Things stayed competitive for a bit between Florida and Southern Illinois, but then [autotag]Alijah Martin[/autotag] got hot and led the Gators to a 93-68 victory over the Salukis Friday night.
Martin led all scorers with 32 points and nearly posted a double-double with nine rebounds. [autotag]Thomas Haugh[/autotag] set a new career-high with 19 points, adding seven rebounds and four blocks to his tally. No other Gator finished in double figures, but Martin’s performance was more than enough to carry the team to a sixth-straight win.
Florida lost the rebound battle for the first time this season thanks to 20 offensive boards from SIU, but the Gators ended with single-digit turnovers for the second game in a row.
Once again, the Gators played worse in the second half, marking a third-straight contest with that issue; however, it was a much more dominant win than the past two games against Florida A&M and Florida State.
Career night for Alijah Martin
Martin was the sparkplug in this victory. Point totals aside, he came up big when the team needed him the most. Florida has been atrocious from three-point range all season, so Martin took things into his hands and drained eight of 13 attempts from deep.
It wasn’t the long ball that sparked the big run, though. Martin slammed a dunk home to cap off a two-possession run of explosive finishes, and the floodgates opened up from there on out.
Perhaps even more encouraging is that Martin wasn’t looking to explode in the points column. When he had a chance to tie his career high of 34 from under the rim, he made the extra pass to Haugh to give him a new career high instead. It’s that kind of unselfishness that’s going to win Florida games — of course, dropping 32 points helps too.
Martin also led the team in rebounds (9) and assists (5), so he’s a guy who can do it all for the Gators at the “3” position. Talk about a breakout performance.
Haugh makes a strong argument to start
Taking nothing away from [autotag]Rueben Chinyelu[/autotag], who starts alongside [autotag]Alex Condon[/autotag] in Florida’s frontcourt, [autotag]Thomas Haugh[/autotag] deserves to see the court more often.
He got some extra minutes with [autotag]Sam Alexis[/autotag] out against Florida A&M and led all of Florida’s big men with 25 minutes tonight. [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag] does a great job rotating his forward in and out, but Chinyelu doesn’t have the stamina to stay out there long, forcing Haugh into starter minutes.
Perhaps it would be wise to start with Haugh on the court alongside Condon, who is one of his best friends. There’s untapped chemistry there, and Alexis and Chinyelu would remain a formidable duo off the bench. There is an element of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it here, but it’s hard to deny the impact Haugh has made on the court over the past week.
He might be the team’s best defensive big and he routinely fights for boards that Condon isn’t always positioned for.
Great assist-to-turnover ratio
The mark of a good basketball team is the assist-to-turnover ratio, and Florida posted a season-high 25 assists while turning the ball over a season-low six times. That’s 4.67 assists per turnover, which would dwarf Utah State’s NCAA-leading 2.41 ratio coming into tonight’s games.
Florida isn’t going to play FAMU and SIU every week, but it’s a really positive sign to see the Gators clean up the turnover problems after giving the ball away 19 times to Florida State just a week ago.
Clayton (25 assists, 14 turnovers) and Martin (21 and 10) are the two main ball distributors on the roster, but Condon (12 and 5) has some court vision too. [autotag]Alex Klavzar[/autotag] could also help in that statistical category with five assists and just one turnover through three games.
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