Florida Basketball: Gators gain momentum and squash the Spiders

Coming off some disappointing outings, Florida basketball took a trip down to Sunrise to take part in the Orange Bowl Basketball Classic to face the Richmond Spiders.

Learning their lesson from earlier in the week, Florida got out to an early lead and never looked back.

Florida Basketball: Flip the script

Against Merrimack, Florida fell into a double-digit hole early before clawing their way back and eventually showcasing their dominance in the second half.

Florida basketball got the memo not to do that against Richmond and was quickly out to an 18-10, thanks in part to seven of those points coming from Tyrese Samuel.

Richmond was able to claw it back to within one before the Gators pulled back away and had an 11-point lead after a Riley Kugel three-point play.

From there, the game turned into a tug-of-war track meet. Richmond was able to shoot 50% from the field in the second half, including 6 of 11 from three in the half to put up 46 second-half points. While Florida's shooting from the field wasn't quite as lethal, Florida still shot 46% in the second half and made four three-point attempts.

What enabled Florida basketball to keep Richmond at bay was their free throw shooting in the second half. While the Gators are 285th in the nation in free throw shooting, they were able to make 15 of 19 from the charity stripe in the second half.

The Spiders were as close as seven points with 7:19 to play, but Florida eventually ballooned the lead to 16 points with with 50 seconds to play. Some garbage time field goals from Richmond made the final score 87-76.

Will Richard led the way for the Gators with 21 points. Samuel had 18 points on the afternoon and 14 rebounds. Walter Clayton had six assists.

Next up for the Gators is a trip to Lakeland to take on East Carolina.