Tuesday’s game at Texas A&M was as close to being a must-win game as possible. The Gators are on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble according to several prominent bracketologists, and they need to beef up their resume.
The Aggies entered the day ranked 73rd in the NCAA Evaluation Tool metric, which made this game what is termed as a “Quadrant 1” opportunity for the Gators. Texas A&M had lost eight games in a row, so the Gators were favored to win. Frankly, this was the only potential Quadrant 1 game left on their schedule that their fans could feel reasonably optimistic about winning. So, they needed to take care of business and start their postseason push.
Instead, they laid an egg. Thanks to perhaps the worst offensive half of basketball that you’ll ever watch and an ill-timed defensive mistake in crunch time, they fell to the Aggies by a score of 56-55. They’ll now face a steep uphill battle to make the tournament from here.
“Really disheartening for our guys, as somber of a locker room as I’ve been in for a while because I think our guys know how hard they played, and you’re up late,” UF coach Mike White said. “You’re a stop away or a missed free throw away. Really resilient group. I’m proud of the physical effort. A lot of stuff that we’ve got to clean up. Credit A&M; they were terrific defensively, swarmed the basketball.
“They go 16-of-16 from the foul line. They hit a couple shot-clock buzzer-beaters. They played with poise. It could’ve gone either way. We were right there. We did a lot of really good things, especially considering the fact that we struggled so much, especially offensively, in the first half. Tough one for our guys.”
The Gators (16-10, 6-7 SEC) shot just 22 percent in the first half, including a 2-for-15 effort from three, and turned it over 10 times. They had just eight points on the board with 4:38 to go in the half and trailed by as many as 13 points before finishing the half on a relative hot streak.
“I feel like we just had a couple of careless turnovers,” center Colin Castleton said. “We took a couple of bad shots that were out of character and we weren’t supposed to do. Just like certain little things like that, just turning the ball over, taking careless shots. I feel like we played hard the whole game. We gave everything we had. But, yeah, little stuff like that, you’re going to lose games if you just do that consistently. We did a little bit of that in the first half, so we had to claw our way back, and it just wasn’t enough.”
Due to some good defense and poor shooting at the other end of the floor as well, they only trailed 27-20 at halftime. The Aggies shot just 32 percent in the first half, went 1-for-10 from three and turned it over eight times.
The poor offensive execution carried over into the start of the second half, and Texas A&M (16-10, 5-8) built their lead back up to 43-31 with 11:02 to go.
“I thought we took some bad shots,” White said. “I honestly tried to get their confidence down. Like, ‘Guys, we’ve got to chill a little bit offensively. We’re playing really hard on the defensive end, great energy, and we get the ball, let’s stop trying to hit grand slams. Let’s let it come to us a little bit.’”
Things seemed to click for the Gators on both ends of the court as the half went on. They took things to another level on defense to go on a 24-8 run over 10 minutes that nearly won them the game (and probably should have).
The run started with one made free throw by Phlandrous Fleming and two by Niels Lane. On their next possession, Lane gathered the ball after Fleming missed a three and dished it to Castleton for a basket.
Brandon McKissic made a free throw, and then Lane drove down the baseline for a layup.
On their next trip down the floor, Castleton threw down a dunk and got fouled. He made the free throw to cut the deficit to 43-42 with 6:23 remaining.
The Aggies’ Tyrece Radford temporarily halted the run with an offensive rebound and putback, but Myreon Jones tied the game at the other end with a three.
Lane made a pair of free throws to give UF its first lead since it was 6-4.
The teams then traded scores over the next couple of minutes until Tyree Appleby and Fleming made threes on back-to-back possessions to give the Gators a 55-51 lead with 1:44 to go.
Florida still led 55-53 with less than 30 seconds remaining. Out of a Texas A&M timeout, the Aggies got the ball to Wade Taylor on the right wing. He pulled up for a potential go-ahead three. The shot missed, but Fleming was late to contest his shot and barreled through him for a foul and three free throws.
Taylor made all three to give his team the 56-55 lead. White opted not to use his final timeout to set something up for UF’s final possession, and Fleming missed a midrange jump shot. The rebound bounced out of bounds, and the officials initially ruled that it was Florida’s ball. After reviewing the play, though, they awarded possession to the Aggies with 0.9 seconds on the clock.
The Aggies got the ball in bounds, and the game was over.
While Fleming will probably catch a lot of heat on social media for fouling Taylor with a two-point lead, White said that this was a complete team loss. Fleming played well, scoring nine points, grabbing six rebounds, dishing two assists and capturing three steals in 34 minutes. They didn’t lose entirely because of that one mistake.
“He’s a mature guy,” White said. “We made a bunch of mistakes throughout the game. So did A&M. That’s basketball. We didn’t lose the game because of one of those couple plays. There’s 50 things we could’ve done better. I think Phlan, deep down, knows that, but I’ll remind him of that. He did a lot of really good things. He played incredibly hard.
“I thought we were terrific defensively as well. Coming in here and forcing 33 percent, 14 turnovers, 2-of-18 from three, I mean, we did enough defensively, obviously, and Phlan was a big part of that. I thought he played with a lot of energy and effort. Unfortunately, down the stretch on those last two or three minutes, we had some miscues offensively and defensively.”
Individually, Quenton Jackson led Texas A&M with 16 points, thanks in large part to 8-for-8 shooting from the free throw line. Radford had seven points and eight rebounds.
Castleton led the Gators with 15 points, 15 rebounds and two blocked shots in 37 minutes, but he didn’t have his best game at the defensive end of the floor.
“I hate that we lost,” Castleton said. “It really drives me crazy because I just want to win the game. I really didn’t care what I was doing. There were a lot of things I could’ve done better. I missed a couple of layups, missed a lob, and I never layup a lob, so I was out of character there.”
Jones scored 10 points, and CJ Felder had seven points and five boards in his first start as a Gator.
The Gators had a chance to pad their postseason resume on Tuesday night. Instead, they’ve dug themselves into a possibly insurmountable hole. They’re running out of time to start digging their way out of it.
“The only way you get there is by winning, and we didn’t do that tonight,” Castleton said. “We’ve got to continue to play as hard as we did tonight and just do better with little stuff. We can’t take as many bad shots, got to make more layups. Basically, that’s the formula.”