No. 1 Florida earned a school-record 27th win on the season Saturday night with a 79-61 victory over LSU in the O’Connell Center.
Dorian Finney-Smith scored a team-high 16 points on 5-of-10 shooting, including 4 of 8 from three-point range.
The redshirt sophomore was 1 of 23 from downtown before Tuesday night’s win over Vanderbilt but is since 7 of 14.
“My teammates . . . stay on my back, telling me to keep shooting,” the redshirt sophomore forward said. “During the game, I turned one down and everybody on the bench yelled, ‘Let (Finney-Smith) shoot it.’”
The Gators (27-2, 16-0 Southeastern Conference) sunk a season-high 13 threes Saturday against the Tigers (17-11, 8-8 SEC), including nine in the first half.
In addition to Finney-Smith, Michael Frazier II, Scottie Wilbekin and Casey Prather finished with double-digit scoring nights.
In his first game since Kentucky, Kasey Hill finished the night with four points on 2-of-four shooting along with five assists and two turnovers.
Despite turning the ball over 13 times, Florida sunk enough of its shots and shut down LSU on the other end of the floor to overcome the sloppy play.
The Gators, who shot 57.4 percent from the floor, had their most efficient shooting night since knocking down 62 percent of their shots in a win over Alabama on Feb. 8.
However coach Billy Donovan said with two more SEC regular season games to go, the team can’t afford any distractions like rankings and records.
Having clinched the SEC outright after Arkansas defeated Kentucky on Thursday night, Florida has locked up the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament. However, the Gators did not cut down the nets Saturday after defeating the Tigers.
“I think that there is still a lot of the season left for us – I didn’t want any distractions,” Donovan said. “I trust the four seniors and they didn’t want to do it and I didn’t want to either. There’s a lot in front of our team and a lot we still need to play for. We just want to close out the rest of the season as best we can.”
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Dorian Finney-Smith scans the court during Florida's 79-61 win against LSU on Saturday in the O'Connell Center. Finney-Smith scored a team-high 16 points in the Gators' win over the Tigers.
