Gators guard Brandon McKissic, like his teammates, didn't find much of anything good around the basket in Wednesday night's 83-70 loss to the 15th-ranked Crimson Tide.
Bama Blitzes Gators in Second Half
Wednesday, January 5, 2022 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida players and coaches lamented the way the Gators started Wednesday night's second half, when visiting Alabama became the aggressor and tone-setter in their Southeastern Conference matchup at Exactech Arena.
"Our energy level coming out of the locker room was not what it needed to be," Coach Mike White said.
Added senior guard Myreon Jones: "We didn't have the grit we had in the first half. We got out-hustled and they out-physicaled us."
And this from senior forward Colin Castleton: "We didn't play as hard in the second half."
Should that have been the case against an opponent as game as the 15th-ranked Crimson Tide, the defending SEC regular-season and postseason tournament champions? Of course not. Could sub-standard effort have weighed into Bama's eventual 83-70 walkover win? Sure, especially since the Tide outscored the Gators by 16 points after intermission.
But some numbers in the box score absolutely jumped off the stat sheet.
UF committed a season-high 20 turnovers.
The Tide pounded the Gators for 20 offensive rebounds.
Those turnovers and offensive boards allowed Bama to get off 20 more field-goal attempts.
The Gators weren't overcoming that trio of minus-20s. No chance.
Bama put all five starters in double-figure scoring, led by 19 points each from point guard Jahvon Quinerly and forward Juwan Gary. The Tide (11-3, 2-0) only shot 40.3 percent for the game, but their quantity of offensive opportunities — 72 shots, including 32 from the 3-point line — smothered what the Gators (9-4, 0-1) were able to manufacture, as they shot 42.3 percent on just 52 attempts (a better percentage than Alabama) for the game, but just 34.6 percent in the second half.
Alabama had a handful of slam-dunk finishes Wednesda night, like this one by 7-footer Charles Bediako.
Gary hit seven of his 11 shots and grabbed eight boards. Quinerly was just 7-for-18 overall and two of nine from deep, but also pitched in five rebounds and five assists. Guard Jaden Shackelford, the league's No. 4 scorer, had 14 points over a game-high 36 minutes. Forward Keon Ellis had 13 points and four steals, and 7-foot center Charles Bediako finished with 11 points and four rebounds.
UF led by three at halftime, thanks to 50-percent shooting, despite not making a field goal over the final three minutes of the period. Bama scored the first five points after intermission and led by one, 44-43, five minutes when it took off on a 15-1 tear to take control.
"We just came out with a lot of energy; everybody on the court, on the bench," Alabama coach Nate Oats said. "We got a lot of deflections, steals, rebounds. That was the biggest change in the game for us."
And you know what didn't change for Florida? The Gators played the first nine-plus minutes of the second half the way they did the last four of the first; without making a field goal. Over 11 minutes and 18 seconds that bridged the two halves, UF missed 10 straight shots and turned the ball over nine times. When Jones dropped his first 3-pointer of the game — he missed his first five attempts and was just four for his last 32 attempts over the last six games at the time — it kicked in some life for the home team. Jones actually made a trio of 3s over a nearly four-minute span to start an 18-7 run that drew the Gators within five, 66-61, with six minutes to play.
Flashback to Jan. 4, 2020, when UF erased a 21-point Alabama lead to win in double-overtime, engineering the second-biggest comeback in program history.
"That started to go through my head," Oats said.
Not for long.
Backup forward CJ Felder (1) was a bright spot for the Gators, finishing with season highs of 12 points and six rebounds in 22 minutes.
Then came a couple more Florida turnovers, including a steal by Ellis, the Eustis, Fla., product, who finished the live-ball transition opportunity with a reverse dunk to put the Tide up nine. A free throw by Anthony Duruji cut the lead to eight, but the next time down Bama executed a perfect baseline-out-of-bounds play that got Shackelford a wide-open 3-pointer in the corner and the Tide an 11-point lead.
The Gators, again, scraped to get the margin to six with three minutes to go on a post-up and dunk from Castleton (19 points, 7 rebounds), but the Tide cut through the UF full-court pressure for back-to-back layups to go up by double digits. That was it.
After the game, White was asked if the team's COVID pause that cost the Gators their regularly scheduled conference opener at Ole Miss last week affected his team.
"No, not going there," he said. "We have to come out in the second half throwing haymakers like we did at the beginning of the game. I loved our energy at the tip."
Second half, not so much. White said that'll be a topic of discussion in the days to come.
Here's betting ball-security and boxing out will be, also.
