The Florida Gators, who had just played a 9:00 game on Thursday night, worked through tired legs and beat a tough Vanderbilt team on Saturday in Gainesville. It was obvious the home team was a step slow, especially in the first half as they missed a multitude of layups and point blank shots and also committed foul after foul. They shot less than 40% from the floor for the game but still managed to stay with Vandy thanks to forcing 17 turnovers with their pressing defense.

In the first half the Gators were forced to play the last five minutes with Patric Young, Eric Murphy and Brad Beal on the bench with two fouls. Beal was having a miserable first half shooting, Young had no points, and even Murphy was not shooting like he normally does. But Mike Rosario came in and gave the team a lift with 10 first half points, Scottie Wilbekin played some great defense, some of it at the power forward spot, and Erving Walker and Kenny Boynton played great as well as Will Yeguette. Despite their foul woes and many missed chippies, the Gators went into the locker room up three at the half 37-34.
“Sometimes it just takes guts,” senior point guard Erving Walker said.

“I just feel like any time during the game we’re going to make a run at some time,” said Yeguete, who had eight rebounds, three steals and a blocked shot off the bench. “Our press today helped us make that run.”

Boynton led the Gators with 18 points and Beal shook off a bad first half to end up with 16. The Gators also went 14-14 from the free throw line and had only one miss for the entire game. Free throw shooting at times has been awful for the Gators this season, so Saturday’s performance was pretty amazing.

Vandy was led by Jeffrey Taylor with 25 points. John Jenkins chipped in 15, but this was four points below his average. The Gator press really bothered Jenkins, who is a great catch and shoot three point artist, and does his best work in half court sets.
“We didn’t do a very good job of attacking their press, and it was disruptive,” Vandy coach Kevin Stallings said. “We did a poor job with our spacing and our ball-handling and it caused problems.”

“I thought the press at least got the game going up and down, and got it going to a style that was probably more conducive to us,” UF coach Billy Donovan said. “And I think because there were so many runs going back and forth by both teams, it was almost who dominated the style of play [at that time]. When it got slowed and got stagnate in the half-court, it was probably in their favor. When it got up and down, it was probably in our favor.”