South Carolina’s men’s basketball team will play its next game on the road against No. 12/11 Florida at the O’Connell Center on Tuesday night. The Gamecocks, who currently hold an 11-14 overall record and are 2-10 in Southeastern Conference (SEC) play, are looking to end a six-game losing streak in league action. The matchup is scheduled for a 7 p.m. Eastern Time tipoff and will be broadcast on SEC Network with John Schriffen providing play-by-play commentary and Mark Wise as analyst.
In their most recent game, South Carolina lost to Alabama by a score of 89-75. Meechie Johnson led the Gamecocks with 26 points, scoring 24 of those in the second half as the team attempted a comeback. Kobe Knox contributed 21 points, tying his career high set during his redshirt freshman season at Grand Canyon.
Meechie Johnson has been a key player for South Carolina this season, averaging 19.7 points, 4.8 assists, 2.8 rebounds, and 1.5 steals per game over twelve SEC contests. He is one of only four players in the conference ranked among the top ten in scoring and top five in assists per game during league play.
As a team, South Carolina leads the SEC and ranks fifth nationally in free throw percentage at 79%. Mike Sharavjamts has made over ninety percent of his free throws this season—third best in the SEC and twentieth nationally. The Gamecocks also average fewer than ten turnovers per game, which places them among the top five teams in the conference for that category.
Florida enters Tuesday’s contest with a record of 19-6 overall and a strong conference mark of 10-2. The Gators have won five consecutive games and ten out of their last eleven since early January. They lead all Division I teams in both total rebounds (46 per game) and offensive rebounds (16.4 per game), holding opponents to an average rebound margin of plus-14.6—the highest nationwide.
Defensively, Florida allows opponents to shoot just over forty percent from the field—the second-best mark in the SEC—and gives up an average of just over seventy-one points per contest.
The Gators feature six players averaging double figures in scoring this season: Thomas Haugh leads with an average of seventeen-and-a-half points per game; Alex Condon follows with thirteen-point-three; Rueben Chinyelu averages eleven-point-seven along with eleven-point-eight rebounds (best in the SEC); Xavian Lee averages eleven-point-four; Boogie Fland adds eleven-point-three; Urban Klavzar scores ten-point-one off the bench while shooting over forty-two percent from three-point range during league games.
The series history favors Florida, which leads South Carolina fifty-one wins to twenty-nine overall—including twenty-three victories out of thirty-three meetings played at Gainesville’s O’Connell Center. The Gators have won five out of six matchups dating back to January 2022, including three straight across two seasons; they defeated South Carolina by nearly fifty points earlier this year.
South Carolina returns home after Tuesday’s matchup to host Mississippi State on Saturday at Colonial Life Arena.
