When South Carolina hosted Florida nearly three weeks ago, the Gamecocks allowed their visitors to shoot 50 percent from three and steal their first road win of the season before they left town.
On Thursday night at the O’Connell Center, the Gamecocks proved to be a far less gracious defensive team.
Due to a season-low 25 percent shooting effort from three, the No. 12 Gators (18-4, 6-1 Southeastern Conference) were forced to hit the glass and clean up their misses to hold on in a 74-66 win against the Gamecocks (9-12, 1-6 SEC).
“We almost got caught because I didn’t think we had great maturity and understanding about the things you can control,” UF coach Billy Donovan said. “I told the players after the game, ‘If you can control shooting the ball, we’d never miss a shot.’”
While Donovan described the Gators’ offensive performance as woeful, Florida’s players maintained a frenetic pace on the boards whenever they did miss.
Florida’s 22 field goals on 59 shots were the second-fewest its made all season, but the team made up for it by garnering a 42-30 edge on the boards and scoring 17 second-chance points off 20 offensive rebounds.
“What won the game for us [Thursday] was that we really did a great job getting to the offensive glass,” Donovan said.
After an early barrage of three 3-pointers from Florida guards Kenny Boynton and Erving Walker built a double-digit lead just under seven minutes into the game, South Carolina clamped down its perimeter defense with an extended zone. The Gamecocks held the Gators to 1 of 13 from three in the second half.
The switch from a man-to-man defense sent the Gators’ field-goal shooting into a tailspin, but yielded plenty of chances for offensive rebounds, which freshman Brad Beal took full advantage of.
Despite going up against the SEC’s top defensive rebounding team, the 6-foot-3 Beal hauled in five of his 11 rebounds on the offensive glass and scored 17 points on 5-of-11 shooting.
“Coach got in our heads all week in practice about the (small forward, power forward and centers) going for the offensive rebound,” Beal said. “In the first half we had 14, so I really wanted to attack the glass because they weren’t blocking out.”
Beal, who leads Florida in defensive rebounds this season, had been held without an offensive board in four of his six previous SEC games.
The Gators, meanwhile, were out-rebounded as a team in four of their last five heading into Thursday.
“Me probably being on him the last two days, telling him he’s got two offensive rebounds in six games maybe had something to do with it, too,” Donovan said. “[Beal] and Erik Murphy, if you look at the SEC (schedule), Kenny Boynton has more offensive rebounds than both.”
Boynton, who finished with three rebounds, and Walker reached double-figures in scoring with 24 and 14, respectively, but no other Florida players scored more than five points.
Boynton, on a 4-of-8 performance from three, helped seal the victory and extend the Gators’ perfect home record to 12-0 with five of his game-high eight free throws in the final 1:09.
“In my freshman year, we kind of let some home wins slip away,” Boynton said. “We learned from those and we just got to keep moving forward.”
Contact John Boothe at jboothe@alligator.org.
Florida freshman guard Brad Beal scored 17 points and grabbed 11 rebounds Thursday in the Gators’ 74-66 win against South Carolina.
