Atlantic City Weekly

Florida’s 5’8” point guard Erving Walker was not having a good shooting night, but he picked the perfect time to hit his only three-pointer of the evening. With his team down two and just under two minutes left, Walker fired a step-back three that put his team ahead of Michigan State and that is where the Gators remained when the buzzer sounded, beating the No. 2 ranked Spartans 77-74 in the Legends Classic Basketball Tournament at Boardwalk Hall Friday night. Walker and senior forward Dan Werner also made key foul shots in the final minute to close out the game against State.

Florida coach Billy Donovan noted after the game that it's early in the season, “But playing against this level of competition, it showed that my guys have put their work in. When we were down seven, we just kept fighting and our press was effective.”

Indeed it was. Tom Izzo’s team turned the ball over 14 times in the first half, pressured into many of the turns by the Florida press. Izzo noted that, “When your team hits 50 percent of its shots and outrebounds the other team by 18, you expect to win, but we didn’t deserve it. We lost the game in the middle of the first half. I was disappointed in how we responded to their press. Give them [Florida] two thirds of the credit for winning; the other third was us not handling the ball well with our guards. It’s the first time we’ve faced this kind of pressure. [Despite the No. 2 ranking] we are not an elite team yet.”

Florida shot only 34 percent in the second half, but the 23 total turnovers by State gave them extra looks at the basket. The Gators also had balanced scoring. Five players were in double figures, led by Chandler Parsons’ 14 and Walker’s 12 points. Michigan State’s top scorer was guard Kalin Lucas, with 20 points. Forward Draymond Green chipped in with 15 points and led the team with 11 rebounds.

For Florida it is a victory that puts them back in the national limelight, after two down years when they didn’t make it to the NCAA tournament.

In the first game of the doubleheader, Rutgers Scarlet Knights, led by the outside punch of quick-release artist Mike Rosario (18 points in the first half on 7 of 9 shooting and 4 of 4 from the three-point line), defeated the University of Massachusetts 83-75. Behind by as many as 15 in the first stanza, the Minutemen closed the gap to 11, 46-35, at the half.

In the second half, a 14-6 spurt in the first four minutes by the Knights put the Minutemen back on their heels, down 19. Rutgers maintained a double-digit lead despite the fact that Rosario cooled down in the second half. In the closing minutes UMass star guard Ricky Harris, who scored only two points in the first half, found his range. A three-pointer with 1:31 to go cut the Rutgers lead to 79-75, but that would be as close as the Minutemen got, as they were forced to foul and the Knights closed it out on the foul line. Rosario finished with 22 points and Harris led UMass with 22 points. Rutgers center Hamady Ndiaye, who entertained the crowd with a flurry of power dunks, finished with 14 points.

In tomorrow night’s games (Saturday, Nov. 28), Michigan St. plays UMass in the consolation game at 5:30pm, while Florida faces Rutgers in the championship game at 8pm. The were 5,154 people in attendance.