Florida Gators

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Coach Mike White and his Florida basketball team had just absorbed an 86-71 loss Tuesday night, courtesy of host Alabama. White watched the Crimson Tide fly around the Coleman Coliseum floor, doing the kinds of the things and playing with the kind of unbridled effort he saw from the Gators in winning their first two games of the Southeastern Conference season. 

His take on the Tide was troubling. 

"I thought they played harder than us," White said. "You hate to ever admit that, but that's reality." 

A trio of Bama players scored a team-high 16 points to pace a thoroughly balanced attack that ran and guarded the entire 94 feet with abandon. Backup guard Keon Ellis got his 16 by hitting five of six shots, including all three of his 3-pointers. Guards Herb Jones and Jalen Shackelford got the bulk of their 16 on blow-bys against UF defenders who were a step behind most of the night. Reserve forward James Rojas had 15 off the bench and guard John Petty added 12 points. 

Those five players — by themselves — tallied 75 points for Alabama (8-3, 3-0), which was four more points than Florida (5-2, 2-1) managed in shooting just 39.7 percent from the floor after arriving in town with the top shooting percentage in the league at 50.6 percent. 

"They were first to the ball, getting offensive rebounds, getting to the [free-throw] line," UF guard Tre Mann said. "They just acted like they wanted it more." 

The Gators, meanwhile, acted like they wanted it in spurts. Very brief spurts, unfortunately. 

UF led 24-21 after a dunk from forward Colin Castleton (13 points, 8 rebounds) with just over seven minutes remaining in the first half, but Bama scored eight straight points to help take a 39-32 lead to the locker room, thanks in no small part to a 25-17 edge in rebounds, including 11 on the offensive end. 

The Gators, though, bounced out of the second half with seven straight points to tie the game at 39 and force a Tide timeout. Whatever Coach Nate Oats told his team in the huddle worked, as Bama tore off on a 20-4 run while UF missed eight of nine shots along the way. With 12:30 remaining, the Gators were down by 16, then eventually by 21. 
 
"That was a great effort from all of our guys defensively," Oats said afterward. "I thought we really locked in after the first eight minutes. If you take away that first minute-and-a-half of the second half, I thought our defense was really good that half as well. And Florida is a good team."

Better than it showed in the second half. 

"It was the same thing as in the first half," Mann said of the breakdowns that led to the Bama breakout. "College basketball is a game full of runs and they had a bigger run that we had. We were focused for two minutes, played hard for two minutes, then we went right back to playing like we did in the first half. It was effort, it was energy, it was attention to detail." 

The lack of those things, actually. 

The Gators were led by a season-high 18 points from guard Tyree Appleby off the bench. Mann and backcourt mate Noah Locke each had 11 points. Standout guard and defensive stopper Scottie Lewis, the team's No. 2 active scorer coming in at 14.0 points per game, was on the floor for just 11 of the game's first 30 minutes due to foul trouble and never got into the flow. Lewis finished with two points.

That Alabama was able to pull away in the second half and win so convincingly was not that big a shock. The Tide, after all, was coming off the most impressive victory of the young SEC season, having gone to seventh-ranked Tennessee, the preseason favorite to win the league, Saturday night and spanking the Volunteers by a dozen on their home floor. 

"They were playing as well as anyone in our league, as we talked about going into the game," White said. "They shared it, shot it, drove it. I thought they controlled tempo and when they wanted to play fast they got by us. At times, with that lead, they slowed it and made good decisions. They were very good in a lot of facets." 

And made UF look very average in a lot of facets.