FORT WORTH, Texas — More than 11 minutes into the game Saturday, Florida already trailed by 15 points at Texas Christian. And that wasn't even the bad news. 

To that point, the Gators had scored a measly three points. 

Eight minutes into the second half, though, UF and TCU were tied. That, in itself, seemed like something of a — perish the thought — moral victory, but no one in the visiting locker room was thinking remptely along those lines after the Horned Frogs hit enough shots in the final minutes to close out a 55-50 win at Schollmaier Arena in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge. 

TCU forward Kouat Noi scored 22 points and guard Desmond Bane added 17, including a pair of free throws with 2.2 seconds left to ice the win and hand the Gators (11-8) just their second loss in six challenges. The Frogs, after blowing a 16-point lead, used a run of eight straight points midway through the second half to break open a tie game and make UF, after forging its furious rally, play from behind again and the rest of the way. 

The Frogs (15-4), winners of nine of 10 at home this season, survived despite shooting just 27.3 percent and turning the ball over 12 times in the second half against UF's amped-up defense. 

"We needed to come out with more awareness and intensity in the first half," Florida senior center Kevarrius Hayes said "If we'd done that, the second half wouldn't have had to be so perfect." 

The Gators were nowhere near perfection in this one, but the defense they unfolded after halftime was elite and enabled them to whittle away at a lead that swelled to 16 late in the first half and sat out 12 when the two teams went to intermission. They put themselves in a difficult situation by missing 14 of their first 15 shots to start the game — failing to score for nearly the game's first six minutes — against TCU's praying-mantis length and a defense that started the day ranked seventh nationally in preventing the 3-point shot. 

"A lot," UF coach Mike When said when asked what went wrong early for his squad. "A lot of TCU [defense]. A lack of poise by us. A lack of execution. Played rattled, really, and dug ourselves a hole — and the hole got bigger. Very tough start, too tough to overcome on the road in the Big 12."

But not too hard to level out.

By scoring the first half's last four points, then 14 of the 16 out of intermission, the Gators tied the score at 34 when freshman point guard Andrew Nembhard hit a 3-pointer with 13:12 to play. On TCU's next possession, UF freshman forward Keyontae Johnson (9 points, 8 rebounds), whose rebounding and defense were in the middle of his team's rally, picked up his third foul and went to the bench. The foul yielded a pair of free throws for guard Kendric Davis, which Hayes (8 points, 4 rebounds, 5 blocks, 2 steals) answered with a driving layup at the other end to tie the game at 36. 
 
That's when the Frogs scored eight unanswered, including 3s by Noi and Lat Mayen (his only shot of the game), while the Gators went nearly five minutes without scoring, including four misses (two 3s, two layups) by fifth-year senior guard Jalen Hudson, who struggled in going 2-for-10 from the floor and 1-for-5 from the arc. 

After White was called for a technical foul, twice the Gators cut the lead to four inside five minutes, but could get neither the key stop nor (when they did) the key basket to move closer. Johnson's 3-pointer with three seconds to go pulled UF within three, but Bane's free throws iced the outcome. 

"We didn't have any [points] to spare," TCU coach Jamie Dixon said. "We loaded up a bunch early, but it didn't finish out that way."

The Frogs shot nearly 43 percent in the first half, compared to the Gators' 27.9 on 8-for-29. In the end, UF was just 30.6 percent for the game and converted only eight of 27 attempts from the 3-point line just four days after tying a home court record with 18 makes from deep in a win over Texas A&M. 

"We got back in the game," Nembhard said. "But if you don't want to dig yourselves a hole you should come out a lot harder than we did."

Senior guard KeVaughn Allen, who had a season-high 31 against A&M, led Florida with 13 points and was the only player in double figures. Freshman guard Noah Locke, who had a career-high 27 against the Aggies, was just two of nine overall, 1-for-5 from the arc and had his string of nine straight double-figure scoring games snapped with seven points over 35 minutes. 

UF fell to 0-6 against teams ranked in the Top 40 of the NET, the first-year metric used to determine the NCAA Tournament field. 

"I thought our guys showed a tremendous amount of toughness and resilience in the last 20 [minutes]," White said. "We were terrific defensively in the second half, but it's hard to win at a good program, at an NCAA tournament team, when you score 50. We've got to get better offensively. And we're searching."