Cocktails on the Court

The lights were bright. The moment was big. And Anthony Roberson was a true freshman. 

It was one of the games Florida perennially circled on its calendar, and the score was tied at 63. The 2002-03 Florida men’s basketball team was playing No. 20 Georgia in Gainesville, as it has nearly every season, and neither team was prepared to drop one of their most important games on the schedule. 

The moment called on Roberson. And he delivered. Roberson hit a 25-foot buzzer-beater over Georgia’s Jarvis Hayes, a future NBA player, and the O’Connell Center erupted after the Gators' 66-63 triumph.

“That’s a shot, a moment, I’ll never forget,” Roberson said more than 23 years later. It's those moments that "leave a legacy," which he surely did. But that shot is still just a small flicker of a longstanding, intense rivalry that has entertained, thrilled and terrified Gators and Bulldogs alike for more than 100 years. At 231 games – depending on who you ask – it's UF's longest-standing basketball rivalry.

While the UF-UGA rivalry on the court has not seen the same heights it has reached in football, the animosity between the programs is undeniable. And it’s growing, for more reasons than one. 

“I don’t like them,” said Florida junior forward Thomas Haugh, whose breakout game with the Gators – coincidentally enough – was in a come-from-behind 88-82 win in Athens as a freshman in 2024. “I don’t think anybody here likes Georgia and they don’t like us. It’s just how it’s going to be. Same thing whether it’s football, basketball, whatever sport you’re playing, it’s Florida-Georgia, it’s one of the best rivalries in college.”

The tensions have only grown for Haugh and the rest of the Gators squad since Georgia handed Florida what would turn out to be its final loss of the season last Feb. 25. The Bulldogs’ win ended a 12-game winning streak that lasted nearly six years; it marked the longest run by either team throughout the matchups' history. 

A history the pair can’t agree upon.

The Gators say they lead the all-time series 127-104, while the Bulldogs think they snagged two more wins somewhere between your great-grandfather's birth and your grandfather's kindergarten graduation. They can't even agree on the score of their first game.

Nevertheless, it came in 1924, nine years after the pair's more notorious football rivalry came to life. On the gridiron, the schools have played every year since 1926, outside of wartime, shifting to Jacksonville in 1933. The tension of the 'World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party' has always been palpable. But the duel on the court has come a long way, and the most recent catalyst lay in a defection.

“Coach Mike White being an ex-Florida coach, it really has intensified the rivalry,” said Lemuel Howard, a former Georgia player said of the now-Georgia coach, White. “It's a really dynamic twist, because of the players and the coaches that are involved.”

White was at Florida’s helm for seven seasons from 2015-22, amassing a 142-88 record. Now with the Bulldogs, he’s 56-46 through his first three and a half seasons. The move gave the Gators another reason to feel the tension when they see red and black on the hardwood, and White’s taken the brunt of it, nagging only one win against UF in eight attempts.  

For former Florida player and current Georgia graduate manager Alex Klatsky, White’s move spurred his start in Athens. Aside from White, very few others have experienced the rivalry from both sides.

Klatsky is one of them.

A walk-on for the Gators from Colts Neck, New Jersey in his playing career, Klatsky appeared in 25 games in his five years at Florida from 2019-24. He soaked in all the experiences in Gainesville, and a select few that stuck out to him came when the Gators faced his current team. 

“Coming to Athens with my teammate, Phlanderous Fleming, and winning here when he was an Athens native was super awesome,” Klatsky said. “He was my roommate, and I meant a lot to him, and it was just really cool to support him in that win.”

In that same win over Georgia in his hometown, Fleming had 27 points, five rebounds, four assists and a steal in his graduate season. It’s those kinds of moments — for the individual, for the team, for the program — that have made the rivalry stand out. Those instances aren’t few and far between.

Also during Klatsky’s time, on Feb. 5, 2020, Florida basketball hit a program milestone against Georgia in the O’Dome. Klatsky and the rest of the Gators squad managed a 22-point comeback against the Bulldogs, the largest at the time since a road win in 1993.

“[It was] pretty incredible,” he said. 

But he now stands on the other side of the rivalry and wears red and black. And he doesn’t do it alone. Beside is his younger brother, current Bulldog redshirt junior guard Brandon Klatsky. The two are enjoying being on the same team after spending time on opposite ends of the rivalry. 

