GAINESVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Defending national champion Florida shot its way out of the AP Top 25.<\/p>\n
The Gators dropped out of the men\u2019s college basketball poll Monday, two days after losing at Missouri to open Southeastern Conference play. It was Florida\u2019s fifth loss \u2014 one more than it had last season \u2014 and was the team\u2019s latest display of lackluster shooting and less-than-ideal playmaking.<\/p>\n
The Gators (9-5, 0-1 SEC) failed to hit double-digit 3-pointers for the 12th time in 14 games and shot a paltry 26% from behind the arc in a 76-74 loss to the Tigers. Florida now ranks 354th in the country in 3-point percentage (28%) heading into Tuesday night\u2019s game against No. 18 Georgia (13-1, 1-0).<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, shooting has been our biggest issue and continues to be,\u201d coach Todd Golden said Monday. \u201cWhen you shot-make, it covers up a lot of your deficiencies, and we have not been able to mask those warts so far this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been an ugly blemish. Air balls from guards and big men, and no clutch buckets like those Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin and Will Richard made look so easy while carrying the Gators to the NCAA title in 2025.<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s starting backcourt, Boogie Fland from Arkansas and Xaivian Lee from Princeton, have been disappointing transfers. Although both have done some good things with the ball in their hands, Fland is 12 of 60 (20%) from 3-point range and Lee is 24 of 90 (26.7%) from distance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe trust those dudes,\u201d leading scorer Thomas Haugh said. \u201cBoogie had seven assists the other day and one turnover. Obviously, he didn\u2019t make shots, but he was still on the court making winning plays. He\u2019s going to knock down those shots. Xaivian is starting to hit some shots now here, too. Obviously, to win games you do need to make some shots like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Florida guard Xaivian Lee (1) shoots over UConn forward Alex Karaban (11) during the second half of an NCAA basketball game, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, in New York. Credit: AP\/Noah K. Murray<\/p>\n
Fland has missed 23 of his last 27 shots from behind the arc, including a 30-footer that would have won the game at Missouri.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think taking away freedom is necessarily the best way to build confidence,\u201d Golden said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to say, \u2018Hey, don\u2019t take that shot.\u2019 If they\u2019re open shots, we want our guys to take them. That\u2019s where our program\u2019s at.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re playing with pretty good purpose offensively, and we feel like he\u2019s capable and just hasn\u2019t been doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fland shot 36.4% on 3s as a freshman at Arkansas last season before having surgery on his right thumb. He\u2019s yet to return to form and now could be shooting with shaky confidence.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Florida’s Boogie Fland (0) grimaces after missing the last shot of the game during the second half of an NCAA basketball game against Missouri, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in Columbia, Mo. Credit: AP\/L.G. Patterson<\/p>\n
Lee has been much better of late, hitting 11 of his last 26 from 3-point range after missing 51 of his first 64. Florida is hoping Fland can work though his slump, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he can lift that up and shoot the ball at a 33% clip from deep, we\u2019re going to be pretty dang good,\u201d Golden said. \u201cI\u2019m still confident in him. I know our staff is. I think the team is. But as we\u2019ve said, you got to go do it. Once he does, hopefully it\u2019ll take some of the pressure off and he can just kind of take off from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Golden won\u2019t put much stock in falling from the Top 25. He points to Florida still being ranked 15th in KenPom analytics and losing five games \u2014 all away from home \u2014 by a combined 17 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re close,\u201d Golden said. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re necessarily dealing with confidence issues in terms of, \u2018Are we a good team or are we not a good team?\u2019 We know we\u2019re a good team, but we got to go out and just finish one or two of these.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GAINESVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Defending national champion Florida shot its way out of the AP Top 25. The Gators…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,319,217,231,772,1544,2148],"class_list":{"0":"post-518900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaab","14":"tag-wires-bot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115844689727383440","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}