The Florida mens’ basketball team made their triumphant return to the court on Wednesday night, defeating the Vanderbilt Commodores with a final score of 91-72. The midweek matchup marks the beginning of the Gators’ conference schedule; the team cancelled the remainder of their non-conference games after losing Keyontae Johnson to a cardiac incident.
Vandy came out of the gate strong, playing competent offense and slowing down the Gators with good on-ball defense. A major factor in their early success was successfully shutting down starting Florida point guard Tre Mann, dogging him with double-teams and preventing him from making plays.
Gators head coach Mike White prepared his team well for this game, though. The offensive identity that served them so well in early games doesn’t work against better teams without Johnson at their disposal. Instead, they found their identity by playing old-school, physical basketball and limiting Vanderbilt’s opportunities.
Incredibly, center Colin Castleton was the leading scorer on either team. He scored 23 points by pounding the hoop on 11-of-13 shooting, all of those attempts coming in the paint. “Whenever they need me to do the dirty work, I’m all here for it,” said Castleton after the game. Scottie Lewis was another major factor in this game, scoring 16 points and accumulating 3 blocks.
There’s a whole lot of meat on this bone, as this team faced a whole slew of problems and won by implementing interesting solutions. Here are three things we observed during Florida’s victory over Vanderbilt.