No. 23 Florida vs. Saint Francis
* When: Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Exactech Arena/O’Connell Center / Gainesville, Fla.
* Records: Florida (6-4) / Saint Francis (2-9)
* Series/Last meeting: First meeting.
* TV: SEC Network (Rich Hollenberg and Patric Young)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD / Stations list
(with Sean Kelley and Steve Egan)
* Ticket info
Projected Starters
Florida
Position
Height / Weight
Class
Statistics
Alex Condon
F
6-11 / 230
Junior
13.9 pts / 9.0 reb
Rueben Chinyelu
C
6-10 / 255
Junior
9.8 pts / 10.7 reb
Thomas Haugh
F
6-9 / 215
Junior
18.6 pts / 7.0 reb
Xaivian Lee
G
6-4 / 185
Senior
11.0 pts / 5.0 reb / 3.8
Boogie Fland
G
6-3 / 185
Sophomore
12.0 pts / 2.1 reb
Saint Francis
Position
Height / Weight
Class
Statistics
Gestin Liberis
F
6-9 / 215
R-Junior
5.5 pts / 4.7 reb
Skylar Wicks
G/F
6-6 / 190
R-Senior
18.8 pts / 7.8 reb
Chris Moncrief
G
6-6 / 190
Senior
3.5 pts / 1.0 reb
Victor Payne
G
6-4 / 190
Guard
5.8 pts / 3.9 reb
Zion Russell
G
6-2 / 185
R-Senior
11.3 pts / 4.5 reb / 3.1 ast
The Setup
No. 23 Florida and Saint Francis meet in the Gators’ first home game since Nov. 21, which will start a string of three straight O’Dome dates against low-major opponents through the holidays. UF, which feel five spots (from 18th) in this week’s Associated Press poll, is coming off Saturday’s 80-70 defeat of George Washington in Saturday’s Orange Bowl Classic at Sunrise, Florida. The Gators will have one more home game before heading off on Christmas break. The Red Flash’s last outing was Sunday night when they lost 95-67 at Temple.
Tale of the Tape
Florida
Statistics
Saint Francis
82.0
Scoring
69.1
.437
Field-goal percentage
.412
.268
3-point percentage
.313
72.2
Scoring defense
82.5
.402
Field-goal percentage defense
.474
.288
3-point percentage defense
.362
13th
KenPom.com overall ranking
362nd
30th
KenPom.com offensive efficiency
359th
10th
KenPom.com defensive efficiency
339th
44th
KenPom.com adjusted tempo
76th
22nd
NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking
360th
5th
Overall strength of schedule ranking
60th
The Breakdown
About the Gators: They’ve inched back up into top-10 status on defense, but their inability to strike from the 3-point line — just 6-for-27 in the GW win — continues to sink their offensive efficiency metrics. And that despite a 77.7% outing from the 2-point area (21 of 27) and the nation’s fourth-best offensive rebounding team (42.1%). … Guard Xaivian Lee, after a tough-to-figure eight-game start to his UF career, has put together back-to-back KenPom MVP games, including his actual Orange Bowl Classic MVP performance when he scored 24 points, grabbed six rebounds, dished four assists and recorded a pair of steals over 35 minutes. That outing followed a 19-point game in the loss against Connecticut in New York City. The staff believes their Princeton transfer just may have turned the corner. … Point guard Boogie Fland went scoreless and missed all four of his field-goal tries in the first half against the Revolutionaries, but finished with 12 points and five assists, without attempting another 3. For the season, Fland is 10-for-47 from deep (21.3%), but 55.8 from the 2-point area. … Forward Alex Condon scored just five points on only five shot attempts (and went 1-for-6 at the free-throw line), but grabbed nine rebounds and dished seven assists. … Center Rueben Chinyelu leads the SEC in rebounding at 10.7 per game, with Condon third at 9.0. … Thomas Haugh is fourth in the conference in scoring at 18.6 points per game on 49.2% from the floor and 33.9 from deep. … Look for Coach Todd Golden to use this run of home games against far lighter competition to get minutes for players down the bench in an effort to cull some depth in the run-up to the start of Southeastern Conference play Jan. 3 at Missouri. The Gators have been outscored 49-24 in bench points the last three games, including 21-2 against GW, although backup guard guard Isaiah Brown, with his first action in three games, scored four points and grabbed three rebounds in four solid minutes. But none of UF’s four reserves had a positive plus-minus box score line. They were a minus-19 combined, instead.
About the Red Flash: This has the potential to be one of the biggest mismatches in O’Dome history; against a team that actually went to the NCAA Tournament last season, no less. Saint Francis, based in Loretto, Pennsylvania, won the 2025 Northeast Conference Tournament and played in the NCAA First Four, losing at the buzzer to Alabama State. The school, however, had already decided to drop to Division II starting in ’26-27. … The Red Flash rank fourth from the bottom, per KenPom, among the nation’s 365 D-I teams in overall efficiency. Their nine losses have come by an average of 25.8 points — and that’s facing just one high-major opponent (Oklahoma, which won by 36). Their two wins have come against Franciscan, a Division III program, and Penn St. Shenango, which competes in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association. … The team’s top player, guard Skylar Wicks, is on his fifth school in five seasons, having had cups of coffee at Texas-San Antonio, Incarnate Word, State College of Florida and Missouri State before heading to NYC. He’s shooting 42.4% overall, but is 22-for-55 from the 3-point line (40%). … Point guard Zion Russell is the only other Flash who averages in double figures.
Numbers of Note
Xaivian Lee
* 16.7 — Lee’s scoring average over the last four games. After going 7-for-42 from the 3-point line over his first six games as a Gator, Lee is 10-for-29 over the last six. That’s 34.4% percent (and much closer to the 33.4 he shot during his three seasons at Princeton).
* 26 — Days since the Gators last played in the O’Dome. UF defeated Merrimack 80-45 on Nov. 21.
* 87.8 — Percentage of minutes Haugh has been on the floor for the Gators this season. That’s the 35th-highest for a player in the nation.
Bottom Line
Welcome home, fellas.
Email senior writer Chris Harry at [email protected]. Find his story archives here.
