After winning 10 straight games by double digits, No. 7 Florida has passed a very different kind of test in its latest outing.
Off the strength of a six-point, neutral-court victory over North Carolina, the Gators will host local rival North Florida on Saturday afternoon in Gainesville, Fla.
Florida (11-0) has two more fixtures remaining on the non-conference schedule. If the Gators beat North Florida and Stetson, they will take a perfect record into their SEC opener Jan. 4 anywhere but Kentucky, which is currently No. 4 in the nation.
Tuesday at the Jumpman Invitational in Charlotte, NC, Florida led by 17 points in the first half before the Tar Heels pulled ahead with less than eight minutes left. But Gators coach Todd Golden was proud of the way his team battled to a 90-84 victory.
“Honestly, we haven’t had a game like this,” Golden said after the game. “We’ve won every game before this by double digits, and to be able to go into a game where we went back and forth in the second half, I think it’s really good for us and it’s going to help prepare us for SEC play. .”
Alijah Martin tied the game at 82 with a 3-pointer and again at 84 with two free throws. Will Richard made an offensive rebound and hit a putback to put Florida ahead in the final minute, and the Gators’ defense was closing in there.
“We know that the rest of the season will not be easy, but we are preparing for the conference and the other games we will play,” Richard told reporters. “It’s definitely good to have a little difficulty.”
Richard had a team-high 22 points on his best shooting night of the season (8-for-10 from the field). Martin scored 19 points as Florida found a way to win despite leading scorer Walter Clayton Jr. (18.5 ppg) with an off night where he shot 4-for-15 from the floor.
Florida is 10-0 all-time against North Florida (7-5), with the last meeting coming in December 2021, but that doesn’t mean the Ospreys can’t be laid off.
North Florida upset South Carolina and Georgia Tech on the road in just the first week of the season. The Ospreys have cooled off since then, losing three of their last five, but their willingness to bomb away from 3-point land makes them a ripe candidate for more upsets.
North Florida takes more 3-point shots (37.3 per game) and makes more (13.6 per game) than any team in Division I.
The Ospreys suffered a 30 percent shooting drop from last Tuesday in a road loss to UNC Asheville. But in their previous game, when they beat UNC Greensboro 89-77, coach Matthew Driscoll made sure his team had other ways to win. North Florida made 21 of 38 shots from inside the arc on the day.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, you live and die (by 3) and you do this, that and the other.’ Well, that’s not true,” Driscoll said. “… Now, I want to make 3s, I want to take threes and I want these guys to knock them down, they’re not good. But thankfully, we got layup after layup after layup.”
Josh Harris (16.4 points, 7.0 rebounds per game) and Jasai Miles (14.2, 7.7) for North Florida. The Ospreys’ most dangerous shooter is Liam Murphy, who comes off the bench and averages 12.3 ppg. Murphy has made 40 of 90 field goal attempts this season (44.4 percent), leading them in both categories.
–Field Level Media
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