Florida Gators
Louisiana-Monroe
Gators 'Exposed' in OT Win vs Louisiana-Monroe
Saturday, November 22, 2014 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- About three-quarters of the way through a practice the night before that was pretty darn dreadful, Florida coach Billy Donovan lit into his front-line players about getting their backsides kicked in by the scout team.
“You're getting exposed!” But you know what? This is who we are!”
It's definitely who the eighth-ranked Gators were for the better part of Friday night against Louisiana-Monroe before escaping with a 61-56 overtime victory that gave the O'Connell Center crowd a far greater sense of relief as opposed to ones of satisfaction.
Michael Frazier scored 21 points, going 11-for-13 from the free-throw line with a couple big makes in overtime. Freshman point guard Chris Chiozza came off the bench to score 11 points, while senior walk-on forward Jake Kurtz, making his second straight start, had six points and a career-high 13 rebounds. Sophomore center Chris Walker, suspended for the first two regular-season games, was quiet in his UF debut with four points, six rebounds and a blocked shot. Florida capitalized on a 32-8 advantage in free-throw attempts by making 24 of them.
Good thing, too.
With their top two scorers -- forward Dorian Finney-Smith (hand) and guard Eli Carter (foot) -- sidelined by injuries, the Gators (2-1) swam upstream and spit into the wind all night offensively, while letting Warhawks (2-1), out of the Sun Belt Conference, come from eight down with less than two minutes to play to push the game into an extra period.
In overtime, though, Florida hit eight of its 12 free throws -- three of four by sophomore point guard Kasey Hill, who was 2-for-12 shooting from the floor -- while LA-Monroe (2-1) was held to just five points, as the Gators inched away just enough to salvage a win while staving off what would have jumped on a short list of the most embarrassing home losses of Donovan's 19 seasons.
And this was on the heels of Monday night's utter collapse against Miami, which erased a 15-point UF lead in the second half and shocked the Gators 69-67 to end their school-record 33-game home winning streak.
“I kind of got a flashback to the Miami game. I think everybody did,” Chiozza said. “We just weren't going to let that happen again. We had to battle.”
To the end.
"Going through this makes my voice in the locker room a lot louder," Donovan said. "Maybe they be like, 'Wow, I know what you're talking about now.' "
Maybe.
The Warhawks built a 12-point first half by going 5-for-9 from long-distance, as the Gators picked up defensively where they left off against the Hurricanes four nights earlier. As in badly.
“We were atrocious in the first half on defense,” Kurtz said.
UF, though, scored the final 10 points of the period, with Chiozza bombing a 3 at the halftime buzzer to draw the Gators within 29-27.
ULM, though, opened the lead back out to six with a trio of layups in the first four-plus minutes, but from there Florida buckled down defensively, as the Warhawks made just two of their next 18 shots while the Gators -- despite just 32.7 percent shooting for the game -- scratched out enough offense to build a nine-point lead with 8:45 remaining.
From there, though, things got stagnant in the UF halfcourt and Finney-Smith (injured during the season opener) and Carter (injured at practice Thursday night) weren't an option. Heck, at one point, the Gators had two walk-ons, Kurtz and seldom-seen Lexx Edwards, on the floor at that same time; and that was in overtime.
“Doe-Doe and Eli, those guys are great all-around players and huge parts of our team,” senior center Jon Horford said. “We're much better with them, but when it calls for it we have to play like we did tonight.”
Said Kurtz: “Hey, we put five guys out there. We expect to win.”
Apparently, so did the Warhawks, who were down 51-43 with less than two minutes to go and scored the final eight points of regulation, including back-to-back 3s. The second came from guard Nick Choppola with 16 seconds to play and proved the last points scored before the horn sounded.
“We have to close out games better,” Frazier said. “We have to be more consistent the entire game. We played better defense in the second half, but we weren't very good in the first half.”
Or at the end of regulation.
But they were better in overtime.
The Gators got two free throws from Kurtz to open the extra time, but Tylor Ongwae (19 points, 8 rebounds) answered with a conventional 3-point play to put the Warhawks in front.
But after a Frazier free throw and a Florida stop, Kurtz gave Horford a nice post-feed for a dunk and two-point lead that UF was able to build on with a couple more stops in the halfcourt.
Chiozza's made one of two free throws with 12.4 seconds left to turn a 3-point lead into a two-possession game and, in essence, ice it.
“We struggled through the whole second half,” ULM coach Keith Richard said. “I'm not sure how much of it was Florida's defense or our offense because they are very good defensively.”
Donovan gladly provided a second opinion on that assessment.
“What I see, which bothers me, is this arrogance that we're really good -- and we're not,” Donovan said. “Maybe it takes moments like these. I think there's a difference between humility and a lack of confidence. They should have confidence in their ability, but they should have a level of humility that when they put a uniform on and go across the line thinking on any given night they could really be exposed.”
Like they were Friday. And the night before.
Coincidence?
“This is how we are in practice. we're up and down,” Kurtz said. “ We have to find a way to be consistent. We're good for three minutes, bad for four minutes. We can't do that if we want to be the team we need to be.”
