Everything was falling Wednesday night for Ole Miss, even this falling-away, off-balance floater from Allen Flanagan (7), with the contest from UF's Will Richard (5).
Rebels Have Their Way in Rout of Gators
Thursday, January 11, 2024 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
OXFORD, Miss. – Both junior guard Walter Clayton Jr. and freshman forward Alex Condon invoked the same word during their brief and quiet postmortem interviews outside the Florida locker room late Wednesday night.
Pride.
Neither player thought the Gators showed much in allowing Ole Miss to shoot an other-wordly 75 percent in the second half and basically score at will on the way to a 103-85 blowout victory at the JB Pavilion.
"They play hard, we knew that, but at the end of the day that's us. That's pride," Clayton said. "You just can't let that happen."
Added Condon: "Have some pride and not be happy taking the ball out of the net every possession."
That was pretty much what Florida (10-4, 0-2) did all night, especially in that second half when the Gators surrendered a whopping 59 points and, eventually, allowed a Southeastern Conference opponent to hit the 100-point mark for the first time in 16 years, a run of 298 games dating to a 104-82 loss to Tennessee on Feb. 5, 2008. The Rebels' 103 points was the most scored in their arena's nine year history and the most by an Ole Miss team since 2001.
Mississippi forward Jaemyn Brakefield poured in a season-high 28 points, guard Matthew Murrell threw in 23 more and wing Allen Flanigan, the transfer from Auburn, had 17. Together, the trio combined to make 25 of 39 shots (64.1 percent). Impressive, huh? Well, the rest of the Rebels (14-1, 1-1) went 14 of 27 (51.8 percent) and put on quite a show in improving to 10-0 at home this season, the program's first under Chris Beard, and bounced back resoundingly from Saturday's 90-64 loss at sixth-ranked Tennessee.
"I had a really good feeling our guys would respond," Beard said. "I couldn't predict a win or a loss, but I knew we'd respond."
It wasn't like the Rebels had to bomb in a bunch of 3s to ring up their big number, either. They made just eight for the game (on 20 tries) against 42 points in the paint and 67.4 percent from the 2-point area, including 17-for-19 after halftime.
That's 89.4 percent.
"Obviously, our defensive effort was atrocious, specifically in the second half," UF coach Todd Golden said.
The game was so lopsided it reduced an obvious secondary storyline – a scoreless night of just 3 minutes, 34 seconds for sophomore guard Riley Kugel – to a footnote, with Golden saying only, "I didn't think he had it tonight."
Ole Miss guard Jaylen Murray (5) sizes up UF counterpart Riley Kugel during the Rebels dominance on offense.
The Gators fell behind by nine in the first period, but managed to pull within four, 44-40, at the break. When the teams returned to the floor, the Rebels didn't waste much time initiating their second-half onslaught.
Before the first media timeout, Brakefield converted an old-fashion 3-point play and a conventional one on back-to-back possessions to go up 11. While the Gators were missing 10 of their next 12 shots, the Rebels were dropping 11 of 15 to start the half and jumping ahead by 20 with 12 minutes to go.
And that was the way things played out the rest of the game, with the Rebels staying hot. Ole Miss hit its last six field-goal attempts of the game, thus treating the home crowd to a rare triple-digit output.
UF shot 41.3 percent for the game, just 38.6 in the second half, and had trouble all night dealing with Mississippi's full-court pressure and ball-screen defense, not to mention the length of 7-foot-5 center Jamarion Sharp, who had a school-record nine of the Rebels' 16 blocked shots. The Gators turned the ball over 15 times leading to 24 Ole Miss points.
"They definitely did a good job of pressuring us and taking us out of our stuff, but we knew that was coming. That's how they play defense and we just weren't able to run what we wanted to," Clayton said. "On offense, they hit a lot of tough shots and got a lot of offensive rebounds."
Then he summed it up the evening perfectly.
"They just punked us."
Gators guard Walter Clayton Jr. (center) led UF had 23 points and five rebounds.
Clayton led his team with 23 points and five rebounds, followed by 18 from grad-transfer point guard Zyon Pullin. Condon tallied his second double-double of the season with 11 points and 15 rebounds, including 10 on the offensive end, the most by a Florida player since at least 1996.
Condon, though, took no satisfaction in his individual performance. Instead, he mentioned the P-word three times in speaking to the team's performance.
"It's an effort thing. It's being soft defensively," Condon said. "That's pride."
And the Gators had theirs taken by an opponent that took a similar beating four days earlier. That's going to happen a lot around the SEC this season.
"They got us," Golden said. "Bottom line, end of story."
