DES MOINES, Iowa — With 2:02 to go and his team clinging to a four-point lead, Florida senior center
Kevarrius Hayes jumped for a rebound, made contact with a Nevada player and knew what had happened even before the whistle blew.
Fifth foul.
Hayes, playing the most inspired basketball of his four UF seasons, called his teammates into a huddle and extolled them to close out a game that 10 minutes earlier was in their utter command by virtue of an 18-point lead. With that, Hayes made the walk to the bench, where his collegiate career would either end or proceed in the NCAA Tournament.
"I had complete faith," he said.
That belief was rewarded, as Hayes watched from the sidelines as the Gators never blinked, even after Cody Martin's two free throws made it a two-point game. Freshman point guard
Andrew Nembhard's driving layup — off a heady held seal in the post by backup center
Dontay Bassett — pushed the lead for 10th-seeded UF back to two possessions and the defense took over from there, holding No. 7-seed and 14th-ranked Nevada scoreless in those final two minutes and finishing off a 70-61 victory in opening-round play of the NCAA West Region at Wells Fargo Arena.
"What a game, my goodness," UF coach
Mike White said after winning his third straight NCAA opener for the program. "We did enough in the end."
With the win, the Gators (20-15) advanced into the tournament's round of 32 and Saturday will play second-seeded and 10th-ranked Michigan (29-6), after the Wolverines, national runners-up last year, moved on with a 74-55 defeat of No. 15-seed Montana in the regional nightcap.
Hayes led the Gators with 16 points on 5-for-6 shooting from the floor, 6-for-8 from the free-throw line, plus three rebounds and three blocked shots in 26 foul-plagued minutes, all the while centering a UF defense that held the Wolf Pack (29-5), champions of the Mountain West Conference, to nearly 21 points below their season average. Fifth-year senior
Jalen Hudson tossed in 15 points, all but two in the first half, to key UF out to the big lead. Freshman forward
Keyontae Johnson had 10 points, 10 rebounds and three steals for his third double-double-double in four games, while Nembhard had eight points, seven rebounds, five assists and just two turnovers in 38 minutes against a Nevada defense that went after the rookie. Senior guard
KeVaughn Allen had 10 points, all in the second half, to help UF build a big lead it would need.
The Gators shot 45.3 percent for the game and made just five of 24 attempts from 3, but made some timely late free throws on the way to going 17-for-22 from the line to help seal the outcome.
Freshman point guard Andrew Nembhard was played 40 minutes Thursday and was harassed by Jordan Caroline (24) and the rest of the Wolf Pack all night, but still finished with eight points, seven rebounds, five assists and just two turnovers in his NCAA debut.
The game did not appear to be headed for a dramatic home stretch, but they don't call it "March Madness for nothing. Just ask the Wolf Pack, who last year erased a 22-point second-half deficit to upset second-seeded Cincinnati in second-round play on the way to the Sweet 16.
They tried to do the same thing to the Gators.
"It was all clicking really well, but then we started clock-watching again and not playing to win," Nembhard said. "Yeah, we'd definitely seen that before, but we took a step in the right direction this time."
Before taking that step, they almost stepped in it. The Gators came into the game wanting to impose their walk-up pace (and will) and keep the Wolf Pack out of their preferred full-court, frenetic ways. UF had control for about 25 minutes, before Nevada got the tempo to its liking for the final 15 minutes.
"We were just trying to slow them down in transition and make them take tough, contested shots," Hudson said.
UF used a 9-2 run to the end the first half, including dunks by Hayes and Hudson over the final 18 seconds, to take a 37-28 lead to intermission. A 10-0 run in the second half had the Gators up by 16, and when Hudson drove down the lane and rolled in a layup just inside 14 minutes to go, the lead was 51-33. About a minute and a half later, out of the under-12 media timeout, Nevada went to run-and-jump pressure — taking a page from the ol' Billy Donovan "white" press — by double-teaming the ball in both full-court
and half court, something the Gators had not seen before.
"We tried to junk it up defensively and our guys executed the game plan great to try to speed them up," Wolf Pack coach Eric Musselman said. "We had them on their heels a little bit."
More than that, actually.
A 3-pointer by guard Cody Martin (23 points, 5 rebounds, three steals in 40 minutes) started a mini-run of six points. A floater by Johnson had UF up 12 at the 8:18 mark, but then came a burst of nine straight points by the Pack, with Martin and his twin brother, Caleb (19 points, 8 rebounds, 4 steals, 6 turnovers), doing the the damage and pulling Nevada within three, 58-55, with just over five minutes left. UF, meanwhile, over eight straight possessions, missed four field-goal attempts, had three turnovers, clanged a one-and-one opportunity and was outscored 22-7.
For the Gators, it was starting to feel like those frustrating disappearing-lead acts against South Carolina, Mississippi State, Kentucky … you get the idea.
"They were speeding us and we were making jump passes, which are not allowed in the program," Hudson said. "That was out of character for us."
Added Hayes: "It was like early in the season, when we're doing well and we'd start watching the clock. We let up a little bit and they started pushing their agenda."
Three times the Pack closed within two points, the last coming when Hayes fouled out battling forward Jordan Caroline (7 points, 10 rebounds) and Caleb Martin under the Nevada goal. Out went Hayes and to the free-throw line went Martin.
"We didn't want this to be his last game," Nembhard said of Hayes, the UF senior leader.
Senior forward and locker room general Kevarrius Hayes leaves the game and turns matters over to Dontay Bassett after fouling with with 2:02 to go.
Martin knocked down both free throws to make it 63-61. At Florida's end, with the shot clock winding down, Nembhard found a crease down the right side of the lane and drove into a wide-open, uncontested layup as Bassett, the third-year sophomore on for Hayes, stood his ground in the post and blocked Tre'Shawn Thurman (7 points, 8 rebounds) from coming with weak side help. The lead was four.
On its next possession, White threw a 1-3-1 at Nevada and the Pack was taken aback. They threw it around, couldn't get into to anything, and took too long trying to find a shot, with Martin missing a 3 and Bassett clearing the rebound with just over a minute to go. Nevada had to think the Gators were going to run clock after that, but Johnson, from just inside the free-throw line, saw Bassett come clean under the basket and bounced him a pass into the post. Bassett two-handed the ball and went up for a two-handed flush and Thurman facial that took the lead to six.
"Just trying to make a play," Bassett said.
As it turned out, Bassett made three huge ones (the seal, the rebound, the dunk) in the last minute, as Hayes cheered him on from the bench.
And survived to play another game. At least.
"Our connectivity toward the end showed how we've grown together as a team," Hayes said. "We had to stand together and eventually we dug ourselves out and did enough to finish the game."
Just like he told them to. Just like he believed they would.
