Florida’s Richard is at peace with role

Chris Richard hears it all the time.

If he played anywhere else but Florida, he’d be starting.

“It does get old after a while, because I never talk like that,” the 6-foot-9, 255-pound senior said. “If I could, I could. But I don’t. I can deal with that.

“I think I’m a pretty good player, but as long as we win.”

On a team of stars, Richard is an understudy, but he got his moment Saturday in Florida’s 76-66 NCAA semifinal victory over UCLA, scoring 16 points off the bench, 14 in the second half, and grabbing four rebounds, two on offense.

Al Horford, the Gators’ leading scorer, had only nine points but pulled down 17 rebounds. Joakim Noah, Florida’s other big man, had eight points and 11 rebounds.

“We just do whatever it takes to win, and if that means one of us sacrificing scoring 15 or 20 points, we’re going to give it up for us to win,” Horford said.

“I mean it’s big. Chris is so unselfish. He knows some nights he’s going to have big nights. He just stepped up tonight.”

UCLA tried hard to stop the Florida big men, but eventually Richard came through.

“I think they did a good job as far as containing us in the post,” Richard said. “They doubled us a lot. That kind of took away from us making good moves. We looked for open shooters.

“Lee [Humphrey] knocked down a couple. Corey [Brewer] knocked down a couple for us early. Then we got it going. We just hit the boards hard on the offensive end.

“A lot of people want to take away our post game, and that opens it up for our perimeter. A lot of people want to take away our perimeter, and that opens it up for our post. It’s just really tough. You can’t really play us one on one in the post, because our post players are great.”

Richard, as beefy as he is, resembles a football player, and at Florida that fits right in.

The basketball team is getting ready to play Ohio State for the NCAA title, the same team the Gators football team defeated to win its national championship.

“We have to win,” Richard said. “There’s a lot of pressure on us from the football team.”

Richard -- who visited spring practice this week -- said the basketball players hear from their counterparts often.

“All the time,” he said. “The football team made a banner for us, a countdown of the days to the championship, and all signed it.”

Saturday night, the Gators took one more step toward a historic double.

“I didn’t want to lose,” said Richard, who didn’t miss any of his seven shots, mostly because they were all close -- three dunks, three layups and a shot in the lane. “I felt like I had to come in and play as hard as I could.”

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robyn.norwood@latimes.com

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Florida finals

Florida’s results in the NCAA basketball championship game:

* 2006 -- Florida 73, UCLA 57

* 2000 -- Michigan St. 89, Florida 76

Source: Associated Press