“When we were in separate places, there was definitely a lot of trash talking,” Alex said.

His Florida ties are far from gone, though, not only from his memories, but his cousin Dave Klatsky has served as one of Florida’s assistant coaches since 2025. In ways like this, the two programs are forever intertwined, no matter how much they wish to separate themselves. 

Despite the tension and the animosity between the two programs, after being on both sides, Alex said he doesn’t feel like they’re all that different.

“I feel like it's a very similar perspective,” he said. “Both programs, both athletic departments, are high-level, SEC powerhouses, and at the end of the day, both programs are trying to achieve the same goal. It's just a very similar approach. This is our rival, this is a big game.”

While the rivalry started on the gridiron, as the seasons passed, the court began to grow its own legs. Howard, who played for Georgia from 1988-91, said the attention on basketball as a whole increased while he was a Bulldog.

“Basketball was becoming more prevalent. We were highly ranked,” Howard said. “After the dominant years, basketball was starting to gain a lot of momentum, so it became an entertainment piece for Georgia athletics.”

Howard was a co-captain during his time in Athens and was part of the 1990 SEC regular-season championship team that dethroned Florida, which won the title the year prior. That sort of back-and-forth nature of the rivalry has been far from rare across the pair’s history. Throughout the years, it has remained competitive and struggled to find a true frontrunner. 

The simple reason: Both teams care too much to stay down. 

“It was built over hard work and dedication,” Roberson said. “Guys you came in there with a will to want to win and do well for your coach and do well for yourself and your family.”

Roberson, nicknamed “Peep” in his time with the Gators, played under former coach Billy Donovan from 2002-05. He was a first-team All-SEC selection and was on Florida’s SEC Tournament title squad in the 2004-05 season. The group won that championship in the state of Georgia, for whatever it’s worth. 

Through that and much more, Roberson felt the full effect of the rivalry. Not only did he participate in some of the most intense games in the SEC, but he was responsible for one of the most significant moments in the rivalry’s history: his buzzer-beater as a true freshman.

It's program-defining memories like those that keep the rivalry from fizzling out. 

“Even in this new era of college sports it’s really important for us to make sure that we value these competitions against rivals,” UF head coach Todd Golden said. “I think it’s really important to our program, I think it’s really important to our fans, people around the school department that we perform well.

“We've got to play really well because I think they view it the same way.” 

However, Klatsky attributed the stoking of the rivalry elsewhere: the rising talent of both teams. 

“Both programs are just getting better,” he said. “It makes the game more and more relevant. This is probably the first time in a little while where both programs are nationally relevant and going in the right direction. So that just magnifies it.”

The rivalry is now one that coaches, fans and players alike mark on their calendars. Not only because of the rivalry, but because of everything that comes with playing the Gators — even the fans. 

“When we went to Gainesville, it was really, really intense,” Howard said, “I can just remember a lot of the heckling that went on during those games. It was more so than other teams, so it was a really, really intense competitive event that happened.”

Some things never change.

Three decades later, and Gainesville is just as difficult a place to play as it was then, mostly because of the fans. When Georgia came to O’Dome this season in early January, it was no different. 

On top of the many things that bombard any opponent who steps foot into the O’Connell Center, Florida’s patented “you can’t do that” chants flooded the arena as Georgia’s Somto Cyril was ejected from the game after being called for a flagrant foul for elbowing Florida center Rueben Chinyelu. Behind the ejection and the roar of their fans, the Gators surged to a 92-77 victory. 

"It was a little bit different, obviously the football one is a lot more intense with 100,000 fans, but, boy, our basketball games, those fans would come out and cheer and definitely when we visited up in Athens you could feel the animosity," said former Florida center Andrew DeClercq, who was on the Gators’ first Final Four team in 1994. 

The colors worn aside, on each end of the rivalry, lessons are learned and some of the world's best athletes, coaches and people are built. Florida and Georgia have 14 former players who currently play in the NBA, carrying with them the teachings of their respective programs, and sometimes sporting the same colors, becoming teammates and leaving the tension in the past.  

“I'm really lucky to have had the opportunity to be part of two different staffs and two different philosophies,” Klatsky said. “And then just take the best of both worlds and put it together myself.”

And just know, for those no longer involved, the rivalry’s impact is still alive. 

“As a fan now, I love watching those games,” DeClercq said.