It doesn't take long for KeVaughn Allen to find his shooting stroke.
"He’s like a microwave," redshirt senior forward Dorian Finney-Smith said. "He gets a couple in, he’s going to start hitting."
The freshman shot 7-of-13 from the field in Tuesday’s road win over Georgia, including 4-of-9 from three-point range, and finished with a game-high 19 points.
At a point in the season when Florida (17-9, 8-5 Southeastern Conference) is struggling to find any flow on offense, Allen has kept the Gators afloat.
He has impressed Florida's coaches all season while scoring 11.9 points per game, second only to Finney-Smith, but coach Mike White said Allen has come on even stronger over the past six or seven weeks.
Against the Bulldogs, White said Allen was fantastic, and that he sees his confidence growing game by game.
"I haven’t said anything different lately. It’s all KeVaughn," White said.
"If there’s one thing we say to him, if there’s one word, if you ask KeVaughn right now, 'what does the staff, what do your teammates tell you every single day?' He would say aggressive. To be aggressive."
Since the Gators beat then-No. 9 West Virginia on Jan. 30, UF’s offense has hit a lull.
In the five games since, in which Florida is 3-2, the team has shot 40.1 percent from the field, 25.2 percent from beyond the arc and 67.7 percent from the free-throw line.
Over that same span, Allen has been near the top of the team’s averages, shooting 42.2 percent from the field, 32 percent from three, 72.2 percent from the charity stripe and averaging 11.8 points per game.
No, not numbers worthy of the Wayman Tisdale Award for national freshman of the year, but certainly worthy of the trust and confidence of his teammates and coaches.
"He did a great job stepping up and making tough shots," Finney-Smith said of Allen's performance against Georgia.
"Sometimes, he’ll turn down shots. He’ll turn down the easy one and shoot a pull-up or something like that, but he’s still learning. He’s getting better throughout the year."
Florida will hope to get another productive game from Allen on Saturday when the Gators travel to Columbia, South Carolina, to face the Gamecocks (21-5, 8-5 SEC) at noon.
South Carolina started the season 15-0, but has gone 6-5 since, dropping its last two games to Kentucky and Missouri.
Michael Carrera leads the Gamecocks with 14.6 points per game, and the team averages 29.5 free-throw attempts per contest. That's good for the second-most in the country.
Florida has won seven straight meetings against Carolina, including a 72-68 comeback win last season capped off by two last-second Eli Carter free throws.
While White said he does consider Florida a "really good defensive team," the Gators’ offense doesn’t have much room to get worse.
"We have to find other ways to score, other than jacking a ton of threes. We have to turn turnovers into transition offense and stay on the offensive glass," White said.
"We are what we are. We’re a good team, but we’re offensively challenged at times."
Contact Alex Maminakis at amaminakis@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @alexmaminakis.
UF guard KeVaughn Allen takes a shot during Florida's 61-55 loss to Alabama on Feb. 13, 2016, in the O'Connell Center.
