Florida coach Todd Golden responded to a question about Charles Bediako’s eligibilty at Alabama 10 days ago by saying the Gators were “gonna beat ’em anyways.” Golden, it turns out, was right.
Florida made quick work of the Crimson Tide in Gainesville in a 100-77 victory Sunday as his team made him look prescient with a dominant showing in the paint and efficient triple-digit scoring. The win gives No. 19 Florida — 11-2 in its last 13 outings after a rocky 5-4 start to the season — a fifth consecutive win over No. 23 Alabama under Golden.
Golden said he meant no disrespect about the “we’re gonna beat ’em anyways” comment, but it nonetheless became a central storyline to Sunday’s game that juiced up an already-electric matchup.
Alabama coach Nate Oats didn’t have much to say about that specific comment in the lead-up to the game, but he did make a curious comment about Florida’s offensive rebounding success, saying earlier in the week: “When you can sit in the lane for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 seconds at a time, it helps you offensively.”
Postgame, Golden had more to say, indirectly but not subtly commenting about the time his bigs were in the paint.
“Our bigs were in the paint for one second, two seconds, three seconds and scored,” Golden said.
Perhaps both coaches contributed meaningfully to the bulletin board material, but Florida was the team that backed up the talk. Fittingly, it scored a whopping 72 points in the paint in the win — five shy of Alabama did in the entire game — and it outrebounded the Tide 44-33, to boot.
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Bediako, whose controversial eligibility started the back-and-forth between Oats and Golden, played 24 mostly forgettable minutes in which he added six points and seven rebounds and eventually fouled out. Seemingly, the fodder he provided in the run-up to Sunday’s game and the juice fans brought to an electric O’Dome were his biggest contributions.
It was Florida’s frontcourt which did the heavy lifting impacting the final outcome: Alex Condon (25 points and seven rebounds), Thomas Haugh (22 points and five rebounds) and Reuben Chinyelu (14 points and 17 rebounds) were tremendous in the win. And Boogie Fland added 15 points and eight assists leading the team’s backcourt.
As right as things went for Florida was as wrong as things went for Alabama. Despite making 14 3-pointers on 34 attempts, it lost the turnover battle 18-2, was outscored 25-0 on points off turnovers and was bludgeoned in the painted area — much like it has been all season.
Florida became the first SEC team in the last 20 seasons to score 70 or more paint points vs. a major-conference opponent. In doing so, it scored its third-most total points in a game this season and finished with more paint points (72) than total points it scored this season in losses to Duke (67-66) and Auburn (76–67).