Ultimate Niche Guy, Ultimate Teammate

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The population of Ullin, Ill., home to Shawnee Community College, was 449 in 2014. That's about one-fifth of the enrollment of Shawnee CC, where Justin Leon was a junior college All-American two years ago on the campus of 2,400 students. That latter number is roughly one-tenth the 24,000-plus capacity of historic Rupp Arena, which will be stuffed to the rafters Saturday when Leon and 13th-ranked Florida (23-5, 13-2) take on No. 12 Kentucky (23-5, 13-2) in a nationally televised game that could very well decide the Southeastern Conference regular-season championship.

Leon is a 6-foot-8, 196-pound forward from Conway, Ark., a city about one-third the size of a sold-out Rupp. Sometimes he has to stop and think of how it all happened. How a kid from Conway, about 15 miles north of Little Rock, took the JuCo route through a mall-less Southern Illinois outpost, managed to land in Gainesville and now finds himself playing on one of college basketball's best teams and headed to one of the game's most hallowed meccas with so much on the line.

"I know back then I thought sometimes about where I'd end up playing, but never really let myself drift a whole lot into that. I always just kind of day-dreamed, you know, about maybe playing here or there," Leon said. "But now that I'm here? At Florida? … No. … I never thought it would be like this. Couldn't have."

And now that Leon is here, Florida fans — and certainly Florida's coaches — can't imagine what the Gators would be like without him.

[Read senior writer Chris Harry's UF-Kentucky 'Pregame Stuff' preview here]

Leon, as everyone knows by now, wasn't a marquee recruit. He will never be a high-flyer or coast-to-coast speedster or intimidating shot-blocker. His greatest individual highlights aren't showing up on "SportsCenter's Top 10 Plays."

But his value to this Florida team cannot be quantified. He's the prototypical "glue guy."

Want a comparison? Think Will Yeguete, but with a different skill set. Yeguete was a great defender, rebounder and all-around effort guy. Leon does not excel at the former two, but he never will be out-worked, be it in games or practices. It is after practice that Leon has taken his value to another level this season, with a daily routine of staying in the gym until 280 makes from seven different spots behind the 3-point line are in the books.

Leon's 7.1 points per game rank sixth on the team, but at 38-for-92 he leads the Gators in 3-point shooting percentage at 41.3 percent, with his number of treys the second-most on the team behind scoring leader KeVaughn Allen. By becoming such a threat from deep — he attempted two shots in the second half in Saturday's win over South Carolina; both 3s, both good — Leon spreads things out and stretches post defenders, thus opening the defense for UF's guards, which can only help as the Gators look for ways to compensate for the season-ending loss of center John Egbunu to a knee injury.

"When you recruit guys, you envision how they are going to fit into your system in a bunch of different categories, but we didn't sign Justin thinking we're going to hang our hat on him or going to count on him being our leading scorer," UF coach Mike White said. "But everything else has been what we thought. We thought he was a hard, hard playing guy."

White and assistant coach Jordan Mincy first spotted Leon at a JuCo combine and knew he was an ideal fit for their program — at Louisiana Tech. White was still there when the Bulldogs signed Leon in April 2015. In Leon, they saw a solid front court player who they could rely on to do his job and play hard every single night.

Unwaveringly and uncompromisingly hard.

"It's the one thing every player can truly control," he said.

Leon, who had nothing but JuCo offers coming out of high school, averaged 21.5 points and better than 50 percent from the floor to go with 10 rebounds a game his sophomore season at Shawnee CC. He did it playing both center and power forward and carved out a niche as a guy who did a lot of the dirty work, while also capable of stepping out and hitting some shots.

A month after Leon signed with the Bulldogs, Billy Donovan left Florida for the NBA and White and his entire LA Tech staff left Ruston for Gainesville.

Leon had zero relationship with the new LA Tech staff and asked out of his letter-of-intent, a request that was granted. He toyed some with Arkansas, Ole Miss, Murray State and a little with Indiana, but when UF signee Noah Dickerson, a marquee low-post recruit from Atlanta, asked the same of Florida when Donovan left, a scholarship opened. Though he'd never visited the Florida campus, Leon jumped at a chance to follow White, sight unseen.

"We knew he was going to be able to contribute, but we didn't know how much that would be offensively," assistant coach Darris Nichols said. "I just knew he'd be a dude we couldn't keep off the floor. We really had no idea he'd be the shooter he became."

Most of the 2015-16 season, Leon came off the bench, averaging 5.3 points and 3.1 rebounds. He shot just over 49 percent from the floor and a surprising and team-best 37 percent from the 3-point line (his 25 3-balls were the fifth-most on the team), though just 46 percent from the free-throw line. The Gators went 21-15 and their season ended in the NIT.

Along the way, Leon led the team in hustle.

Justin Leon squares up for a shot Tuesday night against South Carolina.

He then spent the offseason fine-tuning his game, especially his perimeter shooting.

"I always thought I could shoot, but with the offense and type of coaching style I had in high school it wasn't meant for me to shoot," said Leon, adding he went 1-for-2 on 3-pointers his senior year at Conway High. "When I went to junior college my coach gave me the freedom to just go play and not worry about anything. That gave me confidence and helped me feel like I could shoot. Since then, I've been working on it."

After every practice, without fail, Leon has a free-throw and 3-point routine, the results of which scream from his statistical line. His free-throw percentage is now 75.7, nearly 30 points higher than his junior year. And he's still on-point from deep.

It was early in the SEC season, in fact, that junior forward Devin Robinson took notice of Leon's extra work and stepped in and paired for the same workout alongside his teammate. Every day.

Note: It's probably no coincidence Robinson is 19-for-34 from the arc (55.8 percent) during UF's nine-game winning streak. Give Leon an assist.

"He inspires me on so many different levels," Robinson said. "When you see him out here getting better every day and the progress he's made from last season to this season, I'm like, 'Wow!' He really put the work in and it just made me think that if he can make that commitment to improve, why can't I? So I hopped on his bandwagon."

White in his staff were on it the first time they saw him spilling across the floor for a loose ball.

"We thought he was the hardest-playing guy at the [JuCo] event and that doesn't surprise me when you get to know the young man, how consistent he is every day in practice, what he brings to the locker room, his physical toughness," White said. "All those things we knew, and we know he works, so offensively you hope he can develop. He's not an unbelievably talented offensive player, but he's kind of carved out a little niche where he knows how and where to get his feet set and because of the work he's become a good shooter off the catch."

Little niche, big dividends.

"Coming in, I guess I saw myself as a role player, coming off the bench and getting some limited minutes here and there, but I guess my role just kind of expanded," Leon said. "There have been so many great players at Florida. I was just trying to think of something maybe different I could do to help the team. I guess the role ended up being a little bigger than I ever thought."

Or anybody else.

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