NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The day basically started with a knock on their hotel room door. Florida guards Xaivian Lee and Boogie Fland were interrupted from their routine pre-game rest to learn of a travel mix-up that left their blue Gators' road jerseys back in Gainesville. One was going to have to wear a nameless No. 99 and the other walk-on Cooper Josefsberg's No. 33.
They could have made it a bigger deal, but neither Lee nor Fland let it.
"We were like, 'Screw it! Let's do it!' " Lee said.
After staring down Vanderbilt and its maniacal Memorial Coliseum crowd, the UF equipment staff may just opt to "just do it" again.
Lee, the senior transfer from Princeton, did his new No. 99 proud by drilling a step-back, go-ahead 3-point shot with 44 seconds to play and forward Alex Condon iced a thrilling road victory with a pair of free throws with 6.1 seconds remaining Saturday afternoon in the 19th-ranked Gators' 96-92 victory over 10th-ranked and Southeastern Conference rival Vanderbilt that marked the team's most significant triumph and most complete performance of the season.
As it turned out, the only numbers that mattered were on the scoreboard.
"Everything's under my jurisdiction, but I don't necessarily check to see if we have the jerseys before we leave," said Coach Todd Golden, the first in UF program history to win four road games over top-10 teams, having done over just three seasons. "We woke up this morning, didn't have them, so we scratched and found a way to make it happen."
Rueben Chinyelu(9) hit seven of his nine field-goal attempts, all six of his free throws and grabbed 10 rebounds, half on the offensvie end.
Junior center Rueben Chinyelu, on his way to a league-best ninth double-double of the season, scored all but four of his career-high 20 points in the second half to go with 10 rebounds, while Lee equaled his UF-high of 20 points, a dozen coming during a 54-point second half when both teams were positively elite on their offensive ends.
UF (13-5, 4-1), in winning its fourth straight and moving into a tie with Texas A&M for first place in the SEC, shot 52.5% for the game, including a season-best 37.5 from the 3-point line (9 of 24), plus 25 of 30 at the free-throw line (83.3%). Vandy (16-2, 3-2), which lost its second straight after starting the week as one of just four unbeatens in the nation, countered with 50.8% overall, eight of 22 from distance (36.4), a near-perfect 20-22 at the line and just four turnovers.
The Gators, once again, enjoyed a sizable advantage on the glass, where they out-rebounded the Commodores 40-26, with a 13-6 advantage on the offensive end reflected by a 22-8 edge in second-chance points.
And yet?
"What kind of got us a little bit, they had some guys who don't make 3s make 3s," Vandy coach Mark Byington said.
That would be Lee, who came in at 25% on the season, but banged three of his seven attempts. That would also be backup guard Isaiah Brown, who on his 20th birthday had a career-game of 14 points (including 2-for-3 from distance), 6-for-6 from the free-throw line and four rebounds over 20 minutes.
"What an amazing birthday present," said Brown, the 6-foot-5 sophomore from Orlando. "Brought a win home for the team."
Sophomore guard Isaiah Brown pumps in one of his two 3-pointers on the way to a career-high 14 points.
Junior wing Thomas Haugh had 18 points and eight rebounds. Condon, who struggled with foul trouble amid relentless taunting from the Vandy student section, finished with 16 points, eight rebounds and three blocks. He went 7-for-9 at the free-throw line, knocking down two of the biggest, more pressure-packed of his career.
"They got in my head a little bit in the second half, but it was so much fun out there," Condon admitted. "Some people can get caught up in the moment, but that was a blast out there today."
For both teams. And the fans.
The two squads combined for 14 ties and 17 lead changes. The Gators went up by 11 in the first half, only to trail at halftime, 45-44, when the Commodores grabbed their first offensive rebound of the period and threw in the go-ahead bucket at the buzzer.
Vandy got off to a good start after intermission, scoring the first four points to move ahead by five. Then came a bizarre sequence – but a fortuitous one for the visitors – when Chinyelu was fouled going up for a missed putback. Golden asked for a review of the play, which showed a Flagrant 1 foul against Vandy forward Devin McGlockton, with UF awarded four free throws (two for the foul, two more for the flagrant) and the ball.
Chinyelu, at 62.9% from the line this season, made all four. When Haugh bombed in a 3 on the ensuing baseline-out-of-bounds possession, the Gators had a 7-0 run over five seconds. And the lead.
"That was the weirdest flow of any game I'd ever played in," Lee said.
What followed was a furious back and forth, but only after the Gators managed to build a nine-point advantage with just over 15 minutes to go, only to lose it in less than 90 seconds.
The score was knotted at 60 with 13:25 to go. From there, there were seven ties and 10 lead swaps down the stretch. It was 92-all when McGlockton pumped in one of a bevy of mid-range jumpers for the home team to go ahead 94-92 with 1:11 to go.
At UF's end, with the shot clock ticking down, Lee probed inside the arc and looked for an alley to drive. None was there. Instead, he bounced backward from the left wing for a confident 3-ball that swished with 43.9 to go.
"I try to take every shot with confidence," Lee said. "Whether they're going in or not."
Byington bypassed a timeout and had his team play on. With the clock winding down, guard AK Okereke (15 points) dribbled into traffic and lost the ball out of bounds with 19 seconds to go. Just the fourth turnover, but poor timing for the Commodores, fouled Lee on the inbound. He made just one of two free throws for a 96-94 lead.
Back again came Vandy without taking a timeout. Point guard Tyler Tanner, with a team-high 20 points and five assists, drove down the right side of the lane, but threw up a shot that banged high on the backboard and had no chance, caroming into Condon's hands.
Alex Condon at the line for his game-sealing free throws.
At the other end, the student section was in full-blown mock mode – "AIRBALL! AIRBALL!" – but Condon didn't look like a 65.6% shooter. He swished both for a four-point lead and six seconds later joined Haugh, Lee, et all doing Gator chomps at the Vandy students.
"It's fun to finally win one of those tight ones," said Lee, a reference to UF's five losses coming by a combined 17 points. "I feel like it's the first one of the season where we kind of pulled it out at the end after facing adversity in the second half. It's fun to win on the road, especially with a big student section like that."
The end of the day was quite the contrast from its start. Kind of like the difference between No. 1, the digit on Lee's jersey the first 17 games, and No. 99.
"I'd like him to wear 99 the rest of the year," Golden said. "We'll see how that goes."
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