Looking to avoid getting trapped in a slowed-down, half-court game, the Gators returned to the full-court pressure that brought them success earlier this season.
After a back-and-forth start, Florida (15-5, 4-2 Southeastern Conference) used its athleticism and full-court press to pull away from Georgia (9-9, 1-4 SEC) late in the first half and never looked back, sparking a 87-71 rout of the Bulldogs in the O’Connell Center on Wednesday.
Ahead 30-26 with 3:26 left in the first half, the Gators came out and forced back-to-back turnovers in their press to key a 12-5 run.
“The press was big. It gave us an early lead,” freshman guard Kenny Boynton said. “If we can play like that every game, we can beat any team.”
Power forward Alex Tyus scored a team-high 23 points, Boynton added 21 and point guard Erving Walker notched his first career double-double with 21 points and 10 assists to propel UF to its fourth-straight SEC win.
The Gators had not won four consecutive conference games since 2007.
Georgia shot 59.6 percent from the field and 57.1 percent from beyond the arc, but UF scored 33 points off 19 UGA turnovers, setting the pace of the game and not allowing the Bulldogs to settle into a halfcourt offense.
“I felt that we were really going to need to get the game going up and down, try to make our press a little bit more of a factor than it has been the last couple games,” UF coach Billy Donovan said.
Georgia jumped out to an early lead, scoring the game’s first four points and holding that advantage until 12:47 remained in the first half, when UF went ahead 12-11 on a layup by junior center Vernon Macklin.
UGA forward Trey Thompkins and guard Ricky McPhee led the Bulldogs with 24 and 21 points, respectively, and combined to miss just five shots from the field.
With a force down low like Thompkins and a sharpshooting guard like McPhee, Walker said the team’s focus in practice this week was forcing turnovers and getting out in transition — something UF was unable to do against South Carolina on Saturday.
“Since we started preparing for Georgia, we wanted to go up and down,” Walker said. “Even if we made a few mistakes, we wanted to just keep going because we know in the end we wanted to make fatigue a factor.”
Walker led UF in the first half with 14 points, and Tyus and Boynton scored 15 second-half points apiece, giving the Gators three 20-point scorers for the first time since 2007.
“We need scoring from everybody,” Walker said. “We look at Kenny and Alex as two of our main scorers. As you can see tonight, they’re playing really well, and we need that from them.”
Tyus was especially dominant after intermission, scoring seven straight points in a little more than a minute, and the junior finished just two points shy of his career high. Tyus has scored in double-digits in 11 straight games.
“I think he’s figuring out how hard he’s got to play and the aggressiveness that he needs to play with,” Donovan said. “He’s really starting to understand what goes into this, and it’s good to see him have some of the success that he’s had this year.”
