Gator Country

Florida's Casey Prather drives the baseline during the Gators' win against Marquette on Nov. 29. / Gator Country photo by John Parady

For some, dropping a game in which their team should have won is a deal that may take a little while to get over. However, despite the heartbreaking 65-64 loss the Gators experienced at the hands of Arizona is already in the past for Florida coach Billy Donovan.

“I think you gotta move on,” Donovan said Tuesday afternoon. “I think you try to make your corrections, I think you gotta try to figure out where we need to get better … as difficult as the loss was, I think it came down to a minute and a half, and in a minute and a half they went on a 15-0 run … and then with about a minute and three (seconds) we were up by six, and then they went on a 7-0 run. So those two runs were really the difference in the game, but probably for 38 minutes and 30 seconds, we outplayed them.”

While the Gators had a multitude of physical errors down the stretch, Donovan believes some of the Gators’ late-game miscues may have been due to the team’s mentality.

“It’s a 40-minute game and those big runs to close the game and close the first half really, really hurt us … but I almost felt like on the bench that there was a carelessness in terms of an expectation of ‘ok we’re up by six with a minute to go, they’re just gonna foul us,’ … I told our guys if in some way we really, really learn from this, it’ll be very beneficial going forward. If we don’t, then I think it’s two things — we didn’t learn and we had to swallow a tough loss.”

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