The 13th ranked Florida Gators have moved within a game of the SEC East lead. The Gators avenged an earlier loss to Georgia, beating the 25th ranked Bulldogs in Athens Saturday night 82-71 for their fourth straight win. The victory gives the Gators a 5-3 record in the SEC East. Georgia fell to 6-3. Both teams are trailing Kentucky, which improved to 6-2 on Saturday.
The Gators went into the halftime lockerroom with a 42-33 lead. They increased that lead to 71-56 when Brett Nelson made one of his two three- pointers in the game. But the Gators missed three consecutive one and one free throw opportunities and Georgia took advantage, cutting Florida's lead to 71-64. The poor free throw shooting down the stretch didn't make head coach Billy Donovan very happy.
"With about 3:40 to go in the game, we missed 3 straight one and one's," said Donovan in his postgame radio interview. "Those three guys (Matt Bonner, Udonis Haslem and Brent Wright) went to the free throw line, didn't look confident (at the line) to me. That bothered me. They've got to step up and do that (make free throws)."
On the other hand, Donovan liked the pace of the game. "I wanted to force them to run up and down the floor every single possession," said Donovan. "In Gainesville, with our injuries and our lack of depth, we could never play that way." The Gators lost that game to the Bulldogs 75- 72 on January 17th.
Nelson led five Gators in double figures with 18 points. Matt Bonner scored 17, Teddy Dupay had 14, Udonis Haslem 11 and Major Parker 10. Parker hit a trio of three-pointers, including two key treys in the second half when Georgia cut the Gator lead to nine points each time.
Georgia's D.A. Layne, who was held to six first half points, wound up the game's high scorer with 23 points.
The Gators are 15-4 overall. The Bulldogs are 13-9.
Florida will play the red-hot Kentucky Wildcats Tuesday night in Lexington. Tip off is set for 7:30 p.m. eastern.
