Foul trouble limited Colin Castleton to just two minutes in the first half of Florida’s 83-79 win over LSU on Saturday but the junior transfer from Michigan made up for it in the second half.
Castleton finished the game with 21 points. Coming out of the locker room the big man scored the Gators’ first 15 points of the second half over a six-minute stretch. It marked his second straight 20-point outing after tallying 23 at Vanderbilt earlier this week. Before this week, Castleton’s career-high was 14 points. Castleton should be hearing from the SEC office this week when they announce players of the week, after averaging 21.0 points per game
“He’s a talented guy. He’s really skilled, he’s got big, strong hands, length. We’ve gotten better at finding him and Omar (Payne) offensively in their spots,” Mike White said after the game. “Their confidence level and skill level are both improving. Great to see [Castleton] get going, really gave us a huge spark early second half. But you said it, we’ve gotta get him some more minutes.”
Florida and LSU went up and down the court matching buckets in the first half. A fast-paced, offensive game. The Tigers came out shooting the three well, drilling 5-of-8 in the first half but cooled down in the second only making 2-of-10. Cameron Thomas led LSU with 28 points. At halftime, the game was tied at 40 and Mike White’s message to his team was that the defensive effort needed to be picked up.
“I think Coach (White) just talked to us at halftime about how, obviously, we were tied 40 to 40 at the half and Coach was just kind of straight up. We didn’t really play a good half all in all. We got some defensive options, everything we needed to clean up in the second half. The second half was more aggressive… Personally, I think I just need to move on from those two push offs… I was only in the game for two minutes. I realize that so I’ll fix that.”
The talking to worked. Florida’s defense was considerably better in the second half. It would take LSU more than 11 minutes to score the same 17 points Castleton scored on his own in the first seven minutes of the second period.
It wasn’t just Castleton on offense Saturday. Florida’s offense was balanced with four players scoring at least 16 points. Tre Mann finished the game with a career-high 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting and was 3-6 from beyond the arc.
“He was a different guy. From a confidence level, but also from the aspect of how sound you are as opposed to being casual,” White said. "When he had the basketball today, I felt better. I felt like he had more command of what we were doing.”
The Gators were 2-0 after not playing or practicing for more than two weeks following Keyontae Johnson’s scary episode during Florida’s loss to FSU.
Florida will travel to Tuscaloosa to take on Alabama Tuesday night before returning home to Gainesville to host the Kentucky Wildcats.
