At UF, athletics are not just about football. Over the past few seasons, UF has assembled one of the best men’s basketball teams in the nation.
An early favorite to win the 2027 national championship, the Gators have a stacked roster highlighted by seniors Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu.
Fresh off a 2025 national championship and a 2026 Southeastern Conference regular-season title, Florida has become one of the prominent basketball programs over the last few years. Moreover, the Gators have lost just three home games in as many seasons, making the O’Connell Center one of the hardest college arenas to play in.
Here's a list of four home games all new UF students should attend this upcoming season.
Florida vs. Duke - Dec. 1
For the first time since 1937, one of the premier brands in college basketball is coming down to Gainesville.
Duke has won five national championships, making it the fifth-most successful program in college basketball history. Legendary head coach Mike Krzyzewski led the Blue Devils from 1981 to 2022, posting a 1,129-309 record.
Since then, Jon Scheyer has taken over, recording a 124-25 record and leading Duke to three Atlantic Coast Conference titles.
Florida and Duke will face each other Dec. 1 in the SEC-ACC Challenge, an annual meeting where each SEC team faces a team from the ACC.
“Duke hosts us this year — would be nice to catch them on our home floor,” Florida head coach Todd Golden said last year ahead of Florida’s road game against Duke. “So that's a discussion to be had.”
When the two met in Durham for last season’s SEC-ACC Challenge, the Gators erased a 15-point deficit in the second half, taking the lead in the final minute before falling short 67-66.
Now that Golden has gotten his wish, Florida will have the chance to learn from last year’s game and stun Duke at home.
Jack Lunitz, a sport management graduate student and president of UF Gator Sport Management Organization, said it will be the biggest game in recent Gator history.
“It’s going to be pandemonium,” Lunitz said. “The campus is going to be on fire.”
Florida vs. Georgia - Feb. 20
While Florida and Georgia may have their football rivalry, the two have also had their fair share of history when it comes to men’s basketball.
“Nobody here likes Georgia,” Lunitz said. “We don’t want to see Georgia win anywhere in Gainesville.”
Florida and Georgia will play a home-and-away series, meaning the Gators will host the Bulldogs during SEC action Feb. 20.
At the core of this Florida-Georgia rivalry is Georgia head coach Mike White, Golden’s predecessor.
White coached the Gators for seven seasons, posting a 142-88 record. However, on March 13, 2022, White left Florida for Georgia — a decision that now gets him booed whenever he and the Bulldogs step foot in the O’Connell Center. Five days after White’s move, athletic director Scott Stricklin hired Golden, making him the 20th head coach in program history.
“Everybody in the stadium knows that Mike White used to coach here, and everybody in the stadium loves to see Mike White leave with another loss,” Lunitz said.
Aside from White, recent games have also added to the history between the two teams.
During Florida’s 2024-25 national championship season, Georgia upset the Gators 88-83 on Feb. 25, 2025. That loss was UF’s last. They won 12 straight games en route to SEC and NCAA Tournament titles.
The two met twice in the 2025 season, and in their first matchup on Jan. 6 in Gainesville, things got chippy. With 10:14 left in the first half, Georgia center Somto Cyril was ejected from the game for elbowing Florida center Chinyelu in the head/neck area, which the officials reviewed and later called a flagrant 2 foul.
Given these teams’ recent history on the court and the sideline, this season’s Florida-Georgia basketball games could further add to the rich rivalry.
“When these two teams play, it means everything,” Lunitz said. “We’re playing because we hate these guys and we want to beat them.”
Florida vs. Texas - Feb. 6
Following an underdog run at the 2026 NCAA Tournament, going from the First Four to the Sweet 16, head coach Sean Miller looked to build on his first season at Texas.
When Florida met Texas last season in Austin, the Longhorns gave the Gators a run for their money. After Texas took a 64-61 advantage, the Gators answered, finishing the game on a 23-7 run to win 84-71. The game stood as one of the true road tests the Gators faced during a dominant SEC slate.
