No. 21 Florida vs South Florida (Monday, 8:30 pm)

No. 21 Florida vs. South Florida

 
* What: Jacksonville Sports Foundation Invitational
* When: Monday, 8:30 p.m. (ET)
* Where: VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena / Jacksonville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (0-0) / South Florida (0-0)
* TV: SEC Network (Kevin Fitzgerald and Jon Sundvold)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
  (with Sean Kelley, Lee Humphrey and Steve Egan) 
* Ticket info

Projected Starters

The Breakdown

SETUP: Florida and South Florida meet in the 2024-25 season opener for both teams, but with a somber backdrop following the death of Bulls coach Amir Abdur-Rahim on Oct. 24. Abdur-Rahim, 43, was a rising star in the profession. He rebuilt one of the worst programs in the nation at Kennesaw State into a 2023 NCAA Tournament team, then jumped to USF in and took on another massive rebuild of a perennial bottom-feeder. In one season, Abdur-Rahim led the Bulls to a school-record 25 victories and the American Athletic Conference title, the first regular-season championship in program history. He was honored as coach of the year in two different leagues and was among the most respected in the collegiate ranks. His death, from complications during surgery, was devastating to the USF and Tampa communities. The school named associated head Ben Fletcher as interim head coach. Abdur-Rahim, whose memorial service was Saturday in Tampa, will be remembered during what will be an emotional moment of silence before the game.  

SERIES: UF leads 19-5, with wins in the last four meetings, including a 66-55 victory on Dec. 18, 2021 in the Orange Bowl Classic at Sunrise, Fla. In that one, the Gators let a 16-point second-half lead get reduced to just three before closing out the win despite shooting only 39 percent overall, 31 from the 3-point line and committing 17 turnovers. Center Colin Castleton led the way with 12 points and 11 rebounds, while forward Anthony Duruji came off the bench for 11 points and nine rebounds.  

ETC: UF coach Todd Golden has never faced USF, but his associate head coach, Carlin Hartman, faced the Bulls a bunch as a player at Tulane during the golden eras for both programs during the early 1990s as members of the Metro Conference. … The Bulls also have an assistant coach who may look familiar in Marreese Speights, who serves as the team’s director of player development. Speights was a freshman forward on the second of Florida’s back-to-back NCAA championship teams in 2006-07. … The Gators’ last trip to Jacksonville came in 2016-17, when they played the first two games of the season at the then-Memorial Coliseum while the O’Dome was being renovated. UF defeated Florida Gulf Coast 80-59 in the opener and Mercer 76-54 two nights later, tipping off a season that eventually ended in the Elite Eight. 

 

Tale of the Tape

The Gators

They’re ranked for the first time to open a season since 2019 and begin the third season under Golden (40-29) with two returning starters (five rotational players in all) from a team that went 24-12 (the most wins in the program since 2017) and reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021. The team has spent the offseason honing a rapid-fire offense that ranked 12th nationally last season in efficiency and 17th in tempo. The Gators devoted even more time on improving a defense that proved to be the squad’s Achilles heel in ranking 94th and was way too generous when it came to straight-live drives and ball-screen action. 

Senior guard Walter Clayton Jr. was named to the preseason All-SEC team and is a bona fide All-American candidate after averaging 17.6 points despite shooting numbers that were a tad below his career digits. Clayton, who poured in a career-high 33 points — including his team’s last 16 points over the final four minutes — in the Gators’ 102-100 loss to Colorado in the NCAA Tournament, shot 43.2 percent overall, 36.5 from deep and 87.7 from the free-throw line. Though a combo guard over the first three years of his career, Clayton will inherit point duties and be asked to improve on his near-even assist-to-turnover ratio of a season ago (93 assists, 80 turnovers). The selfless way UF intends to play should help on that front.

Will Richard, the senior wing, hopes to improve on his shooting numbers from last season after taking a mini-dip from his outstanding stats as a sophomore, when he ranked among the top 5 percent nationally in offensive efficiency. Richard hit 41.1 percent overall and 34.5 from distance last year after posting 49 and 39 percent, respectively, the year before.  

Sophomore forward Alex Condon became the first freshman in UF history to make his starting debut in an NCAA Tournament game, when he replaced injured Micah Handlogten in the lineup against Colorado last March. Now the hard-playing and high-flying Condon figures to a fixture in the first unit, alongside Washington State transfer Rueben Chinyelu, who together should form one of the best defending and rebounding duos in the SEC. Condon shot 46 percent from the floor last season and has worked on his 3-pointer (29 percent) as he tries and expand his game. Chinyelu, a 14-minute-per-game reserve who shot nearly 62 percent with the Cougars as a freshman, is sheer power and figures to be among the strongest players in the SEC. 

Florida Atlantic transfer Alijah Martin, one of the most accomplished guards in the nation the last two seasons after helping guide the Owls to the 2023 Final Four, will provide instant defense on the perimeter. He’s also a three-level scorer who’s hit 44 percent overall and 37 percent from deep over his four seasons and 124-game career.

