At no point on Tuesday night was the final outcome between Florida and South Carolina in doubt. Even when the Gators struggled to score, their defense locked down the Gamecocks and prevented any type of run from South Carolina to ever make things interesting. Florida held South Carolina to 22-58 shooting en route to a 62-point night.
One of the reasons why Florida didn’t repeat its 47-point win from the first time the two teams met was their inability to hang onto the ball, but Todd Golden wasn’t too concerned in the aftermath of the win.
Florida beats South Carolina to move to 20-6 on the season
One of Florida's problems during the early half of the season that tended to get masked because of poor three-point shooting was turnovers. Even now, the Gators are 194th in the country in turnovers per game.
On Tuesday, the Gators committed 14 turnovers on the night, which is part of the reason why Florida only scored 76 points. Golden touched on the turnovers after the game:
“Honestly, we had a lot of turnovers tonight, but a lot of them were kind of 50/50 plays where, if the pass is one-inch this way, it turns into a dunk. We were making what I thought were aggressive turnovers, which we'll live with in a game like tonight.”
To Golden’s point, Florida wasn’t making the same lazy turnovers that plagued the team early in the year. The Gators kept trying to push the pace and go for the killshot, but just kept being a tick off. Ultimately, any night that ends with Oliver Rioux in the game is a good night.
It will be interesting to see during the NCAA Tournament how much of a green light Florida players get to make plays versus their bread and butter of getting the ball down low and using their rebounding advantage to pull away.
The Gators are now 11-2 in SEC play with five games to play in the regular season. Florida has a 1.5-game lead on Arkansas for first place, setting up a potential showdown for the conference title on February 28 in Gainesville.