First SEC Win in Exactech Not One Worth Celebrating

Tuesday, January 3

Gainesville, FL

7 PM

Florida Gators

Ole Miss

Senior guard Kasey Hill squares up to play defense Tuesday night against Ole Miss. Hill's career-high six steals helped UF build a 20-point second half lead.

First SEC Win in Exactech Not One Worth Celebrating

Tuesday, January 3, 2017 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry

Box Score Photo Gallery by Tim Casey, Courtney Culbreath, & Kelly Streeter

The Gators withstood a couple late second-half surges by Ole Miss before sealing a 70-63 win.

By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — They won their second Southeastern Conference game in as many tries Tuesday night and sent the Rowdy Reptiles and the home crowd out the door with the first league win the new Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center. Nice job, right?

Wrong.

"It doesn't really feel like a win now," Florida junior forward Devin Robinson said after the 24th-ranked Gators defeated Ole Miss 70-63 in front of 10,423 at the O'Dome. "We know how good we can be. With that kind of [game], you have to be happy you won, but also know that what we did wrong may be the reason we don't come out with a win the next time."

Robinson's words sounded thoughtful and reflective, but also repetitive. Maybe that's because we've heard them before. The Gators (11-3, 2-0) hit a couple of dead spots in the second half and had to withstand the quick-striking Rebels (9-5, 0-2) in the final few minutes by overcoming turnovers, poor decisions and missed free throws. UF led by 20 with 11 minutes to go and by 16 with just over three minutes to go, yet needed two big free throws from sophomore guard KeVaughn Allen with 36 seconds left and one of two from Chris Chiozza with 15 to play to ice the outcome.

Reserve forward Canyon Barry came off the bench to score a season-high 20 points, knocking down eight of his 14 shots and going 3-for-6 from the 3-point line. Allen scored 14 points, thanks to 4-for-7 range from deep and Robinson added 11. But this game wasn't about the UF offense. The reason the Gators won was because of a defense, led by ball-hawking senior point guard Kasey Hill (8 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assist, career-high 6 steals), that was able to build a big enough lead to withstand the Rebels' furious rally and come away with a fourth straight win.

Backup forward Canyon Barry led the Gators with 20 points Tuesday.

UF was really good for about three-fourths of the game.

Then it wasn't.

"We let them back in the game," Allen said.

In the final five minutes, the Gators missed four of seven shots, turned it over three times, went 3-for-10 from the free-throw line and surrendered a couple blow-by layups.

"Focus is a word we've used as much as any other word the last month. Ask any of our guys. It's been a huge point of emphasis," Florida coach Mike White said. "We'll have a lull in practice, a lull at the end of practice, and those things carry over. You saw it tonight. Hopefully, this will be another learning experience for us, but I don't know how many you need?"

Those so-called "lulls" helped doom the Gators in second-half losses against Top 25 teams Gonzaga and Florida State earlier this season. UF had something of an episode of one early in the second half at Arkansas last week, but woke up in time. If Ole Miss had come alive a few minutes earlier — the Rebels shot 59.3 percent in the second half and went 5-for-13 from the arc — this ending may have been a lot different, too.

Credit UF, though, for putting itself in position to build a big lead, thanks to defensive pressure that held the third-highest scoring team in the SEC (the Rebels came in averaging nearly 81 points per game) to just 21 at halftime. The Gators 14 forced turnovers and built a 35-21 edge at the break. The Florida backcourt of Hill, Allen and Chiozza hounded their Ole Miss counterparts, forcing 21 turnovers total. The Rebels starting guards had nine combined turnovers, which almost equaled UF's 10 as a team.

"That's just a recipe for disaster and something we have to work on," Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy said.

Still, after guard Deandre Burnett, the league's No. 3 scorer coming it at 19.2 points per game, was held to just two in the first half, he struck for 16 in the second, including 11 in the final three minutes. His driving layup with 52 seconds left made the score 67-61 after Chiozza missed the front of a one-and-one with chance to put UF up 10.

Allen was fouled and hit both his free throws with 36.8 left, taking the lead back to eight.

Ole Miss couldn't score at its end, then fouled Hill in the backcourt to stop the clock. He missed both of his free throws with 30 seconds to go— part of the team's 8-for-17 performance in the second half from the line — and Burnett drove for another layup to make it a six-point game with 20 seconds left. Chiozza was fouled with 15.5 remaining. He bounced the first, drawing groans from the crowd, but nailed the second to make it a three-possession game … which was enough.

"We go into the locker room [after a game] and talk about ourselves and what we did wrong," Hill said. "This was all a lack of focus that let us get loose on the defensive end."

And after playing mostly lights-out defense for basically the first 30 minutes of the game, no less.

Good thing Barry, who'd been struggling a bit with his shot of late, was there in the first half to score eight straight at one point to get the Gators offense against the Rebels and their mostly 1-3-1 zone. Over the course of his 22 minutes, Barry knocked down a trio timely 3-point shots, including one in the second half that put UF up 18 with 3:48 to go. Right before the lull kicked in.

"I hadn't been playing that well offensively," Barry said. "My teammates have a lot of confidence in me and they found me in good positions to score."

Confidence is always a good thing, but now his teammates need to develop some consistency. Some killer instinct, too.

"We played with defensive intensity at times, but we have to sustain," White said. "The game is not 30 minutes. It's not 35. It's 40."

The Gators know that. Eventually, they'll have to play like they know it. After all, it's much more fun when a win feels like a win.