The Florida Gators improved to 22-6 (13-2 SEC) on the season following their 84-71 win at Texas on Wednesday night.
Gator Country provides postgame quotes from head coach Todd Golden, junior forward Alex Condon, and sophomore guard Boogie Fland.
Opening Statement:
“Incredibly proud of our group. I thought we did a great job being resilient tonight. Credit to Texas. They’re an incredibly tough club. I think they’re really good. The type of team that can make a deep run in March. They’ve done a really good job over the course of the year, similar to how I think we have, of figuring out their personnel and figuring out how they play together. They’ve got a really a lot of really nice pieces. They play with a lot of purpose and for a majority of the game, I thought they were the tougher team. But again, credit to our guys down the stretch. I thought the last 12 minutes of the game, we did a really good job of pushing through and kind of wearing them down a little bit. And we just did a much better job defensively than the second half, which opened up transition for us. Did a much better job taking care of the basketball, which is a huge key for us. One area where we were deficient was on the defensive glass in the second half, but again, credit to them. I thought Matas (Vokietaitis) was really tough to keep off the glass. (Dailyn) Swain did a good job. I think (Chendall) Weaver is a really big-time winning player. Didn’t score, but always gets in there and gets second chances and guards really hard. The type of guy you want to have on your team. So, again, a really good basketball game. I thought we did a good job down the stretch of extending the lead and not giving them any hope or any belief in the last two minutes that they’d come back, and this is a huge win for us going down stretch in conference play.”
On the second-half defense:
“From a defensive standpoint, I thought Texas did a really good job in the first half of making individual plays one on one. Tramon Mark was a problem for us in the first half. We let him get three 3s made. But, again, he was making tough step back 3s, but we weren’t contesting quite well enough and he got comfortable. They only had two assists for the game. They were making a lot of one-on-one plays, and that’s kind of how they play. They don’t turn it over very often, generally. And Swain and Mark and big Matas are really, really hard to guard. And they just, they outplayed us in the first half. We obviously challenged our guys pretty strongly at halftime about guarding your yard and doing a better job on the defensive end. And obviously that flipped for us. We guarded really, really well in the second half, held the 35 (percent) from the field, only let him make one 3.”
On the team’s shot-making:
“When our guards are banging shots like that, we’re going to be really tough to beat, and it allowed us to run away from them down the stretch.”
On the defense wearing Texas down:
“I thought there was a little bit of a moment where we were starting to get some steals, some runouts, and kind of hurt their spirit a little bit. I think our depth really showed up. I thought our bench did a great job. I thought Micah Handlogten had one of his best defensive games of the year. I thought we wore them down, made it a little more difficult for them to execute, and we took advantage of it. We were making a lot of shots on the stretch, also.”
Junior F/C Alex Condon
On another 20-point outing, his third straight:
“I’ve found a rhythm these last few games. My teammates are getting me the ball and trusting me to make the right plays. I didn’t feel like I forced anything tonight and just let the game come to me.”
Sophomore G Boogie Fland
On the defensive improvement in the second half:
“We know they’re a good offensive team. We just had to settle in and chip away at it.”