The Longhorns’ offense is also comparable to the Gators’, added Eric Fawcett, a columnist for Gator Country.
“Texas is one of the teams that has the frontcourt that could hang with the Gators,” Fawcett said. “To beat Florida, that’s one of the prerequisites.”
Now, the two are set to play a home-and-away series, meaning the Gators will host the Longhorns during conference play on Feb. 6. While this game could be another test for Florida, it could also provide Texas, which has been active this offseason, another chance to take down a conference giant.
The Longhorns brought in 10 players during the offseason, including Texas Christian transfer David Punch. Aside from the transfer portal, Texas assembled a strong first-year class, highlighted by the reclassified top-ranked player in the class of 2027, Marcus Spears Jr.
Despite their success in signing players, one of the Longhorns’ biggest wins this offseason was retaining center Matas Vokietaitis, who finished the 2025-26 season with 15.6 points and 7.1 rebounds across the 36 games he started.
“If you’re thinking about what’s just going to be a fun game at the O’Dome, sometimes you want that villain on the other team, and I do think Vokietaitis is as much of a villain as people will see in the SEC this year,” Fawcett said.
Florida and Texas lack history; the Longhorns joined the SEC on July 1, 2024. Still, Florida has a 5-4 record against Texas, having won both matchups since the Longhorns joined the conference.
Nonetheless, this matchup could be one of the many primetime conference games for the Gators — largely because the Gators won’t know what to expect, said Carson Duke, a UF sports management and business senior and community outreach director for UF Gator Sports Management Organization.
“Texas is one of those teams that’s pretty sneaky. You don’t really know how they’re going to do,” Duke said. “As far as SEC matchups go, that’s one of your best ones.”
Florida vs. Kentucky - March 6
Florida will close out the regular season March 6 when it hosts conference rival Kentucky.
While the Wildcats have a 110-45 advantage all-time in the series, the past few seasons have brought the rivalry back to life. UF has won four of its last five against Kentucky, including three straight last season.
In addition to the recent history between the two, Florida’s Denzel Aberdeen will be at the center of this game.
Aberdeen, who played his first three seasons for Florida, including the 2024-25 national championship campaign, transferred to Kentucky for his senior year. When he returned to Gainesville last season for Kentucky's game against Florida, he was booed throughout warmups and the contest.
After averaging 13.5 points and 3.4 assists per game during his sole season in Lexington, the Orlando native returned to UF on April 10. Now, as he awaits the approval of a fifth-year waiver from the NCAA, Aberdeen could finish his college basketball career against his former team.
“Who knows if there is scriptwriters in college basketball in college sports … it’s crazy," Duke said. “It’s a really cool opportunity to actually have him come back and get to see out what he started here at Florida.”
Moreover, many other prominent Gators could play their last games in Gainesville, as the Florida-Kentucky game will take place on Senior Day.
Haugh, Condon and Chinyelu, in addition to Aberdeen, will be serenaded by fans, coaching staff and teammates during this game. Not only were the four key pieces to Florida’s national championship run, but they also displayed loyalty to the program.
Condon and Haugh enter their fourth year at UF, choosing to return to Gainesville over declaring for the NBA twice following the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons. Chinyelu, who transferred to Florida after his first year at Washington State, will finish his third season as a Gator and has also passed up the NBA Draft twice to return to Florida.
“You don’t see that at all nowadays,” Duke said. “The NBA has been these guys’ dream for so long, but they choose to stay at Florida, and they choose to be Gators for all four years and give it their all for one last time.”
Attending one of these games is a must for a new student — even if it means sacrificing a night of sleep to camp outside the O'Connell Center.
Contact Jeffrey Serber at Jserber@alligator.org. Follow him on X @JeffreySerber.
Jeffrey is a summer 2026 sports enterprise reporter and a third-year journalism sports & media major with a media, management and production minor. In his free time, he enjoys hanging out with friends and family, and rooting for the Miami sports teams
