Gators Forward Colin Castleton Named Co-SEC Player of the Week

The Florida Gators are seeing near-immediate returns from their junior transfer forward.

While the Florida Gators football season has finally wrapped up, its basketball season is just now kicking into high gear. With that, some Florida players are already being rewarded for their play on the court, including transfer junior Colin Castleton, who was named Co-SEC Player of the Week earlier today.

Castleton was named Co-SEC Player of the Week following his stellar performance against LSU and Vanderbilt, vaulting the Gators to a perfect 2-0 in SEC play. Castleton would go on to score 23 in UF's SEC-opening win at Vanderbilt and followed that up with a 21-point showing in Saturday's victory vs. LSU.

While it did take a few games for Castleton to find his groove, he appears to have solidified himself as one of the team's premier players, shooting 11 for 13 from the field against Vanderbilt, five dunks for the best field goal percentage by any SEC player on the road in league player in, according to UF, nearly five years.

His talents would show yet again against LSU as Castleton was able to score all 15 of Florida's points in the first six minutes of the second half of the contest. He would go on to have a team-leading 21 points after the break.

"In both games, Castleton’s second-half scoring total topped his previous career high of 14 points, set vs. Houston Baptist while he played at Michigan," UF stated in its release.

"Castleton is the first Gators post player to receive the honor since Patric Young did so early in his sophomore campaign on Dec. 12, 2011. Castleton joins Young (once), Joakim Noah (twice) and Udonis Haslem (twice) as Florida big men to win SEC Player of the Week recognition over the past 20 years."

Gators head coach Mike White recently expressed how great it is to see Castleton improving, allowing the Gators to get into a better groove in the second half of action. He added that the team needs to get him more minutes moving forward.

“He’s a talented guy. He’s really skilled, he’s got big, strong hands, length. We’ve gotten better at finding him and Omar (Payne) offensively in their spots," White said over the weekend. "Their confidence level and skill level are both improving. Great to see [Castleton] get going, really gave us a huge spark early second half. But you said it, we’ve gotta get him some more minutes.”