Next up for Florida: vs. Georgia or Missouri; SEC Tournament at Nashville, Tenn.; Thursday, March 14, approx. 9:30 p.m. Eastern, SEC Network
Notable
* Florida will be the No. 6 seed in next week’s SEC Tournament and face the winner of Wednesday evening’s Georgia vs. Missouri game.
* Zyon Pullin stuffed the stat sheet again with 20 points, eight assists and five rebounds with just one turnover.
* Pullin’s eight assists tied his most as a Gator.
* Pullin’s assist-to-turnover ratio continues to be elite, climbing to 4.38 with today’s 8-to-1 showing.
* Tyrese Samuel scored 16 points, while Walter Clayton Jr. added 14 and Alex Condon scored 11 with a team-high eight rebounds off the bench.
* With Clayton’s 14 points, he climbs to 25th on UF’s single-season points list, surpassing scoring performances by Taurean Green, Mike Miller, Ronnie Williams, Udonis Haslem, Marreese Speights and Kenny Boynton.
Head Coach Todd Golden
On what he saw on Vanderbilt’s final basket…
“We turned the ball over in the backcourt and they drove us and laid it in over us, so, one-point lead, obviously you’ve got to do a better job taking care of the ball in that situation.”
On whether he saw anything different today from the first meeting…
“Yeah, Vanderbilt was definitely the tougher team today. The things that don’t require talent, I thought they out-played us. They had 20 offensive rebounds, we had six. We had 16 turnovers, they had eight. That’s the game right there. We held them to 35 percent from the field, we shot 51. But it was a numbers game – they had 76 field goal attempts, we had 58. They had 20 free throw attempts, we had 14. Really impossible to go on the road and to win a game like that when you let your opponent out-shoot you 18 times from the field and six times from the foul line. It’s just not a good recipe for success.”
On what he can point to that allowed Vanderbilt’s offensive rebounding success…
“Yeah, they played harder, and they got on the glass way better. They were more physical. We didn’t block out hard enough, and credit to them because I thought they played really hard all night.”
On what he saw on Florida’s final possession…
“I saw us get the ball to Walt [Clayton], him drive it, lose control of the ball and try to get a teammate cutting to the basket late, and we weren’t able to connect on the pass.”
Grad F Tyrese Samuel
On the difference in the game…
“We came out lackadaisical. We weren’t ready to play and they were just tougher than us. It was their last home game. They really had nothing to lose, and we came in here like a team that had just come off a big win and thought we were just going to come here and beat a good SEC team. The SEC is the best conference in America. Anybody can beat anybody. It showed today.”
On Vanderbilt’s offensive rebounding success…
“They went to the rim harder than us. We didn’t box out, didn’t execute. Simple as that.”
