Gator Bait

ATLANTIC CITY — For all the hard work the Rutgers men’s basketball team put into the first half, it all came undone in an all-too-familiar second half.
Florida pressured the Scarlet Knights full court from the opening tip, eventually wearing them down en route to an emphatic 73-58 victory Saturday night in the championship game of the Legends Classic at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.
“We have a very inexperienced team and that showed tonight in stretches,” said Rutgers head coach Fred Hill Jr. “When things aren’t going your way you need experience and maturity.”
The key culprits for the Gators, Kenny Boynton and Vernon Macklin, combined for 33 points as Florida forced Rutgers into eight second-half turnovers in extending a five-point halftime advantage to as many as 20.
The Gators (6-0) made turnovers a staple of their climb to the Legends Classic title, forcing 23 in their semifinal victory over No. 2 Michigan State and 15 Saturday against Rutgers.
“Even Fred [Hill] made a comment at the end of the game that those two guards at the front of the press make it difficult to get into any offense,” Florida head coach Billy Donovan said in reference to Boynton and Erving Walker. “Those guys are great up there and to do it in back-to-back games with the amount of minutes they played is phenomenal.”
Boynton’s three pointer with 9:58 to play sparked a 13-4 run that spelled the end for the Scarlet Knights. The trey gave Florida a 55-42 lead and by the time the next 4:04 of game clock ticked away, the game was effectively over.
Florida built an insurmountable 65-46 advantage.
Macklin hammered home a power jam following Boynton’s three and after Chandler Parsons converted a layup, Boyton added one of his own. Two more easy baskets put the exclamation point on the run.
“I always said it before the second half that we need to bring the energy, and it’s hard to come out and stretch it out for any team,” said senior center Hamady N’Diaye. “They would have to bring out more energy than us. … You can sense [the momentum shifting] a little bit but we still had to keep fighting and try to come back.”
The Scarlet Knights (3-2) hung around for the opening 20 minutes behind sophomore guard Mike Rosario’s 11 points.
But Rosario was stifled for much of the second half and finished with just 14 points. It was the second straight game Rosario followed a high-scoring first half with a low output in the second.
“I was just trying to do things other than shoot the ball — and as you can see I had six rebounds — because coach is always telling me to get in there and get some rebounds,” said Rosario whose six boards were a team-high. “I try to be an all-around player, other than shooting the ball, and get my teammates involved.”
Hill credited Florida for making the proper adjustments in the second half.
“We come out at halftime and he’s our leading scorer, and the coach in the other locker room is telling his guys not to leave him,” the fourth-year head coach said. “It’s the same thing we would do against any great scorer...our other guys have to step up a little bit and when we get into a flow things get a little bit easier — and that’s where we couldn’t get going tonight.”
N’Diaye finished with 12 points and freshman forward Dane Miller chipped in nine in the losing effort.
Hill said his team is still trying to maintain its identity for a full 40 minutes.
“We lose sight of our identity of who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish and where we’re headed,” Hill said. “It’s tough when you look up and you’re playing pretty good. I thought defensively we had a pretty good effort and I wish we could have rebounded the ball a little bit better.”
Rutgers has a chance to figure that identity out with the soft underbelly of the non-conference scheduling, beginning with Thursday night’s game against Princeton at the Louis Brown Athletic Center.
 

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