DES MOINES, Iowa — At halftime Saturday night, Florida went to the locker room trailing mighty and 10th-ranked Michigan by just four points, with Gators coach Mike White stunned the game was as close as it was. He'd watched one defensive mistake after another on the end of the floor that usually checks all the fundamental boxes, and thought if he could get his guys back to guarding like themselves in the second half the path to a possible Sweet 16 berth just might open up.

The message and challenge were clear. 

"Let's wake up, defensively!" White told them. 

Twenty seconds into the period, Wolverines guard Ignas Brazdeikis hit a 3-point shot. Not 40 seconds later, 7-foot center Jon Teske caught a lob and dropped in an easy layup. Less than a minute later, U-M guard Jordan Poole drove through the UF defense and converted an old-fashion 3-point play. Then came a wide-open, long-ball 3 by Poole that completed an 11-point Wolverine flurry that needed barely two minutes to play out and put U-M ahead by 15 points. 

Not the wake-up call White had in mind. 

Instead, the maize-and-blue blink-of-an-eye run buried the Gators in a hole they never recovered from, and second-seeded U-M, the defending national runner-up, had little trouble finishing off Florida and its season with a 64-49 drubbing in second-round play of the NCAA Tournament West Region at Wells Fargo Arena. 

Poole led all scorers with 19 points, while point guard Zavier Simpson stuffed his box-score line with nine points, nine rebounds and nine assists in facilitating his team. The Wolverines shot plenty well in banging 42 percent from the floor, with nine 3-pointers, to beat a Gators squad that not only struggled to score all season, but had to do so this time against a defense ranked No. 1 in the nation in overall efficiency. 

Instead, Florida (20-16) finished with its lowest-point total in four years. 

"There isn't really much to say," assessed UF freshman guard Noah Locke. "They lock in defensively and are just a really good team." 
 
The Wolverines (30-6), who advanced to next week's West Region semifinals in Anaheim, Calif., posed a difficult matchup, without question. In addition to that top-shelf defense, the U-M offense rated 20th nationally, making them one of just seven teams in the country rated in the top 20 in both. The Gators needed to play a much cleaner game than the one that unfolded, especially in shooting just 28.6 percent in the second half and making some uncharacteristic decisions/turnovers against thoroughly disciplined bunch of U-M perimeter defenders backed by the massive Teske parked in the post to clean up any mistakes at the rim. 

"I just thought they were super-disruptive and played within their principles," said UF fifth-year senior swingman Jalen Hudson, who went 4-for-15 from the floor and 3-for-10 from distance as the lone UF player to reach double figures with 11 points. "It was hard for us to get into the lane and shake them at all." 

Added freshman point guard Andrew Nembhard (7 points, 8 assists, 4 turnovers, 3 steals): "I think it was just how disciplined they were, shutting down driving angles and not letting us get our shots off easily with good ball-screen coverage. Overall, their defense throughout the game was just really consistent."

More like stifling. 

Even so, Florida stuck around by shooting nearly 41 percent in the first half, including 6-for-12 from the 3-point line. The Gators showed some grit in falling behind by nine early, at 15-6, then twice fighting back to the tie the game, the last time at 23-all. UF was down just 29-28 after a layup by senior center Kevarrius Hayes (8 points, 7 rebounds) with 2:04 to play, but backup guard Isaiah Livers (10 points) dropped a 3-pointer for the final bucket of the first half and sent U-M to intermission ahead 32-28. 

"We were making mistakes, but still hanging around," Hayes said.

White showed his players video clips of those mistakes and how to correct them. UF promptly retook the floor and made a bunch more. 

Ironically, maybe the most egregious — certainly the most ill-timed — occurred during a stretch when the Gators held the Wolverines without a field goal for more than seven minutes, just after reeling off nine straight points to cut that 15-point deficit to just six. 

The Wolverines were struggling a bit against UF's changing defenses. They were in a late-shot-clock situation when Poole got the ball on the left wing and hurried a 3-point attempt before the 30-second buzzer sounded. Hudson fouled him — the third time in the game the Gators hacked a 3-point shooter — and put Poole at the line for three free throws. He made them all.

Instead of a defensive stop and chance to cut further into that lead, U-M went back up by nine. 

"You can't foul jump-shooters. It's one of the defensive no-no's in our program — most programs — and it's written on the wall and talked about every day," White said. "We got to be more disciplined than that." 

That play was at the 13:55 mark, so there was still plenty of time, but playing catch-up against the No. 1 defense is hardly a recipe for success for a team that fights to score. The Gators hit just four of 16 field-goal attempts the rest of the way — "We freaked out a little bit offensively, and they'll do that to you," White said — and for the game managed to shoot just two free throws. 

Here's how Teske put it: "We shut the water off."

Did they ever. 
 
The 49 points was the fewest scored by a Florida team since a 64-49 loss to No. 1 Kentucky in the quarterfinals of the 2015 Southeastern Conference Tournament. That was the program's last game under former Coach Billy Donovan. 

White arrived about six weeks later, and six months later debuted a team with a couple freshmen — Hayes and KeVaughn Allen — who along with Hudson, a transfer from Virginia Tech a year later, played their final game Saturday in a UF uniform. 

White pulled the trio during a stoppage with 24 seconds to go. The three, together, hugged out their Florida careers in front of the team's bench, having helped guide the program to the NCAA Tournament each of the last three seasons.

"It's disappointing," said Allen, who scored eight points to finish with 1,723 for his career, the sixth-most in UF history. "It did not end the way that we wanted it to. We made a lot of mistakes in the first half and spent the entire second half trying to catch up and correct what we did wrong." 

Now they have a lot of time to think about what went wrong, but in time will recall fondly the things that ultimately went right over the course of a roller-coaster season that ended with 20 victories and the program's 20th NCAA berth.

"We never gave up," Hudson said. "We never laid down, we just managed to find a way. We banded together." 

And went out together against one of the best teams in the country.