By Kenneth Cross
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Florida led LSU, 79-78, with inside of a minute to play and once again, guard Zyon Pullin left his mark on the game in a noteworthy manner as his defensive effort helped Gators edge the Tigers, 82-80.
LSU guard Jalen Cook tried to orchestrate the Tigers’ offense off the dribble on the left side of the floor. Pullin reached and batted the basketball loose from Cook as Pullin dove onto the floor and took possession. Then, he picked up the ball, and threw ahead to Tyrese Samuel who fed Walter Clayton, Jr., for a layup and an 81-78 Gators lead with 20 seconds remaining.
Once again, Pullin came up big in the clutch, but this time it was on one of the top defensive plays of the season thus far.
“I thought Tyrese was going to take it, but he dishes to Walt, and made a really tough contested layup that could have been an and-1, probably, and just a winning play down the stretch by a winning player,” said Gators head coach Todd Golden.
After Gators forward Alex Condon made one of two free throws to move Florida into an 82-80 advantage, LSU advanced the basketball and Jordan Wright missed an open 8-foot shot in the lane as the buzzer sounded.
Florida led 60-40 with 15:51 remaining, but LSU gained it’s shooting touch while using both a 2-3 and a 1-3-1 zone defense as those made the Gators’ pace slower and distorted their offensive rhythm.
“They play a little bit of a weird zone,” noted Clayton. “Some teams have done it. They play like a little tandem. Sometimes they go back to a 2-3 but sometimes they stay in a 1-3-1, so it’s a little different. We just have to be better at getting the ball to the middle and making plays.”
Riley Kugel’s jump shot gave Florida a 66-50 lead with 12:08 remaining, and then both teams reacted differently on the offensive end for the rest of the game. Florida was 6-for-26 with four turnovers over that last 12:08 while LSU was 12-of-18, including a three-pointer by Tyrell Ward which tied the score at 78-78 with 1:33 remaining.
“When a team gets down, double digits or 20, they have no fear of failure at that point,” analyzed Golden. “They’re just going to play with freedom. They’re going to try to be really aggressive, driving down the middle the paint and, you know, not have any fear of failure on their threes and I feel like that’s happened.”
The Gators saw the LSU zone scheme as a deterrent to being able to finish in a stronger fashion and potentially close out the Tigers while maintaining a bigger lead.
“We scored 50 points in a half, so zone is one of the ways they’re slowing us down right now, but we’re going to get back to the drawing board and work on it and make sure that we execute so we can get out of it,” Samuel explained.
Clayton led all scorers with 21 points while Samuel had 15 and Pullin scored 14 points. Wright and Baker led LSU with 16 point each. Once again, the Gators held a large margin in rebounding as they had a 43-20 advantage while scoring 20 points off of 19 offensive boards.
The Gators moved their record to 17-7 and 7-4 in the SEC while posting a 4-1 record against SEC opponents when they have lost a second half lead of 10 or more points.