Vernon Macklin’s regular-season debut for Florida couldn’t have started much worse.
In the first 54 seconds of Sunday’s game, he had an early layup blocked against the backboard, committed an over-the-back foul and he was subbed out for sophomore Kenny Kadji a little more than two minutes into the first half.
After UF coach Billy Donovan reminded the 6-foot-10 junior center to relax and not try to do too much, Macklin returned to the floor and went on to finish with 13 points, eight rebounds and three blocks in UF’s 74-46 season-opening win against Stetson in the O’Connell Center.
Macklin struggled down low against outsized opponents in the Gators’ two exhibition games, but he had a meeting with Donovan earlier in the week to talk about some of the things that were bothering him.
Donovan texted Macklin and invited him to watch film, and the two talked about the outside pressure of the center being the team’s savior in the post and the added suspense of not having played a regular-season game since the 2007-08 season.
“I just had to relax,” Macklin said. “I was trying to go out there and try to do too much instead of relaxing. Once I sat back and relaxed, I felt better.”
The resulting tension had Macklin thinking too much on the court, which Donovan said was even visible in the way Macklin stood.
“He’s a great athlete when his knees are bent and he’s ready to go, and he’s an average athlete and average player when his knees are straight up and down,” Donovan said. “He can control all the things that are going to make him a good player and help our team.”
Joining Macklin in the starting frontcourt, power forward Alex Tyus led the team with 13 rebounds, 10 of them on the defensive end, and added 12 points for the sixth double-double of his career.
Forward Chandler Parsons came off the bench to score a team-high 14 points. His final 3 points, which came with 33 seconds left in the game, kept Florida’s 580-game streak with at least one 3-pointer alive.
“I honestly had no idea ‘til I walked in the locker room and (UF athletics director) Jeremy Foley told me about it,” Parsons said. “I noticed at first that it got really loud, but I’m honored to keep the streak alive.”
Parsons’ streak-saving three came after UF missed its first 12 from beyond the arc, putting the team’s 3-point percentage at 7.7 percent, a far cry from the its 52.5-percent shooting from the field and 11-for-15 performance from the free throw line.
“We had a pretty good opportunity to go 0-fer from the game,” Donovan said about his team’s poor outside shooting. “Generally, when you struggle like that behind the 3-point line, you have that many turnovers and there’s no flow offensively, it can really carry over to the defensive end of the floor.”
But the Gators’ defense didn’t struggle at all against the Hatters, holding them to only nine points in the game’s opening 17 minutes and 28.6 percent shooting for the game. UF used its full-court press early and often, forcing 18 turnovers, nine of which came in the first half.
“We were able to force them to go deep into the shot clock, didn’t really give up any easy shots coming out of the press and didn’t give up a lot of easy baskets early in transition,” Donovan said.
