BATON ROUGE, La. - The Gators entered Death Valley listening to the screams of 92,910 fans.
But when they left the field and ambled into their locker room - it was silent.
"Everybody was just thinking about how did that happen?" cornerback Joe
Haden said. "How did we just do that?"
With LSU fullback Jacob Hester's 2-yard, third-down scramble into the end zone with 1:09 remaining, No. 13 UF (4-2, 2-2 Southeastern Conference) fell in the closing minutes for the second consecutive week in a 28-24 loss at No. 1 LSU (6-0, 3-0 SEC).
It's the Gators first losing streak since 2004 when UF lost back-to-back games against Mississippi State and Georgia.
The Gators lost 20-17 against Auburn last week on a last-second field goal.
After leading 24-14 going into the fourth quarter, it appeared UF was on the verge of an upset.
But following an interception, LSU scored to close within 3 points.
Then Hester took the game into his own hands. After UF went three and out, the Tigers got the ball back on what would be the eventually game-winning drive.
Hester carried eight times for 39 yards on a drive that ate up 8:11, leaving the Gators just more than one minute to drive the field.
"We just wanted 30 more seconds," quarterback Tim Tebow said. "It wasn't quite our game. Just fought and did everything we could."
LSU prospered from its ability to succeed on fourth downs. The Tigers succeeded on all five of their attempts, and got many of them by a matter of inches.
"On one of them, our coaches said we stopped them," Coach Urban Meyer said. "If we get the ball back, then that's just a whole different game."
Meyer also made a controversial decision to call just one timeout during LSU's final drive as precious seconds ticked away, leaving UF less time to make a potential comeback.
"It was a third down and three, I believe it was, and the defense was out there," said Meyer of using the one timeout. "I wanted to rest them a minute, and I knew we wouldn't probably have the ability to use three and also save some time on the clock for the offense to go down and try to have an opportunity to win the game."
Tebow heaved a Hail Mary from the LSU 46-yard line as time expired, but LSU defenders batted it down in the end zone.
While the Gators have lost all probable hope at defending their national title, it is still possible to represent the East Division in the SEC Title game if they win out.
"(LSU is) going to be there, and that's our goal - to get there," Tebow said. "We can still make it to Atlanta and win the SEC Championship. We have to still believe in each other and the coaches and fight the rest of the season."
But in the meantime, the Gators? bye week couldn?t have come at a better time. This one hurts bad.
BLeading the whole entire game and then coming up short in the end - that hurts,C said Haden, who had 10 tackles as well as two tackles for losses. BEverybody laid their heart out on the field. We gave everything we had, it just didn?t fall our way this time. It?s not going to happen like that all the time. It can?t.C
