Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- About 16 minutes into Saturday night's Southeastern Conference opener, the Florida Gators -- that gang that doesn't shoot straight -- was hitting better than 50 percent from the floor and the 3-point line, plus more than 80 percent from the free-throw line. 

Oh, and they had a fat double-digit lead on the Georgia Bulldogs. 

"Amazing how that works," sophomore point guard Chris Chiozza said. 

It was not amazing, not with this bunch, that the shooting blaze died down, but the Gators parlayed their smokin' start with terrific defense -- not surprising -- to defeat the Bulldogs 77-63 in front of 9,053 at the O'Connell Center. 

Freshman guard KeVaughn Allen followed up Tuesday night's 32-point outburst against Florida State with 18 points, the second-best outing of young career. Sophomore center John Egbunu benefited from his teammate's initial shooting with more space to work from in the paint. Egbunu scored 12 points and grabbed 12 rebounds, including seven on the offensive end for his second double-double of the season. Chiozza had 11 points, six rebounds and six assists, while reserve guard Kasey Hill had 10 points, six rebounds, four assists and four steals to make Coach Mike White a winner in his SEC debut. 

"That's just how we drew it up," White said. "Come out and hit a bunch of 3s." 

He was kidding. 

UF (9-4) entered the game shooting just 27.4 from deep as a team, but rained in six of its first 11. At the same time, the Gators, 42.2 percent from the floor as a team overall coming in, put down 11 of their first 21 shots, with sophomore forward Devin Robinson (13 points in just 10 minutes) a perfect 3-for-3 from the floor, with two makes from deep, plus 5-for-6 from the free-throw line. 

Robinson, though, took an elbow late in the first half and asked out of the game. He suffered a chest bruise, with the UF health staff taking him to the hospital for precautionary tests. White said after the game he expected Robinson to be OK. 

"With D-Rob out, we all had to pick up the slack," junior forward Justin Leon said. 

That ended up, as is usually case with the Gators, on the defensive end. Though UF's 16-point first half was whittled all the way to four -- at 43-39 -- with just under 16 minutes to go, the Gators slowly took the margin back out to double-digits at around the 14-minute mark and kept it there most of the way, with Allen scoring a dozen after intermission. 

"What really won us the game was our defense," Allen said. "The reason it was so good was the way we practiced the last two days preparing for this game."

 

Indeed, at the other end, Florida was locked in on the backcourt tandem of Kenny Gaines and J.J. Frazier, and bent on preventing them from getting their shots going from deep. UF's defensive rotation and close-outs on the arc were exemplary and limited the Bulldogs (7-4) to just 2-for-12 from distance. 

For UGA, the long-ball looks just weren't there. Of those dozen attempts, five came in the final four minutes when the Bulldogs were trying to cut into that double-digit margin. 

Gaines finished with 13 points and Frazier 12, five points below their season average combo average of 30. The Bulldogs got 20 points and seven rebounds from center Yante Maten. 

"They shot the 3-point shot out of the gate a little better than they've been shooting it, and that was a factor," Georgia coach Mark Fox said. "Then we had to play uphill all night." 

The Gators shot uphill the last 24 minutes or so (40.7 percent in the second half) and converted just 15 of their final 30 free-throw tries, with Hill going 8-for-16. 

"We hit enough of 'em to win," Chiozza said. "It's like with 3s ... we make 'em in practice." 

They'll continuing working on both, also. 

UF's 9-for-22 from the long range (40.9 percent) was their second-best showing from deep this season. The 24-for-41 from the free-throw line (58.5 percent) was the fourth-worst, but also by far their most attempts. 

A bunch of the initial ones went in, though. This time, that was enough.