Florida Gators
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Kansas
Rocked and Chalked: Jayhawks Storm Back from 18 Down
Saturday, December 6, 2014 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Few leads are safe at storied Phog Allen Fieldhouse. The team that plays there is too good, the maniacal home-court advantage is too intimidating.
Want to keep a lead -- even a fat one -- better keep your poise.
And make shots.
The Florida Gators did little of the former and next to none of the latter Friday night, surrendering an 18-point second-half advantage to 11th-ranked Kansas as the Jayhawks, buoyed by their passionate, packed-in fans, pounded past UF and raced away to a 71-65 victory before a crowd of 16,400 that made as much noise as humanly possible. 
In losing to the second college basketball blueblood in as many games, UF went 7 1/2 of the game's final 8 1/2 minutes without making a field goal, while KU scored 17 unanswered points. The drought was all too reminiscent of Florida's brickfest at the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas last week when the team shot a collective 34 percent from the floor and 26 from the 3-point line over three games, including losses to Georgetown and North Carolina.
What made this meltdown (34.7 percent from field, 28.6 from distance after halftime) all the more frustrating for Coach Billy Donovan was that it all fell apart after his team put together a sensational first half the likes of which the UF staff envisioned being this team's identity going into the season.
Instead, Florida (3-4) fell below .500 for the first time in 17 seasons.
“Give them credit for getting out and pressuring,” Donovan said of KU and its second-half jailbreak. “We didn't respond to it.”
KU sophomore guard Wayne Seldon, just five days removed from an 0-for-10 outing in a win against Michigan State, scored 14 of his career-high 21 points in the second half and keyed an end-to-end awakening for the Jayhawks (6-1) that marked the program's biggest halftime comeback in 21 years.
Freshman forward Cliff Alexander had 12 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. Robinson went 10-for-10 from the free-throw line, as Kansas hit 27 of 32 as a team, compared to just 7-for-10 from Florida.
One team gave 22 really quality minutes, the other played harder and more ferociously for the final 18 minutes, and had the backing of the best home-court advantage in the country.
“They picked up their pressure, their intensity,” UF senior center Jon Horford said. “Instead of attacking as a team, we kind of backed up and let them dictate which way momentum was going to go. That's just something we have to do better. No excuses. They did a really good job.”
The Gators, though, showed what they're capable of in the first half. Unlike the Carolina game a week earlier -- when the Tar Heels scored the game's first 12 points and the Gators missed their first 10 shots -- UF did not let a relatively show start shake confidence. The Gators ran off 14 straight points over a 4 1/2-minute stretch, sharing the ball magnificently and keep the ball ahead of the Jayhawks defense, and took the lead out to as much as 17 before heading to the locker room up 39-24. All eight Gators that checked into the game scored.
Florida shot 53.6 percent for the half, compared to KU's 34.8.
Yes, the Gators were capable of this. No, the Jayhawks weren't this bad.
“It was a terrible start and our best players were not very good in the first half,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “Those roles reversed in the second half.”
Said Donovan: “I knew they were going to come out -- they're down 15 and they're at home -- and turn up the heat. ... We responded well.”
Initially, he meant.
UF scored six of the first nine points after halftime to take the lead to 45-27 with 16:35 to go after freshman forward Devin Robinson (team-high 13 points, 5 rebounds, pictured right) hit a driving shot.
Over the course of the next eight minutes, the Gators made just three field goals, with the last one, a Robinson 3-pointer with 8:34 remaining, giving Florida a 52-43 lead.
“The crowd got it into it,” Gators sophomore center Chris Walker said after scoring a career-high 12 points on 5-for-6 shooting and grabbing five rebounds. “They started to hit tough shots and we couldn't hit anything.”
UF's next 13 possessions: eight missed shots, two trips to the free-throw line, and three turnovers.
The Jayhawks, meanwhile, scored 17 straight at one point, with Seldon hitting contested perimeter shots and Alexander getting to the line, and turning a nine-point deficit into an 11-point lead until UF point guard Kasey Hill hit a 3-pointer with 1:07 to go.
Before Hill's shot, the Gators had just 13 points through the half's first 19 minutes. That's not going to win at the O'Connell Center, much less Allen Fieldhouse.
“We had our chances. We had some shots,” Donovan said. “But we had too many turnovers and too many empty possessions in the second half.”
The end result was the biggest home comeback by the Jayhawks since they trailed UCLA by 15 at halftime in 1993. They also avoided the 10th home loss during Self's 12 seasons at KU.
Yeah, just nine home losses since the 2003-04 season. It's that tough to win here.
The Gators gave themselves. Then they didn't.
“You have to credit them. They had a lot of fight, a lot of passion and did a really good job,” Horford said. “In terms of what we could have done better? Had more resiliency, stayed together as a team, continued to run our offense. ... .”
And make some shots.
Ultimately, in this game, you have to make shots.
