After an electric run ignited the O’Connell Center crowd and
squared the game at 59, it looked like the Gators were going to
survive and record their sixth straight win.
But South Carolina freshman Bruce Ellington had other plans.
The guard led the Gamecocks (13-4, 2-1 Southeastern Conference)
with 23 points as they came into Gainesville and recorded a 72-69
upset victory over the Gators (11-5, 2-1 SEC) on Saturday.
Ellington took over the game’s final 2:55, recording eight points
and an assist in that span as South Carolina secured the win.
“He was great, he made clutch plays,” junior Erving Walker said.
“He’s a real good player.”
Ellington’s run to close the game silenced the Gator supporters,
who were as loud as they’d been all day just moments earlier.
With UF trailing by 10, Chandler Parsons and Kenny Boynton
connected on back-to-back threes before Erving Walker was fouled as
he converted an acrobatic layup.
The junior guard missed the free throw, but Alex Tyus was there to
follow up his miss and tie the game.
The 10-0 run took just 1:12, and the Gators seemed to have all the
momentum.
“We never think we’re out of the game,” Walker said. “Especially
when we cut it to … or tie the game, we thought it was our
game.”
But South Carolina would not be denied, and the Gators failed to
capitalize on their opportunities down the stretch.
UF missed its final five free throws—including the front end of a
one-and-one—on it’s was to a 12-of-22 performance for the game.
“The thing that killed us the last four or five minutes of the game
was we didn’t make free throws,” Donovan said. “The free throw
shooting hurt us.”
After two weeks of consistent offensive improvement, UF reverted to
early season form against South Carolina.
The Gators connected on just 26.7 percent of their first half field
goal attempts, as the Gamecocks recorded six blocks in the first 20
minutes.
“I thought (the cause was) our lack of understanding about how we
needed to attack them offensively,” coach Billy Donovan said. “We
had way too many shots blocked, we had guys driving down the lane
without a purpose getting caught up in the air. We didn’t make the
right decisions with the ball.”
As the game wore on, UF’s offensive struggles began to adversely
affect the way it played defense.
After scoring just 11 points in the game’s first 9:08, the Gators
started to lose focus on the other end of the floor. They gave up
22 points over the next 7:36, including a 15-2 run that gave the
Gamecocks a 13-point lead.
“I thought our lack of production on offense in the first half
really bled into us defensively,” Donovan said. “And that was the
thing that was most disappointing to me was our defensive
intensity.”
Some of their struggles were due to the physical play of the
Gamecocks, who became just the fourth team this season to
outrebound the Gators.
Florida frontcourt players shot just 6 for 21 in the first half as
interior defenders Sam Muldrow and Damontre Harris seemingly
contested every shot.
“It’s always going to be physical when you play against a great
frontline like those guys have,” Macklin said.
Said freshman Patric Young: “They were relentless going to the
boards just trying to get position and they never gave up. … They
just didn’t want to lose the game more than we wanted to win.”
But the Gators frontcourt turned it around in half No. 2, as they
combined to shoot 11 for 15 and the team dropped in 24 points in
the paint.
A
large portion of that effort came from freshman Patric Young, who
scored a career-high 12 points and added five rebounds.
“I thought, myself, I could get the team fired up and we’ll pick it
up,” Young said. “We were down and we picked it up a little bit,
but we didn’t play the whole game the way that we needed to.”
