The energy in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center had reached a boiling point. With just 11.6 seconds left on the clock and the score all tied up at 66 apiece, the Florida Gators women’s basketball team needed one last miracle to knock off the Mississippi State Bulldogs.
Sophomore guard Laila Reynolds fiddled around in the paint for a few seconds before passing it off to senior forward Alexia Dizeko. The latter immediately roped the ball back to senior guard Jeriah Warren at the top of the key. Staring down a wide open barrel from just beyond the three-point line, Warren let her shot fly.
As the clock winded down towards all zeroes, the ball bounced off the front of the rim and high into the air. After a few moments that felt like an eternity to the O’Dome home crowd, the ball eventually sailed through the net – almost at the exact same moment the buzzer went off. Warren was instantly mobbed by her teammates as the entire building went wild.
“The only thing I was thinking was, ‘Get in, get in, get in,’” Warren said.
Thanks in part to Warren’s late game heroics, the Florida Gators (13-13, 4-8 SEC) narrowly came away with a 69-66 victory over Mississippi State (18-9, 5-8 SEC) on Sunday afternoon. UF trailed by as many as nine points in the final quarter of play before finishing the game on a 12-1 run.
Freshman guard Liv McGill led the charge for Florida’s offense once again, finishing with a game-high 20 points on 8-of-14 shooting. Reynolds chipped in with 14 points, five assists and three steals, while Warren tallied 12 points of her own (eight of which came in the second half),
Mississippi State came out of the gates stumbling, mainly from an offensive standpoint. The Bulldogs started the day 2-of-8 from the field and coughed up eight turnovers in the first quarter alone.
Nevertheless, MSU was able to stay afloat, thanks in part to its dominance on the glass. In the first ten minutes of action, the Bulldogs came down with 14 rebounds, including eight offensive boards, to the Gators’ three total and zero offensively.
While Mississippi State scrapped its way through the game’s early going, McGill spear-headed Florida’s offense with yet another hot start from the field. The freshman floor general scored more than half of UF’s points in the opening period, tallying nine points on a 4-of-7 shooting clip in that span. By the end of the first quarter, the Gators narrowly led the Bulldogs 17-14.
The second quarter opened with five lead changes, as neither squad could find a way to keep the other at bay. The Bulldogs briefly broke off on a 6-0 run to give themselves some breathing room, eventually leading 31-26 with 3:15 remaining in the second quarter.
As the first half came to a close, however, Florida seemingly flipped a switch on both ends of the floor. McGill put the team on her back once more, cutting through the MSU for a silky smooth finish before knocking down a go-ahead three ball on the following possession.
Less than 40 seconds later, she came back down the court and buried a mid-range jumper to get the O’Dome home crowd on its feet and roaring in approval. Junior forward Alexia Gassett capped off Florida’s 11-0 run with an open layup, giving the Gators a 37-31 edge going into the halftime break.
Florida’s lead grew to as large as eight points to start the third quarter before Mississippi State came right back with a massive run of its own. The Bulldogs notched a 14-3 run, thanks in part to three consecutive three-pointers from junior guard Denim DeShields, to all but erase the Gators’ remaining momentum.
UF eventually managed to stop the defensive bleeding, but not before the Bulldogs had climbed out to a 55-51 lead to end the third quarter. The fourth quarter proved to be a battle to the bloody end, with plenty of back-and-forth action between both squads.
Mississippi State led for the majority of the final period. With just under five minutes to go in the game, graduate guard Jerkaila Jordan knocked down a three-point shot to extend MSU’s edge to 64-55. From there, however, the Gators took back the reins and slowly, yet surely, clawed their way back into the game.
Dizeko kickstarted Florida’s final run of the afternoon with a timely three-ball to cut back into the deficit. Senior center Ra Shaya Kyle followed suit with a physical finish at the rack and a stepback jumper to make it a two-point game.
With just under 90 seconds to go, Gassett was fouled while going up for a rebound. As Florida was already in the bonus, she proceeded to knock down a pair of free throws to make it a tie ballgame. Following back-to-back turnovers from MSU and UF, respectively, Kyle came away with a crucial steal to give the Gators the ball back with 11.7 seconds to go.
As the crowd anxiously looked on, Reynolds received the inbound from Warren, who then parked herself atop the key. With less than five seconds to go, the senior guard found herself with the ball once more, as she let her shot rip for the win.
“I’ve seen her take millions of shots from that spot, and at that speed,” UF head coach Kelly Rae Finley said. “When I saw it take a soft bounce, I said, ‘Oh