant Hill and Tracy Wolfson)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
  (with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) 
* Ticket info

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Projected Starters

Connecticut	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Alex Karaban	F	6-8 / 225	Junior	14.3 pts / 5.3 reb / 2.8 ast
Samson Johnson	C	6-10 / 225	Senior	7.4 pts / 3.3 reb
Liam McNeeley	F	6-7 / 210	Freshman	14.2 pts / 6.1 reb
Solo Ball	G	6-3 / 190	Sophomore	14.6 pts / 3.6 reb
Hassan Diarra	G	6-2 / 195	Senior	7.8 pts / 3.6 reb / 5.7 ast

The Breakdown 

SETUP: Fourth-ranked Florida and Connecticut meet in the second round of the NCAA West Region. UF is the No. 1 seed and UConn is the No. 8. The Gators got here by defeating 16-seed Norfolk State 95-69 in Friday’s first round, while the two-time reigning national-champion Huskies beat 9-seed Oklahoma 67-59. The winner will advance to the Sweet 16 round, set for Thursday at San Francisco. 

SERIES: UConn leads 5-1, with five consecutive victories dating to the 2013-14 season when the Huskies bracketed the Gators’ historic, program-record 30-game winning streak with a buzzer-beating win (see Napier, Shabazz) at Storrs on Dec. 2, then eliminated top-seeded UF with 63-53 defeat in the Final Four at Arlington, Texas. The two teams last met on Dec. 7, 2022, when UConn came to Gainesville and boat-raced the home team, 75-54, with a frighteningly efficient display of basketball on both ends of the floor that turned out to be a harbinger of things to come. Junior center Adama Sanogo scored 17 points and grabbed seven rebounds, while freshman center Donovan Clingan came off the bench to score 16 points on 8-for-9 shooting, clear eight rebounds and block three shots. The Huskies shot 52%, defended the Gators at 37%, won the glass 42-28, and blew up whatever the home team was trying to do on offense (6 assists). UF’s two leading scorers were forward Alex Fudge and guard Riley Kugel with 13 points each. UConn went to go 31-8 and claim the program’s fifth NCAA title by defeating San Diego State 76-59 in the title game at Houston.  

ETC: UConn, then coached by Kevin Ollie, actually beat the Billy Donovan-coached Gators three times over an 13-month stretch from Dec. 2, 2013 to Jan. 3, 2015 when the Huskies came to the O’Dome and left with a 63-59 victory in the return game of a home-and-home series.   

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Connecticut
85.7	Scoring	77.1
.473	Field-goal percentage	.478
.354	3-point percentage	.351
69.2	Scoring defense	67.8
.400	Field-goal percentage defense	.420
.293	3-point percentage defense	.346
3rd	KenPom.com overall ranking	32nd
1st	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	15th
10th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	78th
61st	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	343rd
4th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	32nd
19th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	77th

The Gators

They got off to a rip-roaring start against Norfolk State, jumping to 32-point lead deep into the first half, when the Gators got lackadaisical and over the final two minutes of the period let the Spartans hit five straight field-goal attempts while turning the ball over four times, during an ugly 11-0 spurt that made for a salty intermission. That brief lack of focus — from a team with the rare combination of top-10 offense and top-10 defense — figures to be a focus of Coach Todd Golden and his staff, as a a similar sequence could spell doom against an opponent like UConn. … UF, which scored a NCAA Tournament program-record 53 points in the first half Friday, shot 48.3% for the game, made 10 of 32 from distance (31.3) and had 20 assists, but the lapses on the defensive end, where NSU shot nearly 46% and tallied 48 points in the paint, were alarming. … Norfolk State shot 50 percent in the second half and only made one of six from the 3-point line. The Spartans were 14 of 24 from the 2-point area (58.3%). … UF coach Todd Golden became just eighth coach to win his first NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed. 

First-team All-America point guard Walter Clayton Jr. scored 16 of his game-high 23 points in the first half, including four 3-pointers. He’s averaging 21.3 points on 49% from the floor and 17-for-35 from the 3-point line (48.6%) and hit 16 of his 18 free throws (88.8%) during the postseason. Clayton extended his streak of consecutive games with at least one 3-pointer to 57. This game will be Clayton’s second against the Huskies in the NCAA Tournament. As a sophomore at Iona, where Clayton was the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Player of the Year, the Gaels were a 13-seed and faced fourth-seeded UConn in first-round action at Albany, New York. Iona actually led the game by two at halftime, but UConn broke things open in the second half on the way to an 87-63 victory. Clayton scored 15 points, made three 3s and had four assists. … Guard Alijah Martin won his fifth NCAA Tournament game (he won four at Florida Atlantic), scoring 17 points on five-for-10 shooting with a couple 3s. … Guard Will Richard went just 1-for-6 from the floor (all his shots from the arc), but had four rebounds and five assists. … The Clayton-Martin-Richard trio finished with 48 points against NSU. They averaged 51.7 per outing in the three-game run to the Southeastern Conference Tournament title last week. 

