ATHENS, Ga. — The other team's shots were falling and Florida's weren't. The Gators had watched a double-digit lead wither away. The sold-out home crowd was jacked and jumping and the Gators were starring down yet another heapin' helping of late-game adversity Saturday at Stegeman Coliseum.
Would the Gators scoreboard watch again? Would they wish the clock to tick away again.
Not this time.
Instead, KeVaughn Allen hit a pair of crucial baskets, including a clutch 3-point shot, and his teammates battened down on the Bulldogs and made the defensive plays to close out a 62-52 on the Southeastern Conference road to halt a two-game losing skid in league play. Allen finished with 13 points, while freshman guard Noah Locke added 10, including the go-ahead gutsy, pull-up 3-ball that was part of a 12-point run in the final minutes after the Georgia erased a 10-point halftime lead and led by five with 9:36 to go.
The Gators, playing to win rather not to lose, outscored the Bulldogs 19-4 the rest of the way.
"If you want to achieve something significant, you have to take it. It's not going to just happen," UF coach Mike White said after his team acted on that very notion, given its struggles to finish games during the start to conference play. "You can't hope for an SEC win, especially on the road. You can't hope that you make a shot or a defensive stop. We're in charge of that. I thought our body language, our mental toughness … I saw a little bit of a difference."
Freshman Keyontae Johnson (11), in his first career start, scored eight points, grabbed seven rebounds, had two assists and two steals. (Photo: Tim Casey/UAA Communications)
It started with a different — and more youthful — starting lineup. White went with forward Keyontae Johnson at the forward position, giving the Gators (10-7, 2-3) their first starting lineup (along with Locke and point guard Andrew Nembhard) of three freshmen in at least 19 seasons. Johnson rewarded his coach's faith with eight points, seven rebounds (three on the offensive end), two assists and a couple steals over a career-high 32 minutes. Johnson was engaged on defense and helped his team limit the Bulldogs (9-8, 1-4), despite a torrent start out of intermission, to just 39.5 percent shooting for the game and forced 20 turnovers, a dozen in the second half. Florida scored 28 points off those Georgia turnovers.
"We stuck together and played together," Johnson said. "The crowd can make you do things we're not used to doing, but we didn't feed into that. As long as we stick together and do what we're doing, we can get the result that we got."
The win, which prevented the Gators from starting SEC play with four losses in five games for the first time in 37 years, came with a price. Fourth-year junior forward Keith Stone was carried off the floor with a left knee injury two minutes into the second half after landing awkwardly chasing a Georgia break. Stone played his best half of the season, scoring eight points in nine minutes after going scoreless through the team's first four conference games.
"Very unfortunate for Keith and for this team, which has dealt with a lot of frontcourt stuff along those lines," White said. "He was having a really good game."
So were the Gators — for the first 20 minutes.
UF scored the game's first eight points and slowly took the lead as high as 13, at 30-17, inside four minutes to go in the opening period. After UGA scored six straight, Stone nailed a 3-pointer that sent the Gators to the locker room up 33-23. At that point, the Bulldogs were six of 24 overall and just one of seven from the 3-point line.
That changed quickly.
After tallying just 23 points in 20 first-half minutes, Georgia ignited for 23 through the first seven minutes of the second period. The Bulldogs hit their first six shots, including four 3s, and needed just four and a half minutes to erase the UF lead and tie the game at 40 on a Teshaun Hightower long ball. They took their first lead on a putback E'torrion Wilridge (8 points, 8 rebounds), part of a UGA rebounding effort that showed four Dogs with at least six boards, led by center Nicolas Claxton (9 points, 12 rebounds, 6 turnovers).
When guard Jordan Harris (10 points) drove from the wing for a layup, the Bulldogs had a 48-43 lead, their largest, with nine and a half to go and all the momentum of their home crowd.
Freshman guard Noah Locke had 10 points and hit the go-ahead 3-pointer in the second half. (Photo: Tim Casey/UAA Communications)
But then Florida started chipping away.
"We went on our run and they answered it with some great shots," Wilridge said.
Great defense, too. Georgia's run was short-lived, as the Bulldogs went eight minutes without a field goal. The Gators were down 50-48 when Locke came off a screen at the top of the key and fearlessly launched a 3-ball that bottomed and put UF back in front. The Gators never trailed again, as Locke's shot accounted for points 5, 6 and 7 of a 12-0 run that eventually turned to 19-4 to end the game, including a money-ball trey by Allen (after Georgia cut the lead to four) and a driving, lefty floater when the lead was just four.
"The little things, the mistakes we made earlier this season, we fixed that a little bit [Saturday]," said Allen, who was 4-for-10 from the floor and 3-for-7 from deep on his way to a sixth straight outing of double figures. "We have to continue to get better at it, but I think that was the biggest difference in the game."
As the final second ticked away, White met Allen on the floor for a celebratory hug. As he pulled Allen close, the coach praised his go-to guy for taking the alpha role when the team had to have him.
"KeVaughn made some really big plays for us, offensively. Not that all of us had a bunch of swagger to us, but he did," White said. "Defensively, I thought we sat down in a stance and didn't hope for stops. Instead, we decided to get them."
And, in turn, decided to go and get a really big win.
