Florida's Colin Castleton beats West Virginia's Emmitt Matthews for a second-half flush in the Gators 85-80 road win Saturday. [Photo by Kathy Batten, Associated Press]
UF Locks Down WVU in Second Half for Big Road Victory
Saturday, January 30, 2021 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — What Florida did to West Virginia in Saturday's second half of their SEC/Big 12 Challenge matchup more closely resembled what the Bob Huggins-coached Mountaineers usually do to opponents that come to town.
The Gators pretty much got beaten up by one guy in the first half, but came out in the second and played a far more inspired and efficient brand of basketball in upsetting the 11th-ranked Mountaineers 85-80 at WVU Coliseum for a fourth consecutive win. They did it in great part because 6-foot-11 forward Colin Castleton was better than 6-10, 255-pound Derek Culver over the final 20 minutes, helping his team shoot 55 percent after the break, but also played his role in a defensive performance that limited a WVU offense that came into the ranked 16th in the country to a mere 33-percent shooting from the floor.
Castleton scored 15 points in the second half on his way to finishing with 21, making all nine of free throws, grabbing seven rebounds and blocking five shots. Junior shooting guard Noah Locke dropped in a season-high 19 points, banging three of his four 3-pointers after the break, and fourth-year junior guard Tyree Appleby had 12 points and seven assists. That trio had the large numbers, but this was a total team win for the Gators (10-4), who had all 11 of their players score and did a much better job on Culver, who banged and bodied his way 21 first-half points, including nine from the free-throw line, but added just seven in the second period on his way to a game- and career-high 28.
"We were just being soft in the first half. We didn't play hard enough and he got a bunch of easy buckets he wasn't supposed to," Castleton said. "We just tried to hone in on that in the second half and he didn't get as many easy looks as he did in the first half when he got a bunch of layups."
The Gators got their share of layups and easy buckets, too. They outscored the Mountaineers in fast-break points 26-5, as well as 32-22 in the paint.
UF finished at 48 percent for the game, making eight of 17 attempts from distance (47 percent) against a WVU defense that was allowing just 69.3 points per game and 29.5 percent from deep. The Gators also went 25-for-30 from the free-throw line (83.3 percent) in a clunky, no-flow game riddled with fouls. On defense, they limited the Mountaineers to 40 percent overall, just eight of 28 from the arc (28.6 percent) and held guard Miles "Deuce" McBride to nine points. McBride, ranked seventh in the Big 12 in scoring at 15.7 per game (18.7 in league play) and coming off a career-high 24 against No. 10 Texas Tech, went just 3-for-15 from the floor and missed all six of his 3s.
"Crazy game," added UF coach Mike White. "I thought Colin was really good defensively in the second half. Much better. All of us were. Everyone that played, I thought, was a little bit more locked in defensively."
Offensively, as well.
In a wild one of back and forths — 14 ties, 18 lead changes — UF used a second-half a run of eight straight points (two Locke 3s and a spinning, circus layup by Scottie Lewis), to turn a five-point deficit into a three-point lead with 13 minutes remaining.
"We let them get started. We didn't guard them coming out of halftime," Huggins said. "They're good. They've got really good players. We just didn't play with a lot of aggression."
After the Lewis bucket, neither team led by more than three points over the next 10 minutes until the Gators made a couple momentum-changing plays down the stretch.
The Gators, all of them, had a full day's work dealing with Mountaineer Derek Culver (1) in the post. He finished with a career-high 28 points (21 in the first half), grabbed 12 rebounds, made seven of his 11 shots and got to the free-throw line 17 times. [Photo by Ben Queen, USA Today]
The score was 75-all when Lewis, on an up-court advance from Appleby, buried a 3-pointer in transition at the 4-minute mark. WVU backup forward Gabe Osabuobein had a chance to trim the margin, but bounced two free throws with 3:45 to go. At the other end, Castleton had the ball in the high post with the shot clock inside 10 seconds when, facing a Mountaineers double team, he had the ball knocked from his hands. The ball found its way back to Castleton just above the free-throw line — and with a wide-open lane in front of him.
"I just decided to take it to the basket strong," Castleton said.
He did. Castleton converted the layup, was fouled and hit the subsequent free throw for a six-point edge, 81-75, with 3:22 to go. It was Florida's last field goal of the game and UF's biggest lead of the game. It didn't last very long.
WVU (11-5) got a 3-pointer from guard Sean McNeil (21 points), his fifth of the game. After a Mountaineers stop, a stickback by Culver made it a one-point game, but two more Castleton free throws pushed it back to three. Both WVU buckets came after offensive rebounds. The Gators, to their credit, didn't hang their heads.
"You just have to continue to play," Locke said.
The Mountaineers got no good looks the rest of the way, missing their last four shots (made one of their last seven overall) and even had to jack a desperation shot from half-court after a tenacious possession by the Florida defense sent a tip ball backward when Lewis got tipped the ball away as the shock clock ticked down.
Huggins, nonetheless, turned a finger on his defense that let the Gators make 16 of 29 second-half shots, seven of 11 from distance (64 percent), and watched them go 9-for-9 from the free-throw line.
"Defense to a large degree is about heart and about competing," Huggins said. "When you don't compete, you get exposed."
Florida competed much better and harder to White's liking after intermission. The first half was marred by whistles as officials called a combined 25 fouls and the teams shot 37 free throws. The Gators went to the locker down 42-37, having surrendered a six-point run to end the period with three of their front line players (leading scorer Tre Mann, Appleby and Lewis) sitting a good portion with two fouls. White wasn't going to risk either getting a third in a foul-happy game.
The goal of the second half was play through calls.
"We had to re-set," said Locke, who went 5-for-10 from the floor, made four of his seven long balls and also grabbed five rebounds over 27 minutes. "We had our coaches on the sideline just telling us to continue to stay confident the whole game. That's pretty much what it was. We all came together. We believed we could score, and we did."
