Florida’s sophomore center Micah Handlogten is coming off one of his better games of the 2023-2024 season against Auburn. While the North Carolina native only had four points, he tallied five blocks and three steals in the Gators’ win over the Tigers on Saturday evening.
“Even though he produced really well against Georgia – 23 and 17 – I really thought his most impactful game, in terms of winning, might have been Saturday,” Head Coach Todd Golden said on Handlogten’s performance against Auburn.
Handlogten’s plus-minus against Auburn was 18, the second highest on the Gators in the contest (Walter Clayton, 19).
“He played so hard,” Golden added. “One of the areas I challenged him before the game was with his physicality. I told him, ‘These guys are not going to back down. They’re going to try to hit you every chance they get.’ To his credit, I thought it was by far his most physical game. He set the tone. And to do that with Johni, Jaylen Williams and Dylan Cardwell — that great frontcourt – that’s a huge challenge. I thought he ran to the fight instead of running away from it. He defensively, changed the game in the first half.”
An improvement in physicality is something that the 7’1, 235-pound center has been seeking since the start of the season.
“I’d say that’s definitely the new standard for me,” Handlogten told the media on Friday. “Coach Golden before that game, he challenged me. He literally said, ‘I want you to play as physical as you can. Go into this game and see how that works.’ So I went in there, did that and obviously it paid off. I would say that’s the new standard for me.”
Handlogten’s five blocked shots against Auburn marked his season high and accounted for 25% of his blocks on the 2023-24 season.
“I would say that I finally started coming into my own with the timing aspect,” Handlogten said on shot blocking. “I had it last year, but it was something I was struggling with earlier this year, and I would say that I’m starting to get the hang of it again. A lot of it is confidence, like having the confidence to go up there to block a dunk because you’re putting pretty much everything on the line when you do that. You’re either going to block it or you’re getting dunked on. You have to have the confidence to go and know that you’re going to be the one who’s going to be successful.”
Handlogten was quite the shot blocker a season ago at Marshall, totaling 75 blocks in the 2022-23 season including four games of 5+ blocked shots and a career high of six against Akron.
Florida is currently the No.2 ranked offensive rebounding team in the country, which Handlogten has played a large role in this season. 78 of Handlogten’s 161 rebounds (48.4%) have come on the offensive glass, many of which were rebound putbacks. Handlogten is seemingly always in the right place at the right time.
“I wouldn’t say it surprised me, I knew what I was capable of,” Handlogten said on his success with tip-in buckets. “It’s always been kind of my game. I’ve known how to tip the ball around, get it to where I can get either the possession of it or get it to go in the basket, this is something I was successful with last year, something I was really good at in high school so I think that it’s just bringing it up a level, like I said before, confidence so if you go up there with confidence you’re going to get that ball.”
“It’s something I don’t think you can really teach, just something that’s like, if you can read it, you can read it, you can’t, you can’t. I was blessed with the ability to be able to read those,” Handlogten said on the timing. “It’s just something you have. It’s something that God blessed me with and I can just only use it to my advantage.”
Handlogten is averaging 6.9 points, 7.7 rebounds, and one block per game across 21 games. Handlogten holds a 67% shooting percentage and ranks 24th in the country in offensive rating, according to KenPom. Handlogten ranks 3rd in the country in offensive rebounding percentage, hauling in 18.8% of his opportunities.
The Florida Gators are set to take on LSU on February 13th at 8:00 PM.