Florida Gators stay hot with win over Missouri

The Florida Gators basketball team never let off the gas Thursday night against Missouri. It was an all-around performance from the Gators in the 93-54 win. It was the third consecutive 30-plus point win for Florida, after grabbing a 106-71 win at LSU and an 84-52 at Oklahoma last week. The Gators won three straight games by at least 30 just two other times in school history.
With a huge distraction hanging over the team’s head all week, it was uncertain whether or not the Gators would come out prepared for a Missouri team that had lost its last 12 games. Kentucky was a forbidden word at practices this week, but there was no way around it, Saturday’s game would still be in the back of everyone’s minds. Florida showed some maturity in handling Missouri with ease, and it did so from the start, coming away with points in each of its first nine possessions.
“I don’t know that we’ve started one better this year,” said Mike White. “Our focus was really good from the jump, with the big distraction, of course, of Saturday. I was really proud of the effort, the mental focus, the maturity. We continue to show, or to take baby steps, in terms of our overall maturation. These guys have been asked all week about the game on Saturday, by their classmates every day and by people they see in Gainesville. They go to class on Monday and our guys are being asked for tickets for the Kentucky game, and it’s been all week, ‘Guys, we’ve got a big one Thursday night’. I think our guys embraced that. We got better tonight. We defended better than we have all year at home, so I’m proud of our maturity and our focus.”
By far, the MVP of the night was Chris Chiozza, who came away with his first career triple-double. He finished with 12 points, 12 rebounds, and 10 assists on the night to become the first Florida player to get a triple-double since 2009 and the first player in the nation to do so off the bench since 2008.
“Chris was amazing,” White said. “It was his best game, obviously, as a Florida Gator. He’s kind of been an x-factor, if you think about it, in these last three. He got us off to a great start at LSU with the way that he shot the basketball early, played well at Oklahoma, played incredibly well tonight. I’m happy for him, happy for him, because there’s been games that he probably deserved a few more minutes and he’s just kinda stayed the course, continued to work. Boy, we’ll take a triple-double from him every night.”
It has been an up and down year for Chiozza, so the career night was a very special experience for him, his teammates, and the fans. It came down to the final minute of the game for him to get the 10th assist. The fans were yelling for players to shoot every time Chiozza gave them a pass.
Devin Robinson told Chiozza to give him the ball and he would get him the final assist he needed. Chiozza put his faith in the hands of Robinson, and he fulfilled his promise, draining a three with 31 seconds to go in the game. The crowd and the bench went into a roar.
“The crowd made it a little bit special for him, of course,” said White. “Then, for his teammates to want it that bad for him tells me a couple things. One, they shouldn’t have their focus on a triple-double and guys’ stats, but two, that they’re happy for him. Again, we have a group that continues to grow closer together. We hit bumps in the road like everybody else, but they were rooting for each other tonight. I thought that the culture of our bench was very good tonight.”
Something has changed in this team over the last three games. Florida is less than two weeks removed from two brutal back-to-back losses to South Carolina and Vanderbilt. Now, the Gators are on a three-game winning streak and arguably playing the best basketball they have played all season.
“We definitely redirected ourselves and got more focused, and focusing on what we need to do as a team and as our culture builds every day,” said junior forward Robinson. “We had a team meeting after the Vandy game and everybody put everything on the table, so it worked out for the better so far and we’ve just gotta keep rolling.”
As Robinson said, Florida has to keep this confidence and newfound intensity rolling. White said the Missouri game was the closest the Gators have come to putting a full 40 minutes together on defense this season, and they will need to play at the same level on Saturday against Kentucky’s high-powered offense.
It won’t be easy preparing for a top-10 team in such a short time frame, but the Gators are excited for the challenge. “They’re a really good program, a really good team, of course,” said White. “Obviously, you wish you had two weeks to prepare for them, as opposed to 46 hours. That said, our guys will be geeked up. I’m concerned about our rest and our focus. We’ve got to condense a lot into a short period of time. I’m not concerned at all about our energy level, our intensity level. We’ll come out and be very energetic, as our crowd will be.”