Florida Gators
Texas A&M
One Point Short ... Again
Sunday, February 15, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Dorian Finney-Smith admitted he had an open look at the basket. With his team down a point and just under six seconds to play, the third pass of the possession ball found Finney-Smith on the left wing of the 3-point line with about two seconds to go.
“I should have just taken it,” he said.
Instead, the junior forward did one of the things the Florida coaches constantly teach their players to do; he made the extra pass.
It was one pass too many.
Before a potential game-winning shot could leave the hands of forward Alex Murphy, the final horn sounded and yet another rabbit punch had been landed to the Gators' collective guts, this one a 63-62 loss to Texas A&M in front of a raucous crowd at Reed Arena.
For what it's worth, Murphy's shot didn't go in. The way this season has gone, wouldn't that have been rich?
As it turned out, A&M forward Jalen Jones hit two free throws with 1:12 to go and erased UF's only lead of the game -- a 62-61 margin that lasted all of 33 seconds -- and held on down the stretch as the Gators (12-13, 5-7) continued deeper into their last-possession purgatory by losing for the sixth time in their eight games -- the second straight -- that have gone down to the final play of the game.
“It's tough, man. That's two tough losses in a row,” said junior guard Eli Carter, who along with his teammates were still stinging from Thursday's 62-61 defeat when Ole Miss bombed in a 3-pointer with just over two seconds left. “We've got to dig in and be fed up with this.”
And soon.
The loss was Florida's fourth in a row, matching the longest such skid for Coach Billy Donovan since late in the 2007-08 season. It also put the Gators below .500 at this point in the season -- Valentine's Day, of all days -- for the first time since Donovan took the job 19 years ago.
Carter snapped out of a recent shooting slump by scoring 22 points, the most since he arrived at UF after transferring from Rutgers. In hitting nine of his 17 field-goal attempts (including four 3-pointers), Carter kept his team in the game practically single-handedly. Finney-Smith posted the third double-double of his career, carding 11 points and 10 rebounds, while sophomore center Chris Walker came off the bench to score 11 points on 5-for-5 from the floor to go with four blocked shots.
Florida center Chris Walker flushes a dunk for two of his 11 points at Texas A&M.
UF, though, had trouble all night matching the physicality of the Aggies (17-7, 8-4), who are very much in the hunt for a possible NCAA Tournament berth and played like it. Forwards Kourtney Roberson along with the big-guard tandem of Jones and Danuel House combined for 50 of A&M's points and were responsible for most of the whopping 42 the Aggies accumulated in the paint.
“We fought our way back but didn't have enough resistance defensively in the second half,” said Donovan, whose team trailed by as many as 11 in the first half and by eight with less than eight minutes to go before mounting a comeback. “They were just driving the ball to the basket, posting up and we were giving up layups.”
Yet with all that -- and with anyone not named Carter going a combined 2-for-16 from distance -- the Gators managed to scrap together a 13-2 in the final six-plus minutes. It was a one point Aggies lead when point guard Alex Caruso (8 points, 9 assists) missed a runner. UF turned the rebound into a transition opportunity that ended with Walker tipping in a missed layup by Kasey Hill (no points, but 10 assists, 6 rebounds) and giving UF its first lead of the game with 1:45 to go.
“We couldn't put them away,” Aggies coach Billy Kennedy said. “And that's a team struggled to close out games.”
The trend continued. At A&M's end, House was off on a jumper that Finney-Smith rebounded and fired off to Hill, who was a little too fast for his own good. In speeding up the floor, Hill lost control of his dribble and had the ball swiped by Jones.
“What should've been a fastbreak for us turned into a fastbreak for them,” Donovan said.
Jones took a straight-line drive to the hole and was fouled by Finney-Smith. The two free throws moved A&M back in front.
At Florida's end, Murphy was off on a 3-point shot with 45 seconds to go, leaving the Aggies to run clock. A good defensive possession by UF, though, forced House to take a challenged 3-pointer that Finney-Smith rebounded, as Donovan called a timeout with just 5.3 seconds left and the ball still in the backcourt.
After an A&M counter timeout, then another by Donovan, the inbound went to Carter. The plan was to use a Finney-Smith screen to get a defensive switch and preferably a lane to drive the ball. When it wasn't there, so Carter sprayed a pass to Finney-Smith popping out.
“They rotated on me, so I just passed it,” Finney-Smith said. “He was wide open. Just my instincts. That's just the way I play.”
Added Donovan: “He's very unselfish. It was an unselfish play by him.”
But the wrong one, nonetheless.
Yet fitting for a season like this one.
“We just have to be tougher and have to practice being disciplined,” Finney-Smith said. “When adversity hits, we've got to be stronger.”
They're certainly getting enough practice at that.
