Todd Golden raves about physicality of Florida, matching up with Houston

Going into the NCAA Tournament championship game on Monday night, much of the talk was about how Houston might be able to slow down Florida‘s offense. In particular, Walter Clayton.

The Cougars managed to do that early on, frustrating Clayton and keeping him without a basket for the first 32 minutes of the game. It wasn’t enough.

As coach Todd Golden explained, that’s who Florida is. Take one thing away and another one shows up to make up the difference.

“We’ve gotten a lot of credit for our offense because we’ve been so explosive all year, been one of if not the top two offenses in America all year,” Golden said after the game. “We’ve been a top 10 defense all year also. We’ve been able to stand up against really good offensive teams and find a way to get stops.”

Florida finally began to wear on Houston a little bit after surviving the first half mostly intact. It can thank guard Will Richard for that, as Richard provided the only consistent offense in the early going to keep the game close.

Then, when it mattered, Florida buckled down defensively. Houston stopped getting easy looks.

“I thought Houston got the better of us in the first half,” Golden said. “It was really just a disparity in the turnover count. We had nine, I think they had two in the first half. As I look here, we had four in the second, they had seven. Our defense won us the game tonight. We got nine straight stops in the middle of the second half.”

Florida’s physicality was a point of pride, too. As the game wore on, it seemed that Florida was the team winning more of the 50-50 balls.

And once the offense finally kicked into gear enough to gain a lead, the Gators didn’t look back. It was lockdown mode.

“We held them scoreless the last 2:20,” Golden pointed out. “Walter, great closeout, and (Alex Condon), great hustle play to win the game. That’s what made this team special all year, that we can win different ways, and we showed that again tonight.”

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