Phil Knight Legacy
Veterans Memorial Coliseum| Portland, Ore.
Box Score<https://floridagators.com/documents/2022/11/24/2184477.PDF> | Season Stats<https://floridagators.com/documents/2022/11/7/2022-23_UFstats.pdf>
Records: Florida: 3-2 | Xavier 4-1
Next up: vs. Oregon State, Phil Knight Legacy (Portland, Ore.), Friday, 6 p.m. EST, ESPNU
Notable
* Trey Bonham made his first start as a Gator and led the team with a season-high 23 points.
* Will Richard continued to be a consistent efficient offensive performer, scoring 15 of his season-best 18 points in the second half.
* Colin Castleton posted a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds to go along with four blocked shots. It marks his 15th double-double, tying him with Joakim Noah and Chandler Parsons for fifth-most by a Gator since the 1996-97 season.
Head Coach Todd Golden
On the difference in the game…
“A couple things, I thought. First of all, we had a couple moments where we let them off the hook. At the end of the first half, I’ve got to be able to do a better job of communicating to my team that I want a timeout. That cost us. We could’ve gone into halftime with the lead, and we went in down four, which was really disappointing. It kind of took some wind out of our sails. In the second half, we had a couple breakaway opportunities, a missed dunk that ended up being three at the other end, a missed transition layup that ended up being three at the other end. Against a really good team like Xavier, you can’t have those things happen, right? So, other than some interesting plays like that, I thought it was a pretty evenly played game. They had their moments, we had ours.”
On Trey Bonham…
“As you know from being at our game last Friday night, he provided a big spark in the second half, and I thought he was playing with confidence in the first half before that. That was the guy that we were kind of expecting to get from VMI, and we thought allowing him to build off that performance last Friday, put him in the starting lineup, it would take some pressure off Kyle [Lofton], allow us to put more pressure at the top of the defense. I’m not sure he was great defensively tonight – I’ll have to go back and watch – but he was obviously fantastic offensively and did a really good job scoring the basketball.”
Junior G Trey Bonham
On the difference in the second half…
“We weren’t getting enough stops the whole game. Offensively, I thought we took care of the ball as a team. That was a great team, and we didn’t get the shots that we wanted.”
On the takeaway from the game…
“I feel like we’re a good team. We feel like we could’ve and should’ve won that game. We’ve got a lot of areas to improve, so once we hit our peak and once we get together as a team we’re going to be great.”
