GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Even Coach
Mike White admitted he did not see this performance coming.
Florida thrashed Butler, 77-43, Saturday night, handing the proud Bulldogs program its worse loss in a quarter century. Making the 34-point outcome all the more surprising was just five weeks ago UF and Butler played at the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas, where the offensively challenged Gators threw up brick after brick and the Bulldogs got hot in the second half on the way to winning by seven points.
So, this latest final score was stunning.
But not as much as the score nearly 11 minutes in.
UF 21
Butler 0
Yes, that's what the video screens throughout the Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center showed after
Jalen Hudson banked in a 3-pointer at the 9:24 mark of the first half. The football-like tally was appropriate, considering about an hour earlier the UF football team's obliteration of Michigan in the Peach Bowl had being shown on the JumboTron screen hanging from the O'Dome rafters. The cheers for Feleipe Franks, Lamical Perine and Chauncey Gardner-Johnson soon gave way, basically, to an across-the-board sampling of near-flawless play by their basketball brothers.
"Pretty close to a complete game," senior center
Kevarrius Hayes said of the rematch-turned-mismatch. "Offense working well, defense working well, and everybody staying locked in, through and though."
Hayes was smiling broadly through that assessment — and he scored only two points. Meanwhile, five teammates tallied in double figures, led by fourth-year junior forward
Keith Stone's 12 points and six rebounds, another 12 points and five boards from freshman guard
Noah Locke and freshman forward
Keyontae Johnson's 10 points, eight rebounds, two steals and two blocks off the bench. Senior guard
KeVaughn Allen had 11 points, three rebounds and three steals, while fifth-year senior swingman
Jalen Hudson had 11 points and seven rebounds, as the Gators (8-4), winners of three straight and five of the last six, shot nearly 54 percent from the floor and banged 10 of 21 from the 3-point line (47.6 percent). They also out-rebounded the Bulldogs, 46-18.
But the offensive numbers, while key, paled to the overall energy and defensive intensity Florida unleashed on mostly the same Butler (9-4) team that prevailed 61-54 when the two teams vied Nov. 23 at Atlantis. While UF began the game by hitting nine of 12 field goals, the Bulldogs were savaged on the perimeter and inside, missing their first 11 shots before forward Jordan Tucker, in his fourth game since becoming eligible after transferring from Duke midseason last year, swished a 3-pointer at the 11-minute mark for Butler's first points of the game.
Along the way, Florida did not just defend each possession at an elite level, but chased rebounds and challenged shots with abandon. In the last meeting guards, Kamar Baldwin and Paul Jorgensen hit 13 of 29 shots and combined to score 35 points, with Baldwin making life miserable with hard, downhill drives late in the shot clock.
This time, Baldwin and Jorgensen teamed up to make just six of 18 shots and scored only 14 points, as Butler finished 30.6 percent for the game and just 5-for-24 from the 3-point line (20.8 percent).
"We played with so much more disciplined on defense," Locke said.
The Bulldogs came in averaging nearly 75 points a game. They fell 32 shy of that.
"We played as well as this team has played, obviously, by far. Hopefully we play that well again this year," UF coach
Mike White said. "That's [now] the standard that these guys set. We have to continue to get better, of course, but I thought we'd play well. I know our guys were excited to play and I know we have improved, but I certainly didn't see that score coming. Butler is better than that. I'm not sure we're this good."
For 40 minutes they were.
Butler didn't know what hit it.
"There's a difference between being prepared and being ready," Bulldogs coach LaVall Jordan said after the program's worst margin of defeat since losing 104-64 at fourth-ranked North Carolina on Jan. 24, 1994. "I don't know how much [the Gators] talked about the last game, but they had a different level of team spirit and they looked like they had a lot of pride."
Allen scored on a driving, left-handed push shot 18 seconds into the game. Next time down, Hayes threw in a baby hook. Then it was Stone putting the ball on the deck, getting in the lane and pulling up for a jumper, which he followed the next time down with a 3-pointer to make it 11-0 just two and a half minutes in.
Timeout, Butler. Enter the UF backups.
"The starting five's energy carried over on the bench," Johnson said. "We had to play as hard as they did."
Fourth-year junior forward Keith Stone scored seven of his 12 points in the first four minutes, helping the Gators to a quick 11-0 that soon ballooned to 21-0.
By the first media timeout, the score was 15-0. By the second, the lead got to three touchdowns, with six different Gators in the scoring column.
After Tucker finally got Butler on the board, UF kept the pressure on. In fact, White admitted to being more impressed that his team increased its 21-point lead — by maintaining focus, intensity and defensive discipline, he said — than with the rapid-fire manner in which the Gators built it. There likely was a correlation, White added, between his team's energy and the fact Florida shots dropped from the outset.
UF led 43-18 at intermission (the Gators
totaled 22 points in the second half of the last meeting) and by as many as 37 midway through the second period.
"The guys have embraced being really good defensively," said White, whose squad opens Southeastern Conference play next weekend at home against South Carolina. "We're going to play some really good offenses in league play. I'm not sure we're going to be able to maintain our defensive efficiency, but I do think our guys will at least continue to embrace that it gives you a shot every night to be successful."
In this case, not just successful, but Peach Bowl dominant.
