When the Florida Gators face No. 1 Auburn on Saturday, it will have one of its best players back on the court.
Star point guard Walter Clayton Jr., who missed Tuesday’s win over Vanderbilt with an ankle injury, is set to return for the game against the top-ranked Tigers, head coach Todd Golden told reporters Friday.
“Walt’s pretty close to 100%,” Golden said. “He’s right there. I think you’ll see Walt at his best (Saturday).”
Clayton Jr. suffered an ankle sprain in last Saturday’s blowout loss to Tennessee before being given a rest for the game against the Commodores. He was originally a game-time decision before Golden decided to sit the senior, who leads Florida in scoring with 17.4 points per game.
“We didn’t really know until probably, you know, 90 minutes before game time, whatever it was,” Golden said after Tuesday’s win. “He tested it out this morning, and again at shootaround, and honestly, looked pretty good. But you could just tell he wasn’t all the way confident and comfortable with it. And, you know, it was a calculated decision that we had to make as a program.”
Without Clayton Jr., the Gators had to slug out a close win against Vanderbilt behind the heroics of Will Richard, Alex Condon, Urban Klavzar and Denzel Aberdeen, who made his first-career start in Clayton Jr.’s place.
“Yeah, it was definitely a big adversity test, but we came in with the mindset of next man up, and our guys off the bench came in and did a great job of keeping us going and keeping us in that same rhythm,” Richard said.
Clayton Jr., in addition to being Florida’s leading scorer, is the team’s best free throw shooter (86.4 percent) and one of the top 3-point shooters (35.9 percent). He was recently named to the Bob Cousy Midseason Watch List, which is given annually to the nation’s top point guard.
Tip off between Florida (19-3, 6-3 SEC) and Auburn (21-1, 9-0 SEC) is at 4 p.m. with television coverage on ESPN 2.
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