In his fourth straight Southeastern Conference game out of the starting lineup, Patric Young was doing more on the bench against Mississippi State than just resting his injured right ankle and catching his breath.
He was trying to solve a 6-foot-10, 280-pound problem in Bulldogs forward Renardo Sidney.
After No. 18 Mississippi State (17-5, 4-3 SEC) and Sidney largely held Young in check with just two points at the break, No. 14 Florida (17-4, 5-1 SEC) received a 10-point, second half surge from its 6-foot-9 sophomore to spark a 69-57 win at the O’Connell Center.
“He’s a great kid as it relates to that stuff, so that’s not the end all where he’s just not going to start,” UF coach Billy Donovan said. “I think Patric understands that he’s going to be out there – he’s going to get in the game pretty quickly. It also allows him to see the way the game’s being played.”
Along with Young’s 12 points and six rebounds, the Gators pushed three others into double figures, including junior forward Erik Murphy. While Young did all of his damage in the paint, the 6-foot-11 Murphy scored 14 points on 4-for-7 shooting from three.
The Gators guards, led by freshman Brad Beal, who scored a game-high 19 points, gave Young plenty of touches in the opening 20 minutes but couldn’t help him get into an offensive rhythm on 1-of-4 shooting in eight minutes.
Though Young was fresh off a 15-point performance two days earlier at Ole Miss, Donovan said the sophomore struggled to deal with the strength of Mississippi State’s frontcourt.
“The thing with Sidney is you can catch the ball on him, like he’s not going to fight and try to take away post position, but what happens is when you go to put the ball on the floor and make a move, he doesn’t move,” Donovan said. “If you noticed a couple times Patric tried to back his way in and it was like going into a wall and I think he got off balance a couple times.”
At Donovan’s advice, Young put his post moves on the backburner after halftime, and, instead, focused on going straight up with the ball, leading to four thunderous dunks in just over 12 minutes.
Young sent in two dunks during an 11-0 Florida run beginning at the 7:46 mark, but his most highlight-worthy came two minutes earlier on a one-handed putback of a missed 3-pointer by Erving Walker, who had 10 points.
“My mindset was if (Walker) misses this, I want to block out and get a rebound,” Young said. “I blocked out and the ball was right there so I threw it down. I was really excited because I have been waiting on my first tip-in dunk and there it was.”
Contact John Boothe at jboothe@alligator.org.
