It has been an epic turnaround for Florida basketball since mid-January when many were worried that the Gators would stumble to another NCAA Tournament-less campaign. However, Todd Golden’s team had other plans, running off a streak of 10 wins in 13 tries — including a blowout of the Alabama Crimson Tide inside the O’Connell Center on Tuesday, 105-87.
Florida got a balanced performance from its lineup with five players finishing with double-digit points, led by Will Richard’s 23 along with five rebounds and two steals. Walter Clayton Jr. (22), Zyon Pullin (19), Tyrese Samuel (19) and Alex Condon (10) also finished in double digits for the Orange and Blue.
After the game, a triumvirate of top Florida performers spoke with the sports media to give their respective takes on the monumental victory. Here is what Richard, Clayton and Samuel had to offer in the postgame scrum.
RICHARD: “Start off by thanking the student section, I mean, it was special in there today. Not even just the students but everybody else in there, so want to start off by thanking them and showing that amount of support.”
SAMUEL: “Yes sir, best crowd in the country. They came out every game, homecourt advantage, we won, what, 14? 14-1? At home, that says a lot, so thank you to everyone that always come out to these games.”
CLAYTON: “Appreciate y’all.”
I think it mean a lot. You know, obviously being at home, you want to play your best, and I think that just shows us, it shows ourselves what we’re capable of. I feel like we did our job, a lot of people did their job on defense tonight, you know, that’s a great offensive team so felt like we did a great job on that end of the floor, and that just like, we need to be able to take that on the road with us, showing ourselves we’re capable of that at home and being able to do that on the road.
Yeah it was definitely important, I mean last time we played we were up and they hit some key threes that got them back in the game, so we knew to limit their threes would benefit us down the road.
Well, it was my second one, obviously, I’ve been here for one year but I felt the love going out there. I’m happy that I came to Florida, I feel embraced, and yeah like I’m just appreciative of being here, and I can’t really say much else.
It means a lot, because I don’t think I’ve ever won on Senior Night all my four years. Actually, that’s a lie. Senior Night’s always an emotional night, so people get caught up in their feelings, but we won today so that’s all that matters.
Very important, we were minus-10 on the glass at their place, so blocking out, Coach definitely made that an emphasis. Detain your man and get rebounds.
Big momentum changer. We got to go out there on Saturday and play a good Vandy team, beat them and then it’ll give us even more momentum going into the SEC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament as well.
I think we as a team, me included, we need to be better at just bringing the home energy to other people’s places. I think that’s a big part of, you know, we feed off the energy here from all our fans. So whenever we go on the road and we don’t have that many fans, we need to create our own energy, feed off that.
I don’t think we let ourselves off the hook. I feel like we can get lazy once we get up on a team, so for us it was just staying disciplined, everybody staying on their assignments, stuff like that, rebounding, finishing possessions, and just keep doing what we do on offense.
It’s great, they play hard every day. Every game it shows that they be going on the glass, they have like 10 rebounds amongst each other every game, even if they don’t play that much, they rebound hard. It helped us, it helped us, because I only had like four whatever the case is, so having them do that is great.
Very, very close. We go out to eat a lot, we do a lot of things together, so we are very selfless, so, yeah we’re really close.
RICHARD: “I agree with everything he just said.”
SAMUEL: “Oh yeah, most definitely. I feel like that’s one of the main points of our team, that we can’t finish out games, but today showed that we’re able to, and we’ve got to just continue with that trend.”
CLAYTON: “Kind of what he said, it’s definitely not a good feeling letting a team come back on you, so kind of like Will said, I think it’s a mental standpoint for us, you know, we’ve just got to be mentally tough. Go up 10, wherever you’re playing at and just keep your foot on the gas, you can’t let up.”
Yeah, oh for sure, you can definitely tell it’s a different energy with this team, this environment and everything. That was one of the reasons I came here, to help get Florida back to where it was, and we’re doing the right thing, so.
For sure. I think every young athlete wants to play in front of a crowd like this and win by that much, so it’s definitely huge.
CLAYTON: “It definitely shows we came a long way. ‘Rese, great job from the free-throw line.”
SAMUEL: “Hey man I appreciate you guys, man I appreciate you guys man.”
CLAYTON: “Nah you know, I know we had some free throw issues at the beginning of the year, even me myself included, I was missing some free throws, so just in that area, and like I said, defensively, I think we did a good job tonight just following the gameplan, everybody doing their assignments, so I think we definitely showed a lot of growth.”
Florida wraps up its regular-season schedule on Saturday, March 9, in Nashville as the Gators travel for a rematch with the Vanderbilt Commodores. Tipoff is slated for 4:30 p.m. ET and the game will be broadcast on the SEC Network.
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