Next up for Florida: at Georgia, Saturday, Feb. 17, 1 p.m., SEC Network
Notable
* Florida earned its sixth win in its last seven games, improving its home record to 11-1. The Gators moved to 10 games over .500 for the first time since 2017.
* Zyon Pullin came up with a critical steal in the final :30 that led to a Walter Clayton Jr. layup to put UF up by three with :20 to play. Following an LSU basket and Alex Condon hitting 1 of 2 free throws to put Florida up two, the Gators came up with a last-second stop to seal the win.
* Clayton notched his eighth 20-point game of the season and second in a row, leading Florida with 21.
* Tyrese Samuel scored 15 and pulled down seven rebounds, while Zyon Pullin added 14 and stretched his double-figure scoring streak to 21 games.
* Florida committed eight turnovers, marking single-digit turnovers in five of the last seven games.
Head Coach Todd Golden
On the win…
“Obviously, really pleased with the outcome. Not pleased with the recurring theme of some of our second halves. But it’s just not as simple as we got to do some things better. In the big picture, we’ve been playing really good ball, won six out of the last seven in one of, if not the best league in America. We’re building these double-digit leads against really good teams. I look at LSU, I know their win-loss record in league isn’t great, but that is a talented team. They are super talented. They have weapons. Jalen Cook can make shots all over the floor. [Will] Baker is a super tough cover, unconventional in our league for a pick-and-pop five man to play like that. Then you got Jordan Wright. Tyrell Ward is one of the better shooters around. I was concerned about covering them.”
On LSU’s zone…
“We had trouble penetrating it. Obviously, zone, in theory, you’re trying to play stickier defensively. I thought it did that. First half, I thought they were not sticky defensively and allowed us to get a lot of uncontested rim shots. In the second half, super sticky and then missed some good looks at three. You’ve got to bust the zone a little bit. The way we played Saturday, no defense was really going to bother us and we were shooting the ball so well. Tonight, you’ve got to make them pay, either with some good catch and shoot threes or some second chances. I think we had 13 offensive rebounds in the second half, which didn’t equate to as many points as it usually does for us. Obviously, I haven’t watched it yet, that’s just what sticks out. We need to take the top off that zone by banging a couple of shots and I think we take a little stress off our shoulders.”
On the second half…
“I thought our energy and enthusiasm covered up a lot in the first half, maybe in the first 26 or 27 minutes. And then a little fatigued and a similar issue where we have a couple of empty possessions, and we’re out of transitional alignment defensively. Get up a three and then they come down, to their credit, are ramming us at the rim and we’re not doing a good enough job of staying vertical, staying in a legal guarding position, [and] allowing them to get to the foul line. Then allowing them to set up their zone, and now we have the same story over and over again. So I need to do a better job with our guys. I’ve been really pouring into our energy and effort being our main priority at practice. Our guys have been doing a really good job with that, and I think you guys can see the growth in that area of our team. But our half-court execution, especially against zone or junk defense, has not been nearly good enough. That’s not on [Kevin] Hovde, that’s on me. I need to make sure we spend enough time on those things in practice and we just haven’t done that. We’ll give our guys tomorrow off and, obviously, we’ll address it Thursday and Friday before we head to Georgia on Saturday.”
Junior G Walter Clayton Jr.
On what changed down the stretch…
“I think their zone definitely affected us a little bit. The other thing was just our defense. [Jalen] Cook was able to get a couple threes off, we talked about that in the scout. He got a couple of easy layups, so I think defensively we just needed to string together a couple of stops.”
On the message from Coach Golden in the final two minutes…
“We’ve been in this situation before, so just go out there, play our game and we’re going to win. It wasn’t good that we got into the situation that we got ourselves in, but glad to come out with a ‘W.'”
Freshman F Alex Condon
On confidence gained knowing the team survived second-half troubles…
“I feel like we have a lot of confidence when in those situations, we have the trust in each other that we can get it done, but obviously we don’t want it to get that close.”
