By Ken Cross
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Florida guard Walter Clayton, Jr., continued playmaking, scoring, and leading as he tallied 27 points and the No. 13 Gators took down Virginia, 87-69, in the SEC/ACC Challenge in Gainesville.
This was Florida’s ninth consecutive win to start the season and that feat hasn’t occurred since 2007 when the Gators posted back-to-back national championships.
Clayton has been En fuego for the Gators all season, but over his last three games, he has scored 22.3 points and made 14 three-point field goals. He hit two threes late in the first half and scored seven points in a 9-2 Gators run early in the second half as a pair of layups and a three gave Florida a 48-41 lead with 16:01 remaining.
“Just keep shooting; all of them are not going to go in,” Clayton acknowledged as his antidote for his early shooting struggles where he was 1-of-5 from the field over the first 15 minutes. “My teammates told me to keep shooting.”
Golden explained how Clayton and Alex Condon formed an inside-outside attack which was impossible for Virginia to even neutralize.
“Obviously some good individual performances,” Golden explained. “I thought Walt was fantastic… Makes me a better coach. I thought ‘Condo’ was really efficient on the block.”
Virginia took advantage of the Gators’ lack of aggression on defense on the perimeter and took a 16-7 lead, just five minutes into the game.
“Five or six minutes into the game, we weren’t playing as well as we needed to,” said coach Todd Golden, who picked up his 33rd win and is in his second season as the Florida head coach. “I didn’t think we were guarding on the perimeter and didn’t rebound well enough and that allowed us to have a nine-point deficit early on.”
Trailing Virginia, 20-14, with 13:02 remaining in the first half, the Gators found the elixir for the lack of early momentum as Florida’s defense and rebounding ratcheted to a higher level. Florida hit a 15-0 run over the next 7:09 as the defense pounced on the Cavaliers which forced them to go 0-4 from the field with five turnovers.
“Pressure on the defensive end was something we emphasized quite a bit over the last two days and we didn’t guard the three-point line early and I thought … it definitely bothered me and kept us at bay,” Golden explained.
Clayton has played at an all-America level by leading the Gators in scoring at 18.4 points with 3.8 assists and 3.2 rebounds. He controlled the perimeter on both ends of the floor in his 34 minutes on Wednesday evening.
He is always at the forefront in Florida’s ability to record double-digit runs in a quick manner. Golden explained the 15-0 run the Gators have repeatedly shown that ability to go on long-distance runs.
“In the Wichita game, we had a 27-0 run,” he said. “Tonight, I think it was 15-0, run. I think we have had double-digit-to-0 runs in all of our games. I think it speaks to the depth of our team and efficiency we play offense with and the way we are getting better on the defensive end.”
Alex Condon recorded 19 points and eight rebounds while Alijah Martin posted 16 and Denzel Aberdeen netted 12 as four Gators hit double figures.
Virginia’s Ryan Saunders led the Cavaliers with 19 points and Isaac McKneely added 12.
The Post-Man: Australian native Alex Condon has become more and more aggressive in the post as he leads the Gators with 7.0 boards per night as the team picks up 43 per game with a (+10) rebound advantage.
He is a tough matchup as a shooter in shooting 58.7 percent per game while developing his three-ball.
“I think as a team, we do a little bit better on the glass,” Condon said as Virginia outrebounded the Gators, 34-30. “Coach told us we were (-4) on the glass so rebounding is a strength of ours so we had to do that, going forward.”
Condon scored eight of his points inside the 3:06 mark to seal the Florida win.
Gators’ Depth Once Again A Factor: Aberdeen has made himself into a solid playmaker and leader as he joins Clayton, Will Richard, and Alijah Martin in a major perimeter rotation.
He scored 12 points as he made two threes in 17 minutes.
Aberdeen came in off the bench and scored eight points over the 15-0 stretch when he netted a pair of triples from the left wing and right baseline.
Perhaps Aberdeen’s eye-opener in the first half came after the run where he scored on a breakaway dunk off of a steal to give the Gators a 37-28 lead with 3:06 remaining in the first half.
“Just being able to shoot, my teammates found me in the right spots,” said Aberdeen. “Early on they got on a run and at the timeout, we came in and played defense and rebounded.”
He had 18 points in 20 minutes in the SEC Tournament win over Texas A&M and played double digits in minutes in the Gators’ last four games.
“Everyone saw at the end of last year what he is capable of and the fact that he has been able to do it more consistently has allowed our team to be better,” Golden explained.
Wielding a Sharper Sword: The Cavaliers were exploited by the depth and aggression of Tennessee and St. John’s in earlier tournament games in the Bahamas.
Wednesday evening, they started with more tempo and aggression in an early 13-4 lead which was at 20-14 midway through the first half. McKneely nailed two of Virginia’s four threes over that early stretch.
The more aggressive offensive approach was a positive early for the Cavaliers.
“That defense picked up,” interim-head coach Ron Sanchez said of the 15-0 Florida run. “They got offensive rebounds. Overall, I think we played a really good first half of basketball. We went on a little drought.”