GAINESVILLE, Fla. — After the first 100-point game in more than two years, the best home shooting performance of the season, and placing six players in double-figure scoring, sophomore point guard Andrew Nembhard, who'd just dished a career-best 13 assists in Florida's 102-63 tidal-waving of Long Beach State, had plenty of praise for the flow and efficiency of his offense Saturday. 

"You can just tell. The stats show it. We're playing more freely, everybody is seeing the floor better," Nembhard said. "The ball was really moving."

Sophomore shooting guard Noah Locke went one better regarding that ball movement.

"It was poppin'," he said. 

From the start. UF (8-4) hit five of its first six shots, scored the game's first 14 points, took a 28-point lead into the halftime locker room, and coasted home behind 54-percent shooting from the floor (the highest in five Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center games this season) and a season-best 12 makes from the 3-point line. 

Graduate-transfer forward Kerry Blackshear Jr. scored 21 points, grabbed eight rebounds and sat for the game's final nine minutes. He wasn't needed. Locke tallied the first double-double of his career (16 points, 10 rebounds), while sophomore forward Keyontae Johnson had 21 points and six boards. Freshman forward Omar Payne got his first career start, with classmate Scottie Lewis sidelined by a concussion, and nearly joined Locke at the double-double party. Payne's 11 points were the best of his brief career and his nine boards equaled his season high. 

"We definitely got better today," UF coach Mike White said after a rare drama-free outing from his squad. "Hopefully, some of these young guys can grow from this." 

Given the inconsistent nature of the 2019-20 season, the Florida staff would probably settle, at least for the time being, for maintaining what they rolled out for the O'Dome crowd Saturday, what with the Jan. 4 Southeastern Conference opener against Alabama next on the docket. The offensive product on display against the 49ers (4-11), visitors from the Mountain West Conference, was a far cry from what the Gators displayed a week earlier in a loss to a much better Utah State squad in the Orange Bowl Classic at Sunrise, Fla. 

It started with shot selection. 

"You didn't have to sense it being better, you could see it," Payne said. 
 
By the coaches' count, the Gators took no fewer than 15 horrific shots in South Florida and heard about it since returning from Christmas break. Against LBSU, there was less dribbling, more extra passes — along with better, cleaner passes — and, of course, more balls going through the basket at the end of possessions.

"We've just got to make shots. Honestly, it's as easy as that," said Nembhard, whose team began the day having shot a poor 39.7 percent in home games, so the 54-percent effort this time must have felt like a layup line. "It's as easy as that; we have to make shots, but we also have to take good shots. We took good shots, we made more shots, and our shooting percentage was higher."

Translation: We're not splitting atoms here. It's basketball. 

Defensively, UF held LBSU to 37 percent and smashed the 49ers on the glass 49-31, thus providing more options to play downhill or in transition. Backup freshmen guard Ques Glover came off the bench to score 11 points, while his fellow reserve and classmate Tre Mann managed to put up 10 points despite going just 1-for-6 from the 3-point line. 

Nearly everyone got into the act, with nine of the 10 players who checked into the game finding the UF scoring column. The end result was the program's first 100-point game since the 111-105 double-overtime victory over Gonzaga in the PK80 Invitational in Portland on Nov. 24, 2017. 

Confidence builder? 

"I hope so," White said, opting to for the wait-and-see approach when the Crimson Tide rolls into the O'Dome in a week. "Sometimes the gaining of confidence is a multiple-effort type of thing. Sometimes gaining confidence can be two steps forward, one step back."

Check back next weekend.