SUNRISE, Fla. — Before the post-game press conference broke up late Saturday afternoon, a media member in the small gathering tossed a shoutout in the direction of Mike White, crediting the Florida coach for agreeing to play such a dangerous opponent in a neutral-site game. 

White took the comment for what it was worth. 

"Wasn't a very good decision, was it?" he shot back. 

About an hour minutes earlier, it didn't seem so bad. The Gators had a six-point lead early in the second half against Utah State and seemingly had the momentum of the sparse but partisan crowd at the BB&T Center. The UF advantage was one with just over four minutes left, when the Aggies reeled off seven straight points, took control of the game and ultimately closed out a 65-62 victory that made for quite the long bus ride from the Orange Bowl Classic back to Gainesville.

Senior shooting guard Sam Merrill, the reigning Mountain West Conference Player of the Year, scored 21 points, hitting five 3-pointers, and grabbed nine rebounds to go with five assists, helping Utah State shoot 50 percent in the second half on a day the Gators (7-4) returned to their shooting woes of earlier in the season. Forward Justin Bean had 12 points and nine rebounds, while reserve guard Diogo Britto scored six of his 11 points over the final 4:10, including four free throws in the final 25 seconds to ice the outcome. 

UF led 55-54 with 4:45 remaining when graduate-transfer forward Kerry Blackshear Jr., on his way to season highs of 22 points and 15 rebounds, went to the line for two free throws. He'd made all 15 of his attempts to that point, but bounced a pair, after which Utah State (12-2) proceeded to score seven unanswered, with Merrill, Bean and Britto all with a bucket during the run. Britto's short jumper in the paint gave the Aggies the lead, Bean's cutting layup made it a three-point game, then Merrill's killer 3 out of timeout made it 61-55 with 1:45 left. 

Florida cut it to three a couple times inside 10 seconds, but the Aggies made the plays to get out of South Florida with the victory, as Merrill, Bean and Britto combined for all their team's points in the 11-7 run to end the game. 

"They're as good a team as we'll play all season," said Blackshear, who logged more than 36 minutes, but managed to convert just three of his 14 shots. "Their maturity showed." 
 
Just four days after putting together probably their best all-around performance of both offense and defense of the season — an 83-51 drubbing of Providence in Brooklyn, N.Y. — the Gators started the game by missing their first 14 field-goal attempts and had just two points through the first nine minutes. The Aggies, though, weren't much better in scoring just seven. 

"The start was a little bit of a root canal," said Utah State coach Craig Smith, who in 2019 guided his team to 28 wins, a MWC regular-season co-championship, the league's tournament title and a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament. "It wasn't always pretty, but we were able to make enough plays." 

UF eventually righted the ship, even took a 3-point lead, eventually heading to the locker room tied at 27. The Gators led by six after nearly six minutes into the second, things went a little sideways, on both ends, from there. Florida ultimately would shoot 29 percent for the game, the team's second-worst performance of the season and first time under 43 percent in seven games. UF shot just 35.5 percent in the second half (1-for-8 from the arc), with Blackshear, forward Keyontae Johnson and shooting Noah Locke, the team's top three scorers, combining to make just nine of 39 shots (23 percent).

Those numbers proved no match for USU's 13-for-26 shooting after intermission, including 5-for-12 from deep. 

"We had to be more disciplined as a team,' said Florida freshman guard Scottie Lewis, who with 11 points, five rebounds, three steals and a couple blocks was the only UF player besides Blackshear to score in double figures. "When you're not disciplined against a team that's very disciplined, you're going to pay for it."

That six-point Florida cushion got vaporized by an 11-0 run by the Aggies, with 3s by Merrill and another from guard Brock Miller. When Locke converted a four-point play to tie the game with 8:30 to go and get the crowd back into the game, Merrill silenced them with a driving reverse layup and 3-pointer to go up five. Florida, though, reeled off six straight, with two pair of free throws from Blackshear sandwiched around a putback by Lewis that gave the Gators their 55-54 lead. 

Their last lead of the game, as it turned out. 

"They're very well coached, they've got really good players, and they run stuff that's hard to defend," White said of the Aggies. "They're one of the better teams we'll play all year, without a doubt."

The perceived nobility of scheduling such a foe was of little consolation on that long ride home and on into the Christmas holidays.