UConn men’s basketball puts streak on the line against No. 1 seed Florida in Round of 32; How to watch

RALEIGH, N.C. – The UConn men’s basketball team knows the quality it will go up against on Sunday against No. 1 seed Florida in the NCAA Tournament Round of 32.

The Huskies opened as 9.5-point underdogs in the matchup against a Gators team that many expect to get back to the Final Four for the first time since 2014. But UConn has plenty of history to call upon – like that 2014 Final Four, when it snapped Florida’s 30-game winning streak, took down the No. 1 overall seed and advanced to ultimately claim its fourth national title.

UConn has won five consecutive games against the Gators, only losing once in the six games in the series. That loss came in overtime in the 1994 Sweet 16, the first of two previous NCAA Tournament matchups.

The programs last met in the 2022-23 season, when the Huskies won at Florida in convincing fashion, 75-54, and went on to win the first of their back-to-back national championships. Todd Golden was in his first year with the Gators and has quickly built his program into a contender using UConn as a model.

Dom Amore: At March Madness’ moment of truth, Alex Karaban, UConn men can no longer play it safe

“It reminds me of kind of what we had with (Adama) Sanogo and (Donovan) Clingan and Samson Johnson these last couple years where they just keep trotting out big, skilled, tenacious two-way players that are all over the glass. Then they’ve got a lot of depth on the perimeter, and they’re old,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said Friday night, after surviving Oklahoma in the first round. Florida raced past No. 16 Norfolk State in the game before to begin its run.

Friday’s win was UConn’s 13th-consecutive NCAA Tournament victory, tying Duke (1991-93) for the longest streak since seeding began in 1979.

“We’ve faced the same type of pressure that Todd and his team is facing playing these games,” Hurley said Saturday. “Like, Todd knows what type of team he’s got. I knew what type of team I had the last couple years, and when you know you’ve got a squad, that’s like a real thing when you get to these round of 32, Sweet 16, like you know you’ve got a squad. I could relate to what he’s experiencing right now.”

To keep the streak going, the Huskies will need strong performances from big men Tarris Reed Jr. and Johnson to quell the push from Florida’s deep group of bigs: Alex Condon (6 feet 11), Reuben Chinyelu (6-10), Thomas Haugh (6-9) and Micah Handlogten (7-1).

Florida has three guards – Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin and Will Richard – who average more than 13 points per game.

Clayton, who began his career at Iona and was part of Rick Pitino’s Iona team that lost to the Huskies in the first round of the 2023 tournament, scored 23 points on Friday and averages three 3-pointers per game. Martin, a physical 6-2 guard, made the 2023 Final Four with FAU, where he played his first four seasons. Richard, a Solo Ball lookalike, can go off in any given game.

“The thing that I appreciated most about their teams is obviously their talent was really, really special,” Golden said of the past Huskies’ teams. “They have multiple guys now playing in the NBA, but just how well they played together and how in sync and in unison they competed. Our goal was to try to build something similar. I feel like we are in a really good spot right now three years in, in the sense of building a team that enjoys playing together that’s really deep.”

UConn can’t afford another performance from its scorers like it got Friday, when Liam McNeeley went just 2-for-13 from the field and Alex Karaban went 2-for-7 before his late burst helped win the game. Hurley said McNeeley’s recent struggles make him “incredibly dangerous” for Saturday’s game.

“Some players will stay in it,” he said, “and some players will go through stretches like this and say, ‘I’m closer to being due.”‘

The Huskies will have to keep up with Florida’s offense, which is ranked the most efficient in the country. With its supreme size and athleticism, the Gators also have the 10th-ranked defense and have allowed opponents to shoot just 29.3% from beyond the arc this season, good for No. 8 in Division I. They have the ninth-best rebounding margin in the nation at plus-8.

“The film doesn’t lie about Florida, the challenges that they present in terms of what they do offensively, what they do defensively, what they do on the backboard,” Hurley said. “It’s eerily similar to what the challenges that we’ve presented to people, but it’s not a best-of-seven-game series. It’s a one-game do-or-die situation. For us, there’s a distinct way that we’re going to want to play this game tomorrow that we believe is going to give us a chance to win the game.”

What to know

Site: Lenovo Center, Raleigh, N.C.

Time: 12:10 p.m.

Series: UConn leads, 5-1

Records: No. 8 UConn: 24-10, No. 1 Florida: 31-4

TV: CBS – Ian Eagle, Grant Hill, Bill Raftery, Tracy Wolfson

Radio: UConn Sports Network on FOX Sports 97.9 – Mike Crispino and Wayne Norman

Pregame reading:

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