No Shortage of Experience for Florida Gators 2024-25 Backcourt

Having experienced veterans matters, and the Florida Gators have plenty of it

The Florida Gators head into the upcoming season with plenty of veteran experience / Vasha Hunt-Imagn Images

Experience and leadership are everything in sports. It’s what helps push a team over the finish line in certain games. It can also be the way out of a slump at any point in the season. A veteran presence is also needed to guide the younger players on the team. Simply put, it’s a vital piece of a winning team. 

Fortunately for the Florida Gators, they have a ton of it. And while a portion of it is in the frontcourt, most of the experience resides at the guard position.  

In the Gators starting lineup, they will have Walter Clayton Jr. and Will Richard, a pair of seniors, alongside graduate transfer Alijah Martin. Then, off the bench, they’ll have junior Denzel Aberdeen, who ended the season firing on all cylinders, to help be the leader for the second unit. 

“Those four guys are the ones leading the charge, and I would expect them to have really good years,” Gators head coach Todd Golden said. 

Clayton Jr. is the leader of the Gators and rightfully so. He has been one of the best-scoring guards in the country over the past two seasons. He averaged 16.8 points per game in his final season with Iona before transferring to Gainesville last year where he upped his average to 17.6 points. Undoubtedly, the Preseason First Team All-SEC selection will be a vital instrument in Golden’s offense in 2024-25. 

His running mate, Martin, will also be able to plug the gaps that Clayton Jr. has in his game while being able to pick up the pieces left when Pullin departed to the NBA. 

“Alijah Martin is a huge addition for us,” Golden said. “I think he does a great job of raising the bar for us on a daily basis in terms of our competitiveness, in terms of our belief and in terms of our confidence.”

Martin played in 124 career games (86 starts) with FAU across four seasons. This includes a run to the final four in 2023, in which he was instrumental.

Martin brings a level of toughness and a strong defensive effort that will help improve a woeful Gators defense from a season ago. In his last season with FAU, Martin successfully got his hand in the cookie jar 56 times, which was a career-high for the guard. 

However, he isn’t just a defender. He can put the ball in the basket as well. He scored 13.1 points per game in 2023-24. On top of that, Martin averaged 16.5 points in the Owls' postseason run in the 2022-23 season. 

The final spot in the starting rotation goes to Richard. Richard will be the longest-tenured Gator of the three as 2024-25 will be his third season in Gainesville since transferring from Belmont. He was one of the first transfers Golden brought in and he has been one of the most consistent players for the Gators. 

He has amassed 68 appearances (65 starts) during his time with the Gators and is up near the top when it comes to shooters on this roster. He has shot 36.6 percent from behind the arc over the last two seasons, knocking down 121 3-pointers during this time. 

These three certainly will be a dangerous trio in the SEC, but let’s not skip over the depth the Gators have at the guard spot either. 

Aberdeen will potentially be the first name off the bench for Golden this season. Aberdeen didn’t have the start to the season he would have liked last year, but he definitely made up for lost time to end the season. 

In the SEC Tournament semifinals, the versatile guard sparked an 18-point comeback to help down Texas A&M. He ended this game with 20 points and knocked down four triples to push his team into the tournament final. 

This game showed the player he could be for the Gators, a guard who can light it up from deep. Additionally, he saw an increased workload over the final four games of the season, getting at least 10 minutes a game in each of the four. 

Aberdeen won’t be the only guard coming off the bench though. Golden will also have the option of Isaiah Brown, Kajus Kublickas and Urban Klavzar to put on the court to supply minutes of rest for the starters. This trio may not have experience in collegiate sports, both Kublickas and Klavzar have games logged overseas. 

Kublickas played 37 games with Zalgiris II in Lithuania and competed in multiple international tournaments with the under-20 and under-18 Lithuanian teams. Klavzar made 33 appearances with CD Estela Cantabria, a team in Spain’s second division. Furthermore, he has played with the under-16, under-20 and senior Slovenian national teams since 2019. This may not be Division I experience, but it still counts. 

This is a deep, experienced roster that Golden has assembled and this depth will play a big role in this upcoming campaign for the Florida Gators.