Two straight UF losses snowballed to three in a hurry Thursday night.
This one wasn't supposed to happen.
Arkansas (16-11, 5-7 Southeastern Conference) eliminated any outside shot the No. 15 Gators (22-5, 8-4 SEC) may have had at an SEC regular-season title with an 83-74 upset in the O'Connell Center.
The Razorbacks, who have now won four straight games, returned the favor for their 16-point loss to UF in Fayetteville on Feb. 1, halting UF's 14-game home winning streak and undefeated record at home this season.
"Just really disappointing with our lack of consistency and ability just to play with toughness on either end of the floor," UF coach Amanda Butler said. "We're just not being aggressive enough, and it's really hard to understand why that's happening."
UF trailed from the start and led for just 16 seconds the entire game, struggling most of the night to find enough energy to fight back from deficits.
Marshae Dotson scored the first 9 points for UF and finished with 20.
Meanwhile, Sha Brooks, who had two fouls in the first six minutes, tried to keep her team alive. She led all scorers with 27.
But UF failed to have balanced scoring - only four UF players were on the board at halftime.
UF cut the lead to 4 on a Steffi Sorensen 3-pointer with 32.3 seconds left in the game after being down 11 with 1:20 remaining, but it was too little, too late.
The Gators will now try to redeem themselves on Sunday at 1 p.m. against South Carolina (10-14, 2-9 SEC).
Butler knows that redemption is not going to come easily, though.
"The most frustrating part about it is the only thing that's going to get you out of a losing slump in this league is toughness and fight," Butler said. "At this point in the year, the toughest teams are the ones that are going to continue to excel or begin to excel."
