Tag: college men’s basketball

Florida men’s basketball to host preseason Orange and Blue game

It’s almost time for college basketball, and Florida is hosting an intersquad scrimmage to finish off the preseason.

Instead of facing another school in a traditional exhibition game before the college basketball season starts, the Florida Gators are planning to hold an intrasquad scrimmage on Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. EDT. The program announced the game early Thursday morning.

Admission will be free to the Orange and Blue game with doors opening an hour before tipoff. Students will compete in contests and take home plenty of goodies as part of the event, including a team photo card for the first 1,000 fans through the gates. There will also be an interactive video/photo booth for fans to take pictures with the 2006 and 2007 National Championship trophies. One fan will win a pair of season tickets for the upcoming Florida Gators basketball season.

Capping off the preseason with an intrasquad scrimmage is new for the Gators. Florida has hosted an exhibition before the start of the season since 2004-05, most recently taking down Embry-Riddle last year.

The regular season (and [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag] era) will begin less than a week after the scrimmage takes place. Stony Brook comes into town on Nov. 7 and then Kennesaw State is in Gainesville on Nov. 11. Those should be wonderful opportunities for the Gators to start off strong, but the Florida State game on Nov. 18 will be the team’s first genuine test under new leadership.

247Sports’ Jacob Rudner is reporting that Florida will play “secret scrimmages” against Miami and Jacksonville before the season begins, so the scrimmage won’t be the only form of game-speed preparation the Gators undergo.

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Florida F Colin Castleton at ‘100%’ after offseason surgery

The basketball season is quickly approaching and Florida’s Colin Castleton says he feels like he’s back at full strength as preseason practices commence.

Florida’s most proven player, forward [autotag]Colin Castleton[/autotag], played through a shoulder injury last year that required surgery over the offseason.

Castleton is returning for his fifth year of eligibility in hopes of boosting his draft stock, so starting the season off at full strength is key. He was cleared for action earlier in September but is just now feeling like he’s fully recovered, according to comments made after practice to Gators Online and others.

“I’m 100%  now,” Castleton said. “Probably about a week or two ago, I was like really set around just being like 100 percent, and then they’re just taking me through like the progressions of getting back to full go in like the past week. We’ve been doing individual workouts, so I’ve been taking a little bit of banging and going against the pad, and coaches were hitting on me a little bit.”

Castleton also enters the season at the heaviest he’s ever been. At 6-foot-11-inches, Castleton has always had a long and lanky frame that could use some extra muscle for protection. He says he’s at 247 pounds right now after changing his diet and rehabbing intensely.

Tape has also surfaced of Castleton consistently hitting from three-point range. Todd Golden’s offense should allow him to operate as a stretch four more often than Mike White’s did, and Castleton looks healthy and confident from deep.

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Florida basketball looking to dance in latest ESPN bracketology update

The latest preseason update to ESPN’s bracketology still has Florida making the NCAA Tournament. It’d be a fine start to the Todd Golden era of Gators basketball.

The college basketball season is still a few months away, but there is a bit more clarity on what rosters will look like in 2022-23. That means it’s time for another bracketology update, and ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has the Florida Gators as a No. 10 seed once again.

Lunardi has UF facing off with Michigan in the South Region, the same matchup he predicted in July. That means Florida is not a team that has shown any major improvements in the past month, but it also means that Lunardi feels that bumping the Gators up from the First Four Out in the last update was warranted.

As far as the rest of the SEC, Kentucky is the No. 1 seed in the South Region and Alabama is the No. 6 seed. Arkansas is the No. 3 seed in the West Region, Auburn is a No. 4 seed in the Midwest Region along with eighth-seeded Texas A&M and Tennessee is the No. 2 seed in the East Region. Missouri is in Lunardi’s First Four Out and LSU is the Next Four Out.

After missing the NCAA Tournament entirely in the final year of [autotag]Mike White[/autotag]’s run at UF, finishing as a No. 10 seed would be a solid start to the Todd Golden era of Gators basketball.

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Florida basketball and Xavier to meet in Phil Knight Legacy opening round

The Florida-Xavier series continues on Thanksgiving Day 2022 as the two programs clash in the first round of Phil Knight Legacy event in Portland.

The opening-round matchups of the Phil Knight Legacy event in Portland, Oregon, were released on Monday and Florida drew a familiar foe for Thanksgiving Day. The Gators will face off with the Xavier Musketeers, the same team that eliminated UF in the second round of the National Invitation Tournament and went on to win it all in March.

Tip is set for 5:30 p.m. EST on Nov. 24, and the winner will face whoever wins between Duke and Oregon State. Gonzaga, Portland State, Purdue and West Virginia make up the rest of the field.

Florida and Xavier have faced off a handful of times in recent memory, perhaps most notably in the 2019 Charleston Classic championship game. The Gators took that game but they hold a 2-3 all-time record against the Musketeers.

