Florida Gators

NEW YORK — It's early in the season, but through eight games the identity of the Florida basketball team is starting to crystalize. The Gators play hard, they defend with abandon, and at times — oftentimes lengthy times — struggle to put the ball in the basket. 

"When we're not making shots, we just have to make up for it on the defensive end," senior guard KeVaughn Allen said. "We just have to keep playing and eventually the shots will fall." 

That was the formula Tuesday night when the Gators, who at one point went nearly nine minutes without scoring, crawled into the jerseys of the West Virginia Mountaineers, played a suffocating 40 minutes of defense against one of the nation's highest-scoring teams, and left Madison Square Garden with a 66-56 victory in the Jimmy V Classic. 

Allen scored a season-high 19 points, while fourth-year junior forward Keith Stone added nine points, eight rebounds and a trio of steals. Freshman point guard Andrew Nembhard had another super-solid floor game with seven points, four rebounds, six assists (just two turnovers) and three steals. Fellow frosh and forward Keyontae Johnson came off the bench to get nine points, grab four rebounds and four steals. 

While those represent mostly offensive numbers, it was the overall defensive number the Gators (5-3) did on the Mountaineers (5-3) that sent the team back home with just its second win in five tries against programs from high-major conferences. WVU came to the arena averaging better than 86 points a game and ranked 19th in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency. The Mountaineers left with a season-low tally of points, shot just 29.7 percent (including 7-for-23 from the 3-point line), 55 percent from the free-throw line, and turned the ball over a season-high 21 times. 

"Florida was the better team tonight," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. 

Not because UF shot it well, though. As poor as the Mountaineers' numbers were, the Gators were only marginally better in making 33 percent from the floor, just six of 21 from distance (28.6 percent), and just under 61 percent from the free-throw line. That latter digit actually improved significantly in the waning moments, when WVU was in the process of cutting a 16-point lead in half over the last five minutes. The Gators, though, erased any threat of a disaster by making their last seven free throws, nine of the last 10, and 12 of the last 15 (after starting the game 16 of 31).

"We struggled there," UF coach Mike White said of the charity stripe. "Until the end." Both teams were cold from the outset, but WVU was colder. UF used back-to-back 3s from Allen and Stone as part of a 12-2 run that eventually helped the Gators to a 30-18 lead when Stone bagged a couple free throws with 4:02 to play in the half. After that, Florida's next points did not come until Allen hit a couple free throws at the 15:07 mark of the second half. While UF was going scoreless for those 8 minutes and 55 seconds, WVU scored 13 points to take its first (and only) lead of the game at 31-30. 

Allen's free throws restored the lead to the Gators. His pull-up in transition one possession later kicked in a 16-2 spree during which Johnson (4-for-5 from the floor) had a couple baskets and Nembhard hit a wide open 3. And it all happened after UF got in a 1-3-1 defense that completely flummoxed the Mountaineers (aka "Press Virginia"), thus giving credence to that old basketball adage: Teams that press don't like to be pressed.

"We haven't played a lot of it," White said of what the Gators call their "13" defensive scheme (or 1-3-1), which they only rolled out for two possessions in the first half. "We've worked on it a lot this fall and a little bit in the summer. We got off to a pretty good start just by getting a couple stops, and we just rode it. I didn't envision playing it that much coming into the game." 

It not only worked in the open floor, but played nicely into UF's plans of smothering WVU's standout center, 6-foot-8, 250-pound Sagaba Konate, who was averaging nearly 15 points and better than eight rebounds. UF sent multiple defenders Konate's way and frustrated the big man into a 2-for-10 outing and five turnovers before he fouled out after just 18 minutes. 

Florida, meanwhile, let its defensive energy pump life into the offense by allowing the Gators to get out in transition, which sometimes led to baskets and free-throw opportunities, plus kept the floor spaced when they pulled the ball out. 

"When you go through a dry spell, you have to just run your stuff, stay the course and stay calm," Nembhard said.

Florida did those things better than West Virginia did. Meanwhile, for the second time is an many games, Allen had a livelier bounce to his on-court demeanor, even though he hit just five of his 13 shots. That second number made White happy. 

"So he gets 13 shots up to our next guy, who got six. I like that," White said of Allen, who two springs ago scored a career-high 35 points in this famous building in UF's overtime win over Wisconsin in the 2017 NCAA East Region semifinal. "I tell him all the time — I say it to the media and I say it in front of his teammates — that when he's aggressive, all of our guys gain a little more confidence. He's such a talented scorer. When he settles in and plays with confidence, our entire team does [the same]. This year and last year, as well. He was good."

Offensively, the Gators were just good enough. Defensively, they were outstanding.

For now, that's going to have to do. Right now, that's who they are.