NEW ORLEANS — It’s a long walk from the press conference to the locker room.
After Brad Beal, Patric Young and Erik Murphy wrapped up their media session following Saturday’s loss to Kentucky, they began the return trip through the bowels of New Orleans Arena.
Down the hall lined with blue curtains, up a ramp, across a tunnel, through a marble hallway, down the declined concrete path with white cinderblock walls and through the third door on the left. It was an about 180-step, 400-foot trip that Beal, Young and Murphy made slowly, stoically and in near complete silence.
They’d just finished their best game in weeks, but you’d never know it by their faces. They were down, disappointed, frustrated that their last and best shot at beating No. 1 Kentucky had slipped through their grasp.
“They should be,” coach Billy Donovan said. “I would be disappointed if they felt like, ‘Wow, we really played hard, and happy day!’ I want them to be bothered. They should be bothered. Not to say this should linger on for two weeks, but they need to understand that you can give that kind of effort in the NCAA Tournament and you go home.”
If Florida gives that kind of effort in the Tournament, it might be a while before they have to go home.
As players sat in the locker room, regrouping from the most physical game of the year, the truth started to dawn on them: They can survive without Will Yeguete. Even in a losing effort, that was proven Saturday.
“Right now we were so close to winning that game that we’ve got a bad feeling from losing,” Young said after a few minutes. “I guess looking back at it we’ll say there’s a lot of positives.”
UF hit 50 percent of its threes after failing to crack 30 percent from beyond the arc in its first two losses to UK.
The Gators ran an efficient offense and got career games from Beal and Murphy.
Leading scorer Kenny Boynton had only two points on 1-of-9 shooting, but Florida managed to stand toe-to-toe with the nation’s best team for 39 minutes.
If they’d been sent to the foul line more than just twice, the Gators could be looking at a Sunday matchup against Vanderbilt with an SEC Tournament championship and NCAA Tournament three seed on the line.
“If we go as hard as we did today, I think we can do it without Will,” Boynton said. “We lost, and we’re never happy with a loss, but with the effort we put out today we’ve got to be happy with the way we played as a team.”
“That’s the number one team in the country, right there,” Erving Walker said. “They’ve been all year, and we were right there basically in a road game with them.”
When Yeguete went down with a broken foot, the Gators had to adjust. New rotations and different roles needed time to develop, but now the Gators are ready.
Florida has put itself in a position where its fate will be determined by whether it knocks down shots. They’ve got the rest figured out.
Relying on 3-point shooting is dangerous — and I’d argue nearly impossible — formula for winning a title, but at least it gives the Gators a chance. UF won’t be let down by leadership, team chemistry, role confusion or maturity. The way it handled those things on Saturday proved that.
“To be honest, I think we’re perfectly fine,” Beal said. “We all are still confident in what we’re capable of doing. We just displayed that we can just compete just about with anybody in the nation, so we’re going to come in with a lot of confidence going into the Tournament.”
Contact Greg Luca at gluca@alligator.org.