As much of a redemption game as this matchup is for the returning players on the Gators roster, it’s also a chance for St. Bonaventure transfer [autotag]Kyle Lofton[/autotag] to take revenge on Xavier. Lofton’s 15-point, 11-assist double-double in the semifinals of the NIT wasn’t enough to put the Bonnies over the Musketeers, so he shouldn’t need any extra motivation going into the holiday tournament.

This will also be [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag]’s first in a tournament like this with the Gators. A win would not only be good for Golden’s record at UF but it would likely allow the team to test itself against a perenially strong program like Duke or Gonzaga in the later rounds.

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Gators get an early offer in on this rising 2024 power forward

Gators MBK offers this local lengthy basketball 2024 recruit a scholarship.

Local power forward prospect Sammie Yeaney added the Gators to his offer sheet when the team made their interest in him official with an offer on Thursday. If this bit of news slipped below your radar, don’t worry too much. Yeaney is presently unranked by the 247Sports national board, it’s very early in the 2024 recruiting cycle, and I have yet to spell his name correctly on the first try.

This isn’t the first time Yeaney has popped up in Gators news. He took an unofficial visit on campus in late June, hosted by associate head coach Carlin Hartman and incoming transfer [autotag]Alex Fudge[/autotag]. He’s familiar with the Gainesville area already, being an attendee of The Rock School, just a 20-minute drive from the Stephen C. O’Connell Center.

Nonetheless, it’s still important for the player and staff to get a feel for each other in person and show off athletic facilities. Evidently, it went well, with the offer coming just two weeks later.

Yeaney’s length is the first thing that stands out about him. He’s listed as having a 6-foot-7.5-inch frame, and as you can see in his recruiting pictures above, he’s not just a rail. That physicality has earned him some notice, and Prep Hoops recently ranked him as the second-best player in the state.

With the Gators’ offer in hand, he can boast a pretty good offer list for such an early phase in the 2024 cycle. In addition to Florida, he also has offers from ‘Bama and Texas Tech, which are impressive offers to pull down for a non-five-star prospect who is over two years away from playing his first college game.

Keep an eye on Yeaney. He’s not a star yet, but he’s local and on the rise. Those are the ingredients for a future fan favorite if he winds up wearing Orange and Blue.

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Florida men’s basketball releases jersey numbers for 2022-23 season

Time to start thinking about basketball! The 2022-23 men’s basketball team has received their jersey numbers for the upcoming season.

The Florida men’s basketball team released jersey numbers for the 2022-23 season on Thursday.

With several members of last year’s team gone and a handful of newcomers to the program, there has been some shuffling of the digits on the team. The roster currently sits at 14 players, one short of the NCAA Division I limit.

While jersey numbers aren’t the most exciting news in the world, it’s what we basketball fans have to cling on to this point in anticipation of the [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag] era at Florida. So, without further ado, here’s a look at the 2022-23 roster and which numbers the players will be wearing come the winter.

Here’s a quick glance at all of the jerseys, but continue to scroll for a more in-depth look at each player’s number history.

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247Sports praises recent commitment as ‘first step’ to in-state dominance

The acquisition of the former Mississippi State commit was a major coup for a program looking to lock down the borders.

Monday afternoon, highly-rated guard [autotag]Riley Kugel[/autotag] announced his commitment to Florida basketball. The four-star recruit had initially given his pledge to the Mississippi State Bulldogs but decommitted in March. Now, [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag]’s Gators own his allegiance and it’s easy to be positive about where this team is headed.

247Sports evidently shares that opinion. The recruiting experts employed there are higher than the national average rating him as the 49th prospect in the nation, compared to the composite’s less optimistic placement at 78th overall.

After praising the fine work Golden has done in the transfer portal, 247Sports’ Jacob Rudner asserted that Kugel’s commitment could be an even bigger victory. “It was Golden’s first win in his quest to dominate what he called the university’s “footprint,'” wrote Rudner.

Of course, this is a reference to Golden’s introductory press conference after being hired as the head coach of Florida’s men’s basketball team. “We’re going to try to build a fence around the state of Florida and make sure that we’re involved with every great student-athlete within this footprint,” said the newly appointed Golden.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Golden plucked up [autotag]Korey McCray[/autotag] — Mississippi State’s lead recruiter on Kugel — as soon as he became available during the Bulldog’s leadership change. A win is a win, though, and it’s impossible to be cross about it no matter how Golden pulled it off.

With the final scholarship currently available on the Gators’ men’s roster, the team has been chasing a big man to compliment [autotag]Colin Castleton[/autotag] in the transfer portal. Don’t expect another big in-state win this year, but keep your eyes peeled for highly-ranked homegrown players as the basketball staff builds out next year’s recruiting class. Golden is a man on a mission, and Kugel is a good first step.

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Gators in ‘regular contact’ with this transferring Kentucky forward

Todd Golden and his team are looking to add this former Kentucky Wildcat to the roster.

