Florida Gators

STARKVILLE, Miss. — Another Southeastern Conference game went down to the wire for the Florida Gators. Only this time, it went their way; on the road, no less. They had to earn it with the thing they do best. 

Play defense. 

Mississippi State missed a pair of game-tying shots — good ones, both inside five feet — inside the final five seconds, with UF forward Colin Castleton batting the ball away as time expired in a 61-59 win for the visitors Saturday night at Humphrey Coliseum. The host Bulldogs failed to convert after rallying from 10 down with less than four minutes left to give them a chance to tie or even win the game. 

"We hit timely shots and came up with good defensive possessions," fifth-year senior forward Colin Castleton said. "It came down to that last stop." 

Castleton had 13 points, four rebounds, two assists and two steals, while sophomore guard Will Richard threw in 12 points on four 3-pointers in five attempts. Freshman guard Riley Kugel came off the bench to score eight points and grab five boards against the team he originally signed with out of Orlando Dr. Phillips High. Fifth year guards Kyle Lofton and Myreon Jones combined for 11 assists and no turnovers against a defense that began the day rated No. 9 nationally in overall efficiency. UF, as is its blueprint, also defended at a high level, holding a sixth league opponent (in seven games) to under 40-percent shooting and less than 66 points. 

Forward Tolu Smith led the home team with 12 points and 11 rebounds.  Florida played all but eight seconds of the second half without starting forward Alex Fudge, who left the game after being involved in a hard collision trying to draw a charge at the start of the period. Fudge went to the locker room and did not return to the bench, but was in good spirits after the game, with his status to be evaluated.

The Gators (11-8, 4-3), winners of four of the last five, opened the SEC season with a three-point loss at 20th-ranked Auburn and followed it with a three-point loss in their league home opener against Texas A&M, with both games going down to the final possession. Then came Wednesday night's road loss in a rematch against A&M, that one a two-point game decided at the buzzer. In those three games (as well as their previous three conference wins), UF mostly played from behind due to slow starts. 

This one had a different script, with Florida using an early 11-0 run to build a 16-point lead it twice blew in the second half, setting up the bare-knuckle, white-knuckle finish. 

"It's been no secret and we've talked a lot about how we're going to get off to a better start and obviously we did that tonight. I was proud of how we jumped on them," Florida coach Todd Golden said in looking back on a 33-17 lead with less than three minutes to go in the first half. "Obviously, I felt like they were going to come back on us a little bit. I didn't expect to hold a lead like that the whole game."

Mississippi State (12-7, 1-6), which dropped a third straight, came into the game as one of the SEC's worst 3-point shooting teams (.287) and lived up to the billing by missing the first eight attempts. A Bulldogs' 7-0 run to end the first half grew into a 15-3 run six minutes into the second to make it a game. The lone basket for the Gators during that stretch was a 35-point, desperation 3-pointer that Kugel threw in with Matthews in his grill. 

"They didn't like that," Kugel said with a smile, after getting a game's worth of catcalls from the crowd over his decision to play in the Magnolia State. "I got some boos, a couple 'We hate yous' and 'Riley, you suck!' I love it. It's basketball on the road. Part of the game. It fired me up."

The guy who fired up the Bulldogs was guard Dashawn Davis, the Oregon State transfer, who hit three 3s in the second half, the first with 12:39 to play play — less than a minute after Shawn Jones Jr. had hit the team's first of the game — to tie things at 40. After UF backup guard Kowacie Reeves (9 points) hit just his second 3 in six games, Davis hit another to knot the score at 43. The last tie was at 45-all when a jump hook at the shot clock from reserve center Jason Jitoboh, was followed by a 3 from Richard then an elbow jumper from Castleton to surge the Gators ahead by seven with seven minutes to go. When Kugel and Reeves bombed back-to-back 3s, the second with 3:59 remaining, the Gators were up 10. 

But barely three minutes later, when Davis drilled a corner three with 1:28 to go, the score was 61-59 and crowd was into it. 

"We were probably too tentative in the second half, but a little of that is human nature, just trying to hold onto the lead instead of being really aggressive," Golden said. "Mississippi State was playing like they had nothing to lose in the second half, knocking down shots. It ended up being the game we expected; blow for blow, the team that gets the last couple stops is probably going to find a way to win." Reeves missed a late-clock 3 with a minute to go, but MSU failed to capitalize when Matthews threw a bad pass and turned the ball over with 44 seconds to play. At UF's end, the Gators probed and tried to work for something, but settled for a Kugel 3 attempt that bounced away with 15 seconds left, with Bulldogs coach Chris Jans waving his team to play the game out. 

Forward D.J. Jeffries drove Kugel down the right side of the lane — "I didn't want to foul him and risk overtime, so I just tried to wall up," Kugel said — with Jeffries actually bodying and head-faking past his defender for an open look on the block. It missed. The ball caromed off the front end of the rim and into the hands of forward Cameron Matthews (8 points, 11 rebounds), the Bulldogs' 13th offensive board of the game. Matthews' put-back attempt hit the back of the rim and caromed back into the scrum, where Castleton managed to bump it away as the horn sounded. 

"We just dug ourselves a hole and were playing uphill the entire night," Jans said afterward. "We're disappointed." 

The Gators can certainly relate to that. This time, though, they were elated. 

"It was a dogfight," Castleton said. "The whole game." 

To the very end, with one finally falling their way. 

"For us to do this on the road, I think speaks volumes of the growth of our guys and the progress we've made the last few weeks," Golden said. "This probably would have been a hard one for us to win a month ago."