Florida pulls away late to defeat Vols
GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Admiral Schofield finally showed up for the Tennessee basketball team. Even so, the Vols ran out of steam late against No. 24 Florida.
Schofield, who had scored 39 points in 10 games entering Saturday, recorded his first career double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds, but sophomore guard KeVauhn Allen and the Gators poured it on late in an 83-70 win in front of a sold-out crowd of 10,843 at Exactech Center at the Stephen C. O’Connell center.
“In the second half we just couldn’t punch them back,” Schofield said. “They came out punching and we couldn’t answer their call.”
Jordan Bowden added 15 points for Tennessee (8-7, 1-2 SEC), Detrick Mostella scored nine off the bench and Robert Hubbs had eight. Sophomore forward Grant Williams scored six points and had just one rebound before fouling out.
Tennessee shot 50 percent (28 of 56) from the field but committed 19 turnovers.
“Nineteen turnovers aren’t going to win games on the road,” second-year Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said. “And the way we did it. Some forced, some unforced.
“Then obviously at the end of the game, really poor clock management. We’ll learn form it. We just had too many guys today that we needed to count on and they didn’t give us what they needed.”
Allen scored a game-high 23 points for Florida (12-3, 3-0), Justin Leon had 19 and Canyon Barry added 15.
Florida, which went 7-for-7 from the 3-point line in the second half, shot 83.3 percent from the field over the first nine minutes after halftime, building what was as much as a five-point lead with 12:21 left in the game.
“First half I thought we did a really good job of tagging (defensively),” Barnes said. “They’re a high-volume ball-screen team. We were doing a good job with that coverage (in the first half).
“We were a step late in the second half with every thing. We didn’t tag like we needed to.”
Two quick 3-pointers from Allen on consecutive Florida possessions expanded the lead to 66-59 with 6:25 left. A heatcheck three from Allen made it 69-63 with 4:30 left. He added another with 1:16 to play to make it an 11-point advantage.