ORLANDO — His players wore smiles as they climbed to the post-game podium Thursday. Their head coach wore a look of relief.
"This team's had a rough go of it the last 10 days or so," Florida coach Mike White said. "Been through a bunch."
But when the ball was tossed to start Florida's opener in the NCAA East Region, the back-to-back Vanderbilt disappointments didn't matter. They didn't matter while the fourth-seeded Gators were slogging through a sloppy first half against 13-seed East Tennessee or when they heated up in the second half. And they certainly didn't matter after UF finished off a satisfying 80-65 victory in front of 15,037 at Amway Center to advance in tourney play.
Junior forward Devin Robinson equaled his career-high with 24 points to go with seven rebounds and kept his teammates in the game during a rocky first half. Senior point guard Kasey Hill, the lone player on the UF roster with NCAA experience, had 14 points, six rebounds and five assists, while junior guard Chris Chiozza came off the bench to to score 14 points, all after halftime, grab five rebounds and dish three assists. Sophomore center Kevarrius Hayes had seven points, seven rebounds, a team tournament-record six steals and two blocked shots.
Florida's first NCAA victory in three years moved the Gators (25-8), now 10-1 in NCAA games in their home state, into Saturday's Round of 32 to face fifth-seeded Virginia (23-10), which survived a scare in upending UNC-Wilmington 76-71. The winner advances to the Sweet 16 next weekend in New York City.
"It feels good to get that first one," Robinson said.
And put those Vandy games in the review.
A tenacious display of second-half defense set up UF scoring opportunities in transition, allowing the Gators to reverse an early deficit to start the period and run away with a cozy 15-point cushion despite a combined 2-for-15 from the floor and 14 points from leading scorers KeVaughn Allen and Canyon Barry. Allen, though, had four assists, no turnovers and a pair of steals. Barry went 5-for-6 from the free-throw line and pulled three boards.
"I thought both those guys were good in different areas, not necessarily scoring it," White said. "But that's kind of who we are."
It definitely was who the Gators were during a nine-game winning streak — when seven different players led the team in scoring — that paved the way for a team full full of NCAA neophytes to get its first taste of "March Madness." The shaky start may have had something to do with nerves, but the byproduct was an offense that shot just 43 percent in the first half and clanged nine of 10 3-point shots andn a defense that was too generous in and around the basket in letting the Buccaneers (27-8) make 48 percent, including four 3-pointers.
Florida led just 33-32 at the break.
"We just knew we had to play harder. We had to rev it up a little bit. We got comfortable at the end of the first half," Robinson said. "We just knew we had to take it to a new level. We tried to be more aggressive and get to every loose ball and just play our best basketball on defense. It translated into the offense. That's what we tried to emphasize when we got into the locker room."
Added Hill: "We came in here and talked about it. We knew what had to be done and we went back out and got some stops."
Lots of them.
Junior guard Chris Chiozza scored all 14 of his points in the second half, including a pair of 3-pointers.
ETSU, regular-season and postseason tournament champions of the Southern Conference, accounted for two of the three field goals to open the second half, but at the 17:30 mark forward Justin Leon hit his only shot of the game — a 3-pointer to give UF the lead. Then Robinson nailed one from the corner. Then Robinson nailed another from the top of the key, stepping into it cleanly on a nice leave from Hill in transition.
Bam! A 9-0 run (all on treys after that 1-for-10 first half) and a seven-point lead that got the orange-and-blue partisans into the game.
"In the first half, I think we were in a rush," said Chiozza, who went 4-for-5 from the field and hit both his 3-balls. "We were trying to get the ball up the court, but when we didn't have anything in transition we tried to score too much on the next pass. We were trying to force, trying to get in the paint too fast, instead of making the extra pass."
That all got fixed, as did the UF defense, which held the Bucs to just six field goals through the first 17 minutes of the second half on the way to outscoring ETSU 20-5 in points off turnovers and 18-2 in fast-break points.
Florida shot nearly 54 percent in the second half and put in six of 12 shots from the arc.
"They turned us over, and I was really worried about that going into the game, the live-ball turnovers. They turned a lot of those into points, and that's really hard to defend," ETSU coach Steve Forbes said. "I thought their length and athleticism gave us problems pretty much the entire game."
Case in point: Inside nine minutes to go, Hayes rocketed out of the paint to tip away a pass, secure the ball near midcourt and take the steal the length of the court, nearly pulling down the goal down with a thunderous slam-dunk. That play put the Gators up 16.
But UF also gave ETSU fits with speed.
Case in point: Chiozza was all over the court in the second half, once skying in traffic for a contested rebound, then wheeling and going coast-to-coast for a layup. He made a similar high-energy play — rebound-to-layup — with 3:45 to go after the Bucs had cut the Florida lead back down to 10.
About 70 seconds later, the margin was 16 again.
"Now that we're here and a lot of us haven't been here before, you don't want to go out in the first round, but you also don't want to go out with any regrets, either," Chiozza said. "We were going to go out playing as hard we could. That's all you can really do."
Now they get another chance to do it again.
Vanderbilt, which lost a heartbreaker in first-round play Thursday, surely would swap places.
