{"id":32426,"date":"2025-11-04T06:43:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T06:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/32426\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T06:43:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T06:43:23","slug":"koa-peat-shines-with-30-points-as-arizona-tops-florida-in-college-basketball-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/32426\/","title":{"rendered":"Koa Peat shines with 30 points as Arizona tops Florida in college basketball opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 Freshman Koa Peat scored 30 points to lead No. 13 Arizona to a 93-87 win over third-ranked and defending national champion Florida in the Hall of Fame Series on Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>Peat was impressive in his college debut, shooting 11 of 18 from the floor and adding seven rebounds and five assists. He was fouled making a defensive rebound with 14.2 seconds left and hit his two ensuing free throws to seal the victory in both teams\u2019 season opener.<\/p>\n<p>But, it was consecutive dunks by Peat late in the second half that sent the crowd at T-Mobile Arena into a frenzy and punctuated his first college game.<\/p>\n<p>Jaden Bradley was also impressive, scoring 27 points, including 11 of Arizona\u2019s final 18 points, to help seal the win.<\/p>\n<p>Ivan Kharchenkov shook off an injury late in the first half that sent him to the locker room and finished with 12 points for the Wildcats.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Haugh led Florida with 27 points, Xaivian Lee scored 14 and Alex Condon and Micah Handlogten each had 11.<\/p>\n<p>The Wildcats shot 49.2% (30 of 61) from the field, while Florida\u2019s poor second-half shooting (14 of 38, 36.8%) sealed its fate.<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"AnchorLink\" id=\"more-section-display-name\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"Link\" aria-label=\"No. 13 Arizona eyeing another deep March run with influx of young talent\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/arizona-basketball-preview-6f3c65e0d57e1280477c0a09b57c15d3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"Arizona guard Jaden Bradley passes against Akron during the second half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo\/Ryan Sun)\"  width=\"599\" height=\"399\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762238603_452_\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Gators opened the game strong, pushing their lead to 12 points after hitting 11 of their first 16 shots.<\/p>\n<p>The Wildcats clamped down on defense and held Florida to 5-for-16 shooting the rest of the half while going on a 32-16 run by hitting 11 of 18 shots down the stretch.<\/p>\n<p>Arizona, which shot 50% from the floor in the first half, led 50-46 at halftime.<\/p>\n<p>Up next<\/p>\n<p>Arizona: Hosts Utah Tech on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Florida: Hosts North Florida on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 Freshman Koa Peat scored 30 points to lead No. 13 Arizona to a 93-87&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1855,2527,22889,22888,3108,8294,111,1882,28,2530,30,29,22891,22887,2537,12034,22890,110,3115],"class_list":["post-32426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-wildcats","tag-arizona-wildcats-mens-basketball","tag-az-state-wire","tag-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-florida-gators","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-ivan-kharchenkov","tag-jaden-bradley","tag-mens-college-basketball","tag-nevada","tag-nv-state-wire","tag-sports","tag-thomas-haugh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}