{"id":368627,"date":"2026-08-11T18:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/368627\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T18:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:48:17","slug":"theyre-back-gators-hoops-team-to-face-grand-canyon-in-jacksonville-in-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/368627\/","title":{"rendered":"They\u2019re back: Gators hoops team to face Grand Canyon in Jacksonville in December"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The defending basketball national champion Gators beat Miami 82-68 on Sunday night at the VyStar Arena. (Chris Smith,  News4JAX)<\/p>\n<p class=\"Box-_wrDxHtU__Box-sc-10sa3ie-0 Text-nO2aZ44r__TextBase-sc-s2hv5x-0 jJNfBD fSvavs article-text\">JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 The University of Florida men\u2019s basketball team will play in Jacksonville for the third consecutive season when it faces Grand Canyon in mid-December. <\/p>\n<p class=\"Box-_wrDxHtU__Box-sc-10sa3ie-0 Text-nO2aZ44r__TextBase-sc-s2hv5x-0 jJNfBD fSvavs article-text\">The Gators will play at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena on Dec. 18 with the school announcing the matchup on Tuesday morning. Tickets will first be available in a presale on Oct. 20 and then for public sale on Oct. 21. <\/p>\n<p class=\"Box-_wrDxHtU__Box-sc-10sa3ie-0 Text-nO2aZ44r__TextBase-sc-s2hv5x-0 jJNfBD fSvavs article-text\">Florida is coming off a season where it won the SEC championship but lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament. The Gators won the national championship the previous season. Florida brings back four starters under head coach Todd Golden. <\/p>\n<p class=\"Box-_wrDxHtU__Box-sc-10sa3ie-0 Text-nO2aZ44r__TextBase-sc-s2hv5x-0 jJNfBD fSvavs article-text\">Jacksonville has become a recent home for the Gators. Florida opened its 2024-25 season here against South Florida and beat Miami in town last year. <\/p>\n<p class=\"Box-_wrDxHtU__Box-sc-10sa3ie-0 Text-nO2aZ44r__TextBase-sc-s2hv5x-0 kfUEDb copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p>About the AuthorJustin Barney headshot<a class=\"Link-PukYsz7Y__LinkBase-sc-scvrjz-0 gQZqgJ\" href=\"https:\/\/www.news4jax.com\/team\/YZYINYEDP5DTPJQ7HZSUC3AOWM\/\" title=\"View Justin Barney&#039;s full profile\" itemprop=\"url\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Justin Barney<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"Box-_wrDxHtU__Box-sc-10sa3ie-0 Text-nO2aZ44r__TextBase-sc-s2hv5x-0 duhyRF bxSMlJ\">Justin Barney joined News4Jax in February 2019, but he\u2019s been covering sports on the First Coast for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The defending basketball national champion Gators beat Miami 82-68 on Sunday night at the VyStar Arena. (Chris Smith,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3111,116,118,117,1631],"class_list":["post-368627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-gators","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-sports4jax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368627","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=368627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}