{"id":33445,"date":"2025-11-04T22:54:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/33445\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T22:54:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:54:13","slug":"four-reasons-florida-fans-should-stay-hopeful-after-tough-arizona-loss-wruf-98-1-fm-850-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/33445\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Reasons Florida Fans Should Stay Hopeful After Tough Arizona Loss – WRUF 98.1 FM | 850 AM"},"content":{"rendered":"

All eyes were on the reigning national champions Monday night in their first game of the season against the Arizona Wildcats at the Hall of Fame series in Las Vegas. The Gators were outperformed by the No. 13 Wildcats 87-93<\/a> with freshman forward Koa Peat and senior point guard Jaden Bradley, who scored a combined total of 57 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even though Florida failed to bring home a win, here are four things that Florida basketball fans should be hopeful about in the near future:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thomas Haugh is back.<\/p>\n

Junior forward Thomas Haugh played 38 minutes and scored a team-high 27 points against the Wildcats. He was by far the most complete player.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great thing about T is that he\u2019s a winning player,\u201d coach Todd Golden said. \u201cYou can put him anywhere on the floor and he\u2019s going to impact the game positively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last season, he proved his ability to compete at the highest level in college basketball and helped the program win its third national championship. Haugh was known as the team\u2019s sixth man, but this year he seems to be the main man.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Urban Klavzar proved himself on opening night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-1 junior played for 18 minutes and scored a total of eight points for the team on Monday night. Klavzar started strong in the first half by hitting a three-pointer that gave the Gators a 24-12 lead, but he was scoreless in the second half.<\/p>\n

Klavzar totaled 83 points with 17 three-point field goals in 26 appearances as a sophomore last season as a valuable asset to the team\u2019s success last year. This season will be no different. Fans may be seeing a lot more of the Slovenia native on the court as the Gators figure out the rest of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Micah Handlogten is a challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Handlogten played a great defensive game at center against the Wildcats. The senior scored 11 points in the 23 minutes and recorded a team-high 12 rebounds. While the Gators lacked defensively, Handlogten put pressure on Arizona\u2019s offense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At 7-foot-1, Handlogten is a force to be reckoned with on Florida\u2019s defense, proving that he\u2019s an elite defender who protects the rim. In 2023-24, he ranked No. 43 in defensive rebounding percentage and No. 37 in block percentage, according to 247Sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo Micah Handlogten\u2019s credit, I thought he did a great job in the second half of bothering Peat,\u201d Golden said. \u201cThat size and length made it an issue for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the good news: It\u2019s the first game of the season<\/p>\n

Florida basketball fans have no reason to worry following the loss to Arizona. The Gators are in a good position to be one of the top teams in the country.<\/a> Losing to the No. 13 team in the country doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s over.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m super disappointed we lost, but the reason why we played this game was to give ourselves a really good opportunity to get a quality win,\u201d Golden said. \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody is going to hold this loss over our head, moving forward, and I do think it gives us a great opportunity to teach our team before we play North Florida on Thursday.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gators have a total of 30 games left to play during the regular season and travel back home to face North Florida Thursday in the O\u2019Dome. Tipoff is at 8 p.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Category: Feature Sports News<\/a>, Gators Men’s Basketball<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All eyes were on the reigning national champions Monday night in their first game of the season against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,23423,2530,30,29,20053,23468,3115,3116,20054],"class_list":{"0":"post-33445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-basketball","10":"tag-florida-gators","11":"tag-florida-headlines","12":"tag-florida-news","13":"tag-micah-handlogten","14":"tag-sec-basketball","15":"tag-thomas-haugh","16":"tag-todd-golden","17":"tag-urban-klavzar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33445","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=33445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}