Forward Alex Condon had 12 points, five rebounds, three assists, two steals and two blocks. Center Rueben Chinyelu added six points and eight rebounds, sharing the post with 7-1 backup Micah Handlogten (2.9 ppg, 5.6 rpg), who had six points and eight rebounds in just 17 minutes off the bench. … Reserve forward Thomas Haugh (9.5 ppg, 5.9 rpg) made all four of his 2-point shots and missed all five of his attempts from 3 on his way to 13 points and three rebounds. He also had four assists and a couple steals. … Junior guard Denzel Aberdeen scored eight points, grabbed three rebounds and hit his only 3-point shot of the game. UF is 21-0 when Aberdeen makes a 3. 

The Huskies

They’re in the seventh season under Dan Hurley, who in his fifth and sixth season did something only Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Donovan were able to do in their 12th and 11th seasons, respectively: Capture back-to-back NCAA championships. UConn went 68-11 over those two seasons, winning the 2023 title as a No. 4 seed and the ’24 crown as a No. 1. The win Friday over OU was the Huskies’ 13th straight in NCAA play, tying the 64-field record held by Duke from ’91-93 and will be looking to set the consecutive-win mark at the Gators’ expense. … They finished third in the Big East Conference (behind St. John’s and Creighton) at 14-6 in league play. … UConn ranked in KenPom.com’s top 10 in both offense and defense each of the last two seasons, but took a significant plunge in ’24-25, especially on the defensive end of the floor. The Huskies play slow but efficiently on offense. They’re 28th in effective field-goal percentage, made 57.3% of their 2-point shots (15th nationally) and 35.1 from distance (106th). Defensively, UConn is solid inside the 3-point line (45.8% ranked 11th in the country), thanks in great part to the second-best shot-blocking team in the country (17.7%), but rate 256th defending the arc (34.6%). The Huskies will give up looks, so it’s up to the Gators to make ’em. 
 

Forward Alex Karaban, out of Bradenton (Fla.) IMG Academy, did not start the season opener of his freshman year, but has started every game since (109 straight) and was a key cog in the team’s championship run. He’s a double-figure career scorer (12.2 ppg) and nearly 38% shooter from the 3-point line, although his shooting percentages from the floor, arc and free-throw line this year are down from his previous two seasons. He scores at 53.6 percent in the 2-point area, 35.3 from 3 and makes winning plays. … Forward Liam McNeeley, out of Montverde (Fla.) Academy, was a top-10 prospect in the 2024 class and McDonald’s All American. McNeeley’s shooting percentages haven’t been great (43.3 from 2 and 32 from 3), but he does a little bit of everything very well and is expected to be a 2025 NBA lottery pick. … Guard Solo Ball is the team’s scoring leader and best 3-point threat at 42.2%. He’s hit double figures in 21 consecutive games. … Florida fans might remember point guard Hassan Diarra, who as a freshman at Texas A&M banged a 27-foot 3-pointer with one second remaining to knock the Gators out of the SEC Tournament in Tampa. Diarra has grown into one of the better playmakers in the country, with his 35.8% assist rate the 24th best in the nation. … With center Samson Johnson flanked by Karaban and McNeeley, the Huskies resemble a team that actually plays a conventional lineup of three bigs and two guards, but Karaban and McNeeley function more as playmaking guards. If Johnson gets the ball on the block, he’s probably going to score (77.6% from 3). He has yet to attempt a 3 this season and his 8.8% block-shot rate is 28th nationally.  

The Huskies stick with mostly an eight-man rotation, with backup 6-10, 260-pound center Tarris Reed Jr. (9.8 ppg, 7.3 rpg), a transfer from Michigan, an imposing presence. Forward Jaylin Stewart (5.4 ppg, 2.4 rpg) and guard Aidan Mahaney (4.5 ppg), a transfer from Saint Mary’s, will get minutes. 

Numbers of Note

* .611 — Florida’s winning percentage in second-round NCAA Tournament games, based on an 11-7 record that also includes three consecutive losses (2018, ’19 and ’21). 

* 78.9 —UConn’s team free-throw percentage, which is 15th-best in the country. Four of the Huskies’ five starters shot at least 82%.  

* 1,339 —Career points for Karaban, who ranks 28th on the Huskies’ all-time scoring list.

* 1994 —  Year of the Donyell Marshall game in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament at Miami Arena. Marshall, the Big East Player of the Year, first-team All-American and career 77-percent free-throw shooter, went to the line for a pair with less than three seconds to play and the game tied. He missed both. The Gators won 69-60 in overtime, then two days later defeated Boston College to reach the first Final Four in program history. 

* 2,006 —Career points for Clayton, one of just five four-year players in college basketball this season who amassed 2,000 points for their careers. Clayton, who’s tallied 1,235 as a Gator (the rest in his two seasons at Iona), is joined on that list by Erik Reynolds II (Saint Joseph’s), Zeke Mayo (South Dakota State/Kansas), Wade Taylor IV (Texas A&M) and Kam Jones (Marquette). 

 

Bottom Line

Now things get really serious, with one of the marquee games of the tournament’s second round, and very likely a road-type environment for the Gators. 

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu