Next-Day Takeaway

NEXT-DAY TAKEAWAY
South Carolina 77, No. 20 Florida 72
Three leftover thoughts from Wednesday's home loss.

1) 1) It was dubbed "Superhero Night," with DC and Marvel emojis assigned to each Florida player. Fun stuff. Even point guard Chris Chiozza came out before the game in costume — "The Flash," of course. But then South Carolina showed up with the Kryptonite. To deal with the rough-and-ready Gamecocks, the Gators had to be ready to match USC's physicality and effort. Florida was OK on that front, but the Gators were horrendous on defense; one of their worst overall performance of the season on that end. Scouting reports provide answers to the test. They tell you that Chris Silva prefers to drive right. Yet, there he was in the final minutes, with UF down three, putting the ball on the floor and driving right (and right) past Kevarrius Hayes for a layup. The scouting reports emphasized the necessity to fight through screens. Yet, there was Wesley Myers and friends squaring up for some wide-open long ones when UF defenders, even the normally super-sound Chiozza at times, got caught up in traffic or out of position. Myers had hit just seven 3s in seven Southeastern Conference games coming in, but three of them came in the loss to Tennessee four days ago. The Gators were warned of a potential warming. Just like they were warned not to get too ramped up from beating Kentucky four nights earlier. Celebrate it, Coach Mike White told his team, but remember it's just the seventh of 18 conference games. So what happened? They let a team that oftentimes struggles to score and hits 3s — USC was averaging 65 points per game on the SEC road and making just 6.1 3s per game — get too many easy post touches, too many clean looks from distance. Make that four out of five wins for South Carolina in the series. The Gamecocks would appear to have a blueprint for beating the Gators, and it starts with coming into the game confident that they'll emerge as the tougher team. The winning one, too. The two play again Feb. 10 at Columbia.

2) Kudos to redshirt freshman Dontay Bassett. The little-used center/post forward was needed when Hayes got in foul trouble. Coming into the game, the 6-foot-9, 240-pound Bassett had scored only seven points in 11 games this season. In eight first-half minutes, he scored eight of his career-best nine points, hit both his field-goal attempts, went 4-for-5 from the line, with a rebound and blocked shot. In a loss that really cut UF's momentum at the knees — and on a team so thin in the front court -- he was one of the lone bright spots. Bassett has absolutely no problem dealing with USC's physicality. If anything, he's shown in practice that he embraces contact. His problem is channeling that physicality without fouling. He did that better than at any time this season Wednesday. What he put on tape earned some trust from his coaches and likely some more quality minutes down the line.

3) Yes, the loss was a bad one, especially given the high the Gators were riding after winning at Kentucky. But before everyone hops off the bandwagon, let's step back, survey some things and apply some perspective to the here and now. Florida is alone in second place in the SEC standings, a half-game behind Auburn and a full game up on Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee. The conference champion is likely to come from one of those five teams. UF has five games remaining against that pool of five: Alabama twice, plus one each against UT (road) and Auburn (home) and UK (home), plus a trip to South Carolina, which is two full games behind the Gators along with Arkansas and Ole Miss. The schedule is a brutal one because the league is deeper than it's been in years. That said, the Gators hold their fate in their hands. So does everyone else. And here's betting each of those above teams lose one at home that they're not supposed to. Did Florida make things more difficult by losing Wednesday? Absolutely. So the Gators will have to steal one elsewhere on the road to make up for it. Like they did at Kentucky.

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Players Mentioned

Dontay Bassett

Chris Chiozza

Kevarrius Hayes

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