It was a tale of two halves for Florida Basketball as the Gators looked out of synch in the first half against Maryland before clamping down for a dominate second half to win 87-71 and move on to the Elite Eight to face Texas Tech.
Todd Golden gave a press conference after and these were five of his most notable comments he made after the game.
Florida Basketball: Made Their Own Mess
"And put ourselves into some predicaments and kept the game tight. Second half we did a much better job taking care of it. And put ourselves into some predicaments and kept the game tight. Second half we did a much better job taking care of it."
There is no getting around that Florida was sloppy with the ball in the first half and had this game gone south, that would have been the headline everyone would be using as to why Florida's season ended.
Overcoming Condon
"Our first half, Condon goes down. It was a couple minutes into the game. We just got out of sorts a little bit. We had to play Tommy pretty much the whole first half. He did a great job but he started getting fatigued."
To be fair, part of the issue for Florida was Alex Condon going down and Thomas Haugh having to play way more minutes than he is used to playing.
Rueben Chinyelu's Impact
"Yeah, I think that was a moment where we might have started wearing them down a little bit. We were making them chase us. Again, we were valuing the basketball so we were making them guard for the majority of the shot clock. And we were able to get some slips on the pick-and-rolls for Rueben."
When Florida started to pull away in the second half, a huge reason why was some easy dunks for Chinyelu that allowed Florida to settle down and ramp up the pressure on Maryland.
Denzel Aberdeen Has 12 Points
“Denzel was fantastic tonight. He did an incredible job. He was in there when we kind of iced, kind of from the 10-minute to 4. He gave us a great stretch, hit a big 3. I think that extended it back to 15 when they were starting to get baskets. He just played with great confidence tonight. He was fearless. He attacked for all 20 minutes he was out there. He gave us a big lift."
One of the under the radar players from Thursday was Denzel Aberdeen. After not seeing his normal minutes against UConn, Aberdeen hit big shots when needed to spread out Florida's scoring.
Urban Klavzar Is Getting Rotated Out
"We didn’t play Urb as much."
For the second straight game, Urban Klavzar came in for his normal rotation, struggled mightily, and was promptly subbed out and not seen again until mop up duty.