The Florida Gators needed to shoot their way out of trouble Tuesday night, a sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t proposition in a season pock-marked by far too many close but no cigar endings. The Gators desperately needed someone, anyone to heat up in the final 5:39 when they were trying to erase a 10-point deficit but even though there were enough open shots to get turn this NIT quarter-final game with Penn State into the season’s best comeback, this was a night when nothing would drop.
Florida’s 71-62 loss to the Nittany Lions ended a season that will be best remembered by all the times the Gators needed a shot to drop or a stop on the defensive end or a call to go their way. The story of the season was a mirror image of those final five minutes when the Gators couldn’t get shots to drop or find a way to stop Penn State’s 6-5, 240-pound bull of a low post force, Jamelle Cornley, and when there were no whistles even though there was plenty of contact.
There was no shortage of effort on the part of the Gators, who valiantly fought their way back from 60-50 with 5:39 left to 63-59 when Dan Werner tipped in a shot with 2:13 remaining to end a fast break that he started with a steal near midcourt. There was never a lack of effort by the Gators this season.
Not once and certainly not in this game.
“I never feel sitting over there that these guys aren’t playing hard and aren’t trying. I’ve never felt that way. We’ve had one game this year when we’ve lost by double figures. Every game we’ve been in there and we’ve battled.”
Effort and hard work were enough for 25 wins in this season but not enough to camouflage a team with far too many flaws in 11 losses. Six of the losses were by four or fewer points. Only one loss was double-digits.
And all this proves that hard work and hustle can get you so far, but at some point you better have enough pieces to the puzzle to provide answers or else you get exposed. Tuesday night, there was plenty of hustle and the Gators worked very hard the entire game, but an already short bench was decimated. Freshman center Kenny Kadji, whose 6-10, 250-pound body, long arms and shot blocking presence could have helped the Gators keep Cornley out of the lane, where he scored all but four of his game-high 24 points, missed the game after suffering a concussion in practice Monday.
Adding to the problems, Dan Werner was playing with the flu and a temperature. A completely healthy Werner might have struggled going against Cornley, but in a weakened condition, he had dead legs and not enough strength.
“Haven’t really slept in two days,” said Werner, whose temperature was as high as 100.6 Tuesday. “No excuses, though. I showed up to play and when you do that being sick isn’t an excuse. I didn’t play well enough.”
Werner had four points, five rebounds and a couple of steals in 33 minutes battling against Cornley and 6-9, 250-pound Andrew Jones, who combined for 19 rebounds as the Nittany Lions won the battle of the boards 37-27.
“I tried to get Dan some rest getting him in and out as much as I could but I probably played him too many minutes,” Donovan said. “Kenny had a concussion that kind of really put us with a short bench and we had to play Chandler some at the four and in the front court we had a hard time matching up.”
The Gators might have still pulled this one out if they could have hit a few shots, but other than freshman Erving Walker, who hit 6-12 from the field including a 28-foot banked three-ball with 25 seconds left in the game, nobody could get into any kind of shooting rhythm. Walker hit 4-8 from the three-point stripe. The rest of the team was 1-17.
Alex Tyus got 15 points and eight rebounds for the Gators, but his scoring came in spurts. He hit three of his first four shots then missed four in a row before finishing up by hitting four of his last five. Three of his misses came during the final 8:16 of the second half when the Gators hit only 3-10 from the field and saw their 25-21 advantage turn into a 33-32 halftime deficit.
Nick Calathes, who hit 8-10 against Miami Friday night, couldn’t explain his 3-12 shooting that included 0-6 from the three-point line.
“I had good shots … I just couldn’t get them to go,” Calathes said. He had 10 points, seven assists and two rebounds but only one assist after the half when the Gators struggled not only to make shots but catch the ball several times when they were only a step or two away from the basket.
Florida trailed 44-43 with 12:43 remaining in the game after Calathes hit a pair of free throws but over the next two minutes Penn State got three-balls from Stanley Pringle and David Morrisey while the Gators were going 0-5 from the field. Penn State’s margin swelled to 52-43, putting the Gators into that all too familiar role of needing to spend all their energy making up a deficit the rest of the way.
Every time the Gators got within striking distance, the Nittany Lions went to their answer man. Cornley had all the answers for Penn State but the Gators had no answers for Cornley. When the Gators got it to within six points with 8:45 left in the game, Cornley answered by powering his way for a layup and a foul, which he conveted into an old-fashioned three-pointer to make it 57-48.
When the Gators got back within four (63-59) on Werner’s tip-in, Cornley answered at the other end with another power move to make it 65-59. Without a true power guy in the middle that could keep the paint clean, the Gators were helpless against Cornley, who had missed the last two games with a separated shoulder.
“Tom Izzo (Michigan State coach) said it best: ‘He’s the best player in the Big Ten,’” Donovan said. “I say this with all respect but he is a nasty competitor. He is a nasty, tough competitor and I say this with great respect.”
Doubling down on Cornley was out of the question, too. Penn State is the best three-point shooting team in the Big Ten so the Gators had to play the perimeter hard and take their chances on the inside. The Gators did limit the Nittany Lions to 8-25 shooting from the three-point line but Cornley was always there to clean up when they missed and Florida had no one capable of handling him.
Cornley’s big contribution against the Gators was scoring and rebounding (game-high 12), but Donovan said that the Penn State big guy has the ability to affect games in so many ways.
“He’s not a guy that has great lift off the ground and he’s not a dynamic jumper or anything like that,” Donovan said. “He’s not a guy getting 25 a game. It’s the other stuff. It’s not just the scoring. It’s things he does to impact the game. Tonight it happened to be scoring but it’s other things he does.”
On this night the Gators needed to find a player who could impact the game when they needed him the most but as was the case in every single loss this year, there was always something missing. And so a second straight season ends with a loss in a tournament that speaks volumes that the Florida program is still in the recovery process after losing so much from the NCAA championship teams of 2006 and 2007.
Certainly it’s unfair to compare this group to those championship teams and sometimes it’s difficult to remember that the championship teams were built player-by-player, season-by-season over a period of time. Those two NCAA titles didn’t happen overnight nor will getting back to a championship level. A little bit more of the puzzle came together this year but there are still parts that have to be added before the Gators can compete at the elite level once again.
This wasn’t a championship season but if those10 close losses can create the hunger that was in the program in 1999 when Donovan took his first Florida team to the NCAA Tournament, then one day fans might look back on the 2009 season as a necessary bump in the road to success.
Losing games hurts. Losing games that could have been won should create a burning desire to change things from the way they are into the way they could be and should be. The Gators have six months to figure out if they have the burning desire to take the next step.
GAME NOTES: Walter Hodge scored seven points in his final game as a Gator. Hodge, who only has to complete an internship this summer to earn his Florida degree, is looking to play in Europe next year. Hodge and his wife are expecting their second child. “Any day now … could be tonight,” Hodge said after the game … Hodge played in 117 victories in his four years at Florida, the most of any player in school history … Nick Calathes finished the season with 231 assists, breaking his own school record of 221 set last year … The Gators hit 5-22 from the three-point line while