BATON ROUGE, La. — With a win over LSU on Sunday, Florida accomplished something it hadn’t since the 2006-07 season: 10 wins in the Southeastern Conference.
The No. 14 Gators (21-5, 10-2 SEC) rode a dominant first half to a 68-61 victory at LSU (10-17, 2-10 SEC) en route to the milestone.
UF coach Billy Donovan said the 10-win plateau is an indicator of how far his players have come the last four years.
“You fail to see sometimes the growth that guys have made in terms of their approach,” Donovan said. “And I’m really proud of those guys in terms of the jump they’ve made.”
But it was a lack of maturity that nearly cost the Gators the win.
UF followed an impressive 40-25 first half with a lackluster showing over the final 20 minutes, allowing the Tigers to pull within six with 4:41 remaining.
“Coach preached to us at halftime to come out with intensity, and we didn’t,” sophomore guard Kenny Boynton said.
After holding LSU to just 34.4 percent shooting in the first half, Florida allowed the Tigers to hit 51.9 percent over the final 20 minutes.
The Gators also struggled on the offensive end, as their second-half field goal percentage was less than half of the gaudy 59.4 percent they shot before the break.
“We didn’t come out with that much intensity like we should’ve come out with … and that was all on us,” senior center Vernon Macklin said. “We should’ve just come out of the locker room and thought the score was 0-0. Maybe we would’ve played harder.”
Macklin and his teammates dominated the interior in the first half, as UF’s 28 points in the paint were more than LSU scored overall.
Macklin, who recorded 12 first-half points and 16 for the game, said the Gators worked all week on establishing position close to the basket, which set them up for inside scores against a Tigers team that likes to force opponents outside.
That philosophy changed in the second half, as LSU’s switch to a zone defense put the emphasis back on Florida’s guards.
The duo of Boynton and junior Erving Walker responded by scoring 22 of Florida’s 28 second-half points. Each finished with a team-high 17 for the game, but Donovan was critical of their performance.
“Our perimeter guys got a little tentative, and we didn’t do a great job attacking the zone,” he said. “We have to do a better job of mixing in when to post feed and when to drive.”
Those struggles led to a scoreless second-half stretch from 9:01 to 3:11.
But Boynton and Walker recovered by dropping a combined eight points the rest of the way, closing out the win.
“Honestly, I wasn’t really concerned,” Boynton said. “I knew our points were going to come. We had went on so long without scoring, but it was just a matter of when.”
INJURY UPDATE: Senior forward Chandler Parsons missed Sunday’s game with a left thigh bruise suffered Feb. 12 against Tennessee when he collided with teammate Alex Tyus.
Donovan said after the game he is “concerned” with Parsons’ injury, as the senior experienced swelling during a Friday workout and was subsequently shut down by the team’s trainers.
Donovan said Thursday that Parsons was 50-50 to play against LSU, but the senior made “very, very little improvement” on Friday and Saturday.
Parsons’ status for Thursday’s game at home against Georgia remains uncertain.
“I don’t have any timeframe for him to be back,” Donovan said. “I do not expect him to be back tomorrow and definitely do not expect him back Tuesday.