A pair of key returning reserves from last season, sophomore guard Denzel Aberdeen (3.3 ppg) and 6-9 forward Thomas Haugh (3.9 ppg, 3.7 rpg), will have greatly expanded roles this season, with both in the 20-minute range. … Forward Sam Alexis, a 6-8, 240-pound transfer from Tennessee-Chattanooga, can play both the “4” and “5” spots. The most skilled “big” on the roster, Alexis averaged 10.8 points and 9.1 rebounds while shooting 55 percent from the floor last season. … The Gators are still awaiting word on the eligibility of freshman Urban Klavzar, the Slovenian guard who has yet to be cleared by the NCAA. If available, Klavzar’s offensive skill set (starting with his quick 3-point release) will be a welcome addition, as he vies with sophomore Kajus Kublickas and freshman Isaiah Brown for the fifth guard spot. 

 

The Bulls

USF tips off its 53rd all-time season. What should have been a joyous celebration and banner-hanging campaign recognizing the program’s first regular-season conference title in program history instead will be a somber start to a rebuild. Fletcher served as Abdur-Rahim’s right hand in their inaugural South Florida season, as well as their time together during the resurrection of the Kennesaw State program. 

While the Bulls went a sterling 25-8 in ’23-24, a 20-game winning streak (the fourth-longest in state history) and 16-2 mark in AAC play, the program lost its three best players and leading scorers to the transfer portal. First-team all-league guard Chris Youngblood (15.3 points, 42 percent from 3) is at Alabama, point guard Selton Miguel (14.7 ppg, 39 percent from 3) is at Maryland and power forward Kasean Pryor (13.0 ppg, 7.9 rpg) is at Louisville. That’s 43 points per game and some excellent shooting and rebounding the Bulls will need to make up from a roster that returns four rotational players, plus one medical redshirt. 

The lone starter back is guard Kobe Knox, the middle son of former Florida State star wide receiver Kevin Knox, and one of three excellent Knox boys by way of Tampa Catholic High. The first, Kevin II, was a one-and-done with John Calipari at Kentucky and now plays in the G League. The youngest, freshman Karter, originally followed his older brother’s path to UK, but flipped and followed Calipari to Arkansas last spring. The Gators will see Karter in a couple months. Kobe, meanwhile, is a former McDonald’s All American who started all 33 games last season after transferring to USF from Grand Canyon. He shot 41 percent from the floor and 32 from deep. 

Point guard Jayden Reid is a tough Long Island-bred kid who earned AAC All-Freshman honors on his way to starting 13 games last season, including a double-double of 11 points and 10 assists in his first collegiate game, a win over South Carolina State. His 47.5-percent shooting from 3-point range was a program record for a freshman. He finished with 101 assists on the season, with his assist-to-turnover ratio of 2.06 ranking 10th nationally among freshman.

Forward Jamille Reynolds is a Tampa Bay product, by way of St. Petersburg Lakeland, but took a circuitous rout to get to the Bulls. USF is his fourth school, with previous stops at, in order, UCF, Temple and Cincinnati. His career numbers show 560 points and 338 rebounds, with his best season coming in ’22-23 when he averaged 10.1 points and 5.4 rebounds with Temple.

Guard Kasen Jennings followed Abdur-Rahim from Kennesaw, but sat out last season with an injury, eventually returning to practice and taking a medical redshirt. He averaged 6.2 points per game for the team’s ’22-23 run to the NCAA Tournament. … Backup 6-9 forward De’Ante Green is a transfer from Florida State, where he played in 55 games as a reserve. … Guard Jimmie Williams is a transfer from Wallace State (Ala.), where he was one of the top junior-college prospects in the nation after pouring in a school-record 48 points in the national tournament.  

 

Numbers of Note

 * 3 —1,000-point career scorers in the UF lineup, based on to-date tallies of Martin (1,476), Clayton (1,404) and Richard (1,143). This will mark the third time this century the Gators have begun a season with a trio of 1,000-point club members on the roster. The other two seasons were 2011-12 (with Kenny Boyton, Erving Walker and Mike Rosario) and 2021-22 (Tyree Appleby, Phlandrous Fleming and Brandon McKissic).   

* 43 —Points scored by USF sophomore guard Charlie Bradley against Florida State in the championship game of the 1981 Florida Four, a four-team tournament that featured Florida, Florida State, South Florida and Jacksonville and was played twice then disbanded. The Bulls won both tournaments, claiming the first on their home floor of the Sun Dome in Tampa in 1981, then winning at the O’Connell Center a year later, including a 77-73 championship-game defeat of the Gators. Bradley, the state’s all-time scoring leader with 2,319 points, held the O’Dome single-game record until it was broken by LSU’s Chris Jackson, who dropped 53 on the Gators in 1989.

* 110 —All-time seasons for Florida men’s basketball, which began Dec. 15, 1915 with a 30-14 road victory against Jacksonville YMCA.  

* 1971 —The first year the Gators and Bulls played basketball. UF swept the home-and-home series early in the ’71-72 season, winning 116-87 at Alligator Alley on Dec. 4, 1971, then again on Dec. 14 with a 98-77 victory at Curtis Hixon Hall in downtown Tampa. 

* 1995 — The last year the Bulls defeated the Gators. The date was Nov. 28, with USF getting 24 points from guard Chucky Atkins in a 73-58 rout at the Sun Dome in what turned out to be UF’s last season under Coach Lon Kruger. 

 

Bottom Line

Last year’s team won 24 games. This one is deeper, more complete. So is the SEC, but that’s a story for down the road. Let’s go. 

Email Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu