Florida’s magical SEC Tournament run came to an end on Sunday when they ran out of steam in the championship game falling 86-67 to the surging Auburn Tigers. With Auburn having the double bye as opposed to only the single bye Florida earned they looked like the fresher team and while the Gators were able to keep things close for much of the game eventually the Tigers were able to build a lead that was insurmountable. While the SEC Tournament had a sour ending, Florida has to be happy with how the weekend went and a neutral site loss to the Tigers won’t have any negative effect on their NCAA Tournament seeding.
Heartbreaking
Sadly, the biggest story of this game was not the final score or who won or lost, it was a devastating injury suffered by sophomore center Micah Handlogten. Early in the second half he jumped for a rebound and came down awkwardly, suffering an apparent lower leg injury that was later confirmed to be a fracture. The entire building went quiet in stunned silence at the horrifying nature of the injury as tears flowed from the Florida sideline. Auburn’s entire bench circled while head coach Bruce Pearl started to lead a prayer. This was nothing short of heartbreaking for a young athlete who has given his all to the Gators this year and will no longer be able to compete in the NCAA Tournament, a goal he had when he came to Florida. Our thoughts and prayers are with Micah as he begins his road to recovery.
While it’s awkward to transition back to talking about this game from a basketball standpoint, it’s worth noting that this very well could have had an effect on the Gators who had to go from mourning a teammate having an apparent devastating injury to having to compete at the highest level of the sport. To what extent we don’t know, but it couldn’t have been easy for the Gators to have 100% focus, particularly in the immediate action following the incident.
Defensive Scramble
Florida’s ability to guard has been questioned all year and playing their fourth game in four days they simply didn’t have the legs to make up for their defensive issues with effort. Auburn was able to get just about everything they wanted defensively, and they did it in a way the Gators haven’t seen a lot of this season. Much of the SEC is free-flowing basketball, but Auburn is a team that slows the game down and wants to run a lot of sets, and they lulled the Gators to sleep with a lot of complex actions that had Florida confused and out of position as layups and wide open threes fell. Had the Gators had fresher legs there is a chance they would have been able to make up for some of these defensive lapses with energy and effort, but it just wasn’t there from a lot of players who had to play huge minutes over four days. Florida has shown the ability to win games and they’ll be a trendy pick to go on a run in the NCAA Tournament, but they’ll have to be able to defend better than they did on Sunday.
Negative Regression
Florida has put up rock solid offensive numbers this season and have had far more hot shooting nights than cold ones in the last few months and maybe they were due for a cold game as they couldn’t get much going against Auburn. Florida shot only 36% from the field, and even more notably they were only 1-13 (8%) from three. This is notable for a number of reasons. First, the fact that they were only able to get up 13 three-point attempts is a concern, arguably a bigger concern than the fact they were only able to hit one of them. The low number of attempts speaks to just how out of rhythm the offense was, as were their struggles to finish at the rim. Auburn ended the game with 10 blocked shots which speaks to how they were able to load up to the ball side and meet the Gators at the rim, and it was another number that spoke to Florida’s issues. Generally speaking the Gators haven’t had problems putting up points this season so they won’t be too concerned with this one game sample, but it’s certainly not what they wanted as their last taste of action before the NCAA Tournament.
Final Thoughts
It’s incredibly difficult to win four games in four days and that’s why the double bye for the top four teams in the regular season is so massive. Auburn was the fresher team and they played like it, coming out with a lot more energy and sustaining it throughout the entire fourty minutes. It’s also impossible not to talk about the mental toll that the Handlogten injury had on the team that had to go through a tearful ten minutes or so before returning to action and having to somehow compete at the highest level. Overall this was a game and an SEC Tournament championship the Gators would have loved to have, but there were no real downsides to losing. Florida is comfortably in the NCAA Tournament field and while it’s possible a win over Auburn would have bumped them up a seed a loss certainly doesn’t hurt them, and they’ll now get to settle in to watch the Selection Show and see who they’ll take on in just a few days.