What Happened
Florida junior guard Walter Clayton Jr. scored 28 points and the Gators used a second-half spurt of sensational basketball on both ends Wednesday night to run Pittsburgh out of the Barclay’s Center for an 86-71 victory in first-round action of the NIT Season Tip-Off at Brooklyn, N.Y. Clayton, the Iona transfer, returned to the city where he was 2023 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Player of the Year and put on a show. The 6-foot-2 combo hit 11 of his 17 field-goal attempts, went 6-for-8 from the 3-point line, grabbed five rebounds and dished two assists. UF forward Tyrese Samuel, the Seton Hall transfer also making a homecoming of sorts, tallied 20 points on 9-for-11 shooting and 10 rebounds, while backup center Alex Condon came off the bench for 11 points and six boards. Grad-transfer point guard Zyon Pullin, playing just his second game for the Gators, had 10 points, eight assists and just one turnover for 29 minutes. The game could not have started much worse for the Gators, who lost 7-foot-1 center Micah Handlogten to a rolled ankle 49 seconds in and quickly fell behind 7-0. The Pitt lead was 19-10 when UF awakened for a 10-1 run and the lead. The two teams went back and forth the next 11 minutes until the Gators ripped off the last eight points of the period, including a 3-pointer by freshman Tommy Haugh at the buzzer that gave Florida a 39-34 lead. Pitt, though, briefly jumped back ahead early in the second half, but a 10-2 run by the Gators, including eight from Clayton, opened a seven-point UF margin with just inside 15 minutes left. The lead swelled to as many as 15 over the ensuing nine minutes, as Florida shot 53 percent in the second half (on the way to a sterling 24 assists to just 8 turnovers), held Pitt to just 35.3 percent in the second half and forced nine turnovers in the period. The Panthers were led by 19 points and nine rebounds from guard Ishmael Leggett.
What it Means
The Gators have played five games, three of them against high-major, power conference opponents and all three out of the Atlantic Coast Conference. That’s a decent schedule for so early in the season and now they’ve won two of those games. That’s a good start toward the resume build, especially with two more high-major games on the immediate horizon (read on).
In the Spotlight
Clayton, of course, would be the obvious pick here. That said, the status of Handlogten, given the Gators lack of depth in the front court (after Yale transfer E.J. Jarvis quit the team in September about the same time 6-11 backup Aleks Szymczyk broke his foot) is a big deal in both the small picture, as far as the tournament championship game, but obviously much bigger in the big picture. As in, how long will he be out? Handlogten had started all five games, averaging 10.0 points, 8.5 rebounds over 21.1 minutes and shooting 70.4 percent from the floor.
Staggering Statistic
Clayton, who won back-to-back Class 7A state titles at Bartow (Fla.) High, had zero high-major scholarship offers and not even a recruiting sniff from UCF (an hour to the east) or USF (an hour to the west). The guy who took a chance on him, Rick Pitino, now at St. John’s, was sitting courtside to watch his former Iona star.
Up Next
Florida (4-1) moves into the NIT championship game, where the Gators will face No. 13 Baylor (5-0), following the Bears’ 88-72 victory over the Beavers in Wednesday’s earlier first-rounder. All four teams will have Thanksgiving Day off and return to the court Friday afternoon, with the UF and Baylor tipping off at 5:30 p.m.
