SAN FRANCISCO – Since the postseason began, the Florida Gators have worn Nike warm-up T-shirts to games with a two-word slogan printed across the chest. 

“Nothing Easy,” it says. 

Do they really have to take the phrase so literally? 

Eventually, the Gators offset their miscues with an across-the-board solid second half of 53% shooting, 39% defending, a dominant rebounding performance and more guys to do it all with, the totality of which made for a draining night for the Terrapins and their limited “Crab Five” rotation. UF’s 87 points were the most surrendered this season by a UM defense that came into the game ranked No. 6 nationally in overall efficiency.

The winner will punch a ticket to the Final Four next week at San Antonio, Texas. 

Oh, and even Condon got back in the act. He returned midway through the second half and soldiered through the soreness to give his team six points and four boards in 13 minutes, nine after halftime.

“Florida is really good and they’re deep,” said Maryland coach Kevin Willard, whose iron-horse starting five that averaged 30 minutes each on the season hit an orange-and-blue in the “Sweet 16” round. “I think their bench was what really wore us down.”

The second half started with a couple free throws from Haugh, followed by a 3 from Martin that quickly had the Gators ahead by seven. The Terps answered with back-to-back buckets, but then Chinyelu bodied his way in the post to three consecutive buckets, two of them dunks, and joined forces with another Martin 3 to take UF’s lead out to 55-44 with 14 minutes to go.  

“We were able to keep our poise in the moment,” Chinyelu said. 

They did so a number of times in the second half, what with Maryland forward Derik Queen beasting his way to 27 points on 8-for-17 from the floor and 10-for-10 from the free-throw line. Queen’s 3-pointer at 11:04 made it a seven-point game, but Aberdeen drove the paint for a jumper and Martin chased it with an old-time 3-point play to push the Gators back up 12 with 10 minutes remaining. 

Three minutes later the margin was 18. 

It maybe could have been that in the first half had Florida’s ball-security merely been awful (say, eight turnovers), instead of atrocious (13).

 

“We were able to re-calibrate a little bit and the message was simple. We had to keep defending and obviously stay aggressive on the glass, but we had to do a better job of taking care of the ball,” Golden said. “We were elite in the second half.”

The Gators outscored the Terps 47-33 after the break, continued to crash the boards on the way to a 42-20 advantage for the game (15-7 on the offensive end) and turned it over just three times while collecting 11 assists in the second period. 

“We had a lot of defensive lapses, but they were capitalizing off of it,” Queen said. “They were making their 3s, their shots. If they didn’t make it, they got the offensive rebound and repeated. Just kicked it out for 3s, layups. They just scored.”

 

It wasn’t always that simple. Take the sequence approaching the 11-minute mark in the second half. Maryland had closed within eight. In the Florida halfcourt, the shot clock was winding down when Condon lost control of the ball and went to floor to chase possession. He managed to grab it, then from flat on his back, tried to push the ball toward the basket in hopes of hitting the rim for a clock reset.

“That’s just Condo making a great play, doing what he had to do,” Martin said. “It was a back-breaker.” 

 

Two huge points at huge juncture of the game. Two the hard way. 

The Gators, having equaled the third-most wins in program history, are headed to their 10th Elite Eight (their first since 2017) and Saturday will week a sixth Final Four appearance in program history. 

“It’s been an amazing experience, and I’m not necessarily surprised,” Golden said. “We knew early we had a really great group of young men that would pull for each other and play the right way. Our team talent has really taken over. I thought that showed tonight in the second half with the way we kind of put our foot on the gas down the stretch.”