Florida 108, UNF 68: Gators ground Ospreys, eclipse century mark in rout

Three days after opening their 2017-18 season with a blowout win over an overmatched team, the Florida Gators men’s basketball teams got another one of those wins.

They played even better defense this time, too.

Florida’s 108-68 destruction of North Florida featured:

• Six Gators scoring in double figures, led by KeVaughn Allen’s 18 points
• Chris Chiozza haphazardly chasing a triple-double and finishing with nine points, seven rebounds, and six assists
• Keith Stone scoring 14 points on eight shots and playing brilliant defense for most of his minutes
• Gorjok Gak (!!!) scoring a career-high 12 points on just four shots, thanks partly to a 4-for-4 night at the line (!!!!!)
• Florida holding North Florida’s three-happy offense to a 7-for-28 performance from beyond the arc
• Walk-ons Mak Krause and Andrew Fava starring in the last few minutes of play, each recording their first points as Gators — with Fava doing so on a pair of lovely drives that delighted the Rowdy Reptiles like little else on the night

North Florida is not — ¿Como se dice? — good at basketball, sure. But Florida sure clipped the Ospreys, who have now lost games to the Gators in each of the last three seasons, and by an average of 33.3 points per game.

And Florida has scored 100-plus points in its first two games of this season — possibly for the first time in school history — and outscored its football counterpart on the season in just 80 minutes, while also allowing neither of its opponents to score 80 points or a full point per possession in up-tempo, run-and-gun contests.

And the Gators have done this without big man John Egbunu, who will not be game-ready for at least a couple of months, and with Chiozza still nursing and managing a shoulder injury.

A team that has scored 224 points in its first two games and won both by 40 points still has a lot of room to grow, in other words.

You might want to hop on this Florida basketball bandwagon while you can — it’s gonna have next to no room remaining very, very soon.