According to a Friday morning report, the Gators are among an ocean of schools who are in “regular contact” with transferring forward Keion Brooks Jr. As a former top-25 prospect from La Lumiere in Indiana, he has been productive during his college career but has fallen short of first-round expectations so far.

Having spent the first three years of his college career with the Kentucky Wildcats, Brooks is exploring his options for the upcoming year. He has closed off virtually nothing at this point in his re-recruitment, with the SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12, and Big East included in conferences represented. Brooks is also publicly mulling a return to Kentucky or a stab at the NBA.

Brooks has been in the portal since late April, riding a season’s performance that closely mirrors what he did in 2020-21 on the stat sheet but in twice the number of games. He’s a scorer first and foremost, notching 10.8 points per game, but it’s all on the inside. His production at the arc, or lack thereof, came on less than one shot attempt per game.

For a player with Brooks’ physicality, you’d generally expect more rebounds than what he’s provided. In this case, I’m willing to issue a get-out-of-jail-free card. Friend or foe, it’s tremendously difficult to make an impact on the glass with Oscar Tshibwe on the court. Getting out from under his former running mate’s shadow will make a difference and his rebounding figures should blossom.

An area where I’d like to see him make improvements is how often he gets to the free-throw line. Drawing fouls is a skill and he has the build to put those skills to work. With a 6-foot-7-inch frame that has carried a lot of lean muscle since the day he stepped onto a college campus, Brooks needs to be willing to do some of the team’s dirty work.

With two scholarships open and a portal packed full of useful players, there’s no reason not to expect reports of this nature to trickle out for the Gators. They’ve already added four players from other programs and Golden has shown no sign of taking his foot off the gas. Don’t get too disheartened if Brooks goes a different direction — he’s a talented and useful player but Todd Golden seems to know what he’s doing.

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Gators hoops hosts this Buffalo transfer on campus

After missing out on Johni Broome, can Todd Golden land elite rebounder Josh Mballa from the transfer portal?

There are still two open scholarship spots on Florida’s men’s basketball roster, and [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag] is combing through those available in the transfer portal to find the best fit. Former Buffalo forward [autotag]Josh Mballa[/autotag] was one of the players in Gainesville on Friday to meet with the team, according to 247Sports.

In his third season with the Bulls, Mballa averaged 13.0 points, 8.6 rebounds and 0.9 blocks per game. He’s a monster on the offensive boards too, posting the 39th-best offensive rebound percentage among D-I players. He made the All-MAC second team and entered to portal following the season to seek brighter horizons.

In 2020-21, Mballa posted even better numbers. He averaged a double-double (15.3 points and 10.8 rebounds) and was named MAC Defensive Player of the Year.

This will be Mballa’s second transfer after moving on from Texas Tech following his freshman year, and he fits the needs of first-year head coach [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag]. The Gators lack size and rebounding ability past [autotag]Colin Castleton[/autotag]. [autotag]Jason Jitoboh[/autotag] and [autotag]CJ Felder[/autotag] are returning and [autotag]Alex Fudge[/autotag] came in through the transfer portal, but UF still needs one piece down low to complete the frontcourt.

That’s where Mballa fits in. It’s unknown how well the meeting on Friday went, but Golden has hand-selected the guys he wants to go after and landed most of them so far aside from power forward Johni Broome who chose Auburn.

Ole Miss also hosted him recently, so there’s likely to be some more SEC competition for him down the road.

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Florida guard Myreon Jones set to return for extra year

First Colin Castleton announced his return to Florida basketball and now Myreon Jones has done the same.

On Monday, [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag] received the good news that [autotag]Colin Castleton[/autotag] would be exercising his extra year of eligibility to return to Florida for another season. Six days later, [autotag]Myreon Jones[/autotag] followed in his footsteps and decided to return for a super-senior season, according to a report from Jon Rothstein.

Jones’ return gives the Gators a veteran ball-handler in the backcourt to pair with rising sophomore [autotag]Kowacie Reeves[/autotag] and Belmont transfer [autotag]Will Richard[/autotag]. There’s also sophomore [autotag]Elijah Kennedy[/autotag] and incoming freshman [autotag]Denzel Aberdeen[/autotag] to consider in the backcourt rotation.

The thought was that Florida would need to grab a point guard from the portal after [autotag]Tyree Appleby[/autotag] announced his decision to transfer, but Jones fills that spot in nicely. Golden can still go after someone he likes in the portal with three open roster spots, though.

Jones transferred from Penn State in 2021 and averaged 8.5 points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game with the Gators as a senior. He was very streaky over the season and finished with the season shooting 35.5%. Most of Jones’ shots came from beyond the arc, which made for some exciting offense at times. His best performance came against Georgia when he made seven three-pointers en route to 23 overall.

If Jones can find some consistency, he can be a valuable piece of this Gators team. Golden’s usage of him could help Jones improve his stats and allow the younger guards to grow as the seasons unfolds.

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