GAINESVILLE, Fla. – As far as starts go, Florida's couldn't have been much worse Tuesday night. The Gators missed 13 of their first 14 field-goal attempts against Florida A&M.
As far as finishes go, though, the home team was much better. The Gators didn't run away from the Rattlers like most of their previous series 12 meetings, but the home team had two very good performances from a pair of starters, plus career games from a couple young backups in pulling away for an 89-68 victory at Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center.
Junior wing Will Richard scored 20 points and grabbed six rebounds, while junior point guard Walter Clayton Jr. bounced back nicely from his tough final seconds in Friday's loss to Virginia by finishing with 18 points, five assists and four rebounds. And though UF's two leading scorers, guard Riley Kugel and 7-foot-1 center Micah Handlogten combined for just two field goals and seven points, backups Denzel Aberdeen (12 points) and 6-11 Alex Condon (17) totaled 29 points and 10 rebounds between them.
It wasn't pretty. Frankly, not all that entertaining, either. But it eventually turned into a comfortable win for the Gators (2-1) and leaned into what Coach Todd Golden believes will be a defining characteristic for his second UF squad.
"The thing about this team that is going to determine how good we're going to be is just continuing to understand that it's probably going to be someone else every night, depending on who we're going up against and what they're trying to take away," Golden said. "[This] was Will's night."
Sophomore guard Denzel Aberdeen (11) totaled 19 points and 41 minutes during his entire '22-23 freshman season. He had career highs of 12 points, four rebounds and 19 minutes Tuesday.
Richard, who had just three points in the season opener against Loyola Maryland eight days earlier, hit six of his 12 shots, two of five 3-pointers and six of seven free throws. It was also a very good night for Clayton, who with the backing of his teammates moved on from the two turnovers in the final seconds of the 73-30 UVA defeat by going 5-for-10 from the floor and seven of eight from the free-throw line.
"I don't do well with losing at all, especially when I feel like I was a big part of it," said Clayton, the transfer from Iona. "My teammates around me, they've been picking me up, telling me I'm going to be all right. Obviously, I have to learn from my mistakes, so we just need to put it behind us and be better."
That certainly was the case early on. Nearly six minutes into the game, the Gators trailed 7-4 and were shooting 7.1 percent from the floor (1-for-14).
"I thought we just came out too relaxed," Richard said. "We tried to ease our way into the game, instead of coming out and being aggressive."
A mini-run of seven straight points, five from Richard, including a 3, surged UF in front. Though FAMU never led again and fell back by as many as 15 in the period, the visitors never really went away.
The Rattlers (0-3), who hit five of their last six shots of the first half (and trailed by just 10 at intermission) and four of five to start the second (to trim the Florida lead to eight), got a game-high 24 points from backup guard Love Bettis, who went 9-for-15 from the floor, three of five from distance, sank his three free throws and had four steals.
"We could have done a better job on the scouting report," Clayton said with a laugh.
Junior guard Walter Clayton Jr. (1) attacked FAMU to make five of his 10 shots and get to free-throw line eight times on his way to a season-high 18 points.
Maybe so, but Bettis, a junior-college transfer with no FAMU minutes on tape, wasn't even on the scouting report because he missed the Rattlers' first two games, blowout losses at Creighton and Nebraska, due to disciplinary reasons.
With about six minutes to play, the Gators had a cushy 17-point lead, but the Rattlers were on a 5-for-5 streak and shooting 64 percent in the second half.
"We just got to be on the same page. We need to talk more. We need to communicate more," Clayton said. "Some of them were tough shots, but we gave up a lot of open looks, so we just got to fix that."
Offensively, the Gators shot 47.6 percent for the game, including nearly 59 percent after halftime. Condon, the freshman, was especially active off the bench – UF's reserves scored 35 points after just four against Virginia – in knocking down six of his eight shots, with two made 3-pointers on three attempts. His activity, body language and productivity were a lot different than four nights earlier in Charlotte, N.C. All but one of his 17 points came after intermission.
"I just felt like I was falling back into the Virginia game in the first half and I was like, 'Nah, screw this! I'm not doing this again,' " Condon said through his Australian accent. "So in the second half, I just came out more aggressive."
For the most part, so did the Gators on the whole. It wasn't great by any stretch, but it was plenty good enough to beat the Rattlers.
It'll have to be a lot better to beat a run of four power-conference opponents over the next 10 days, starting with Friday night's home date against rival Florida State when the Gators will have grad-transfer point guard Zyon Pullin eligible and all but certainly in the starting lineup. Pullin, who starred the last four years at California-Riverside, had to sit out the season's first three games because he played three games in the non-sanctioned Portsmouth Invitational during his time in the NBA draft evaluation process. The Gators expect to a far more complete team, on both ends, with Pullin running the show.
Certainly more complete than they mostly were against the Rattlers.
"It will be a tricky one to evaluate," Golden said. "We won by 21 and you're not going to be too upset about a 20-point win. But with that said, obviously, there are a lot of areas we could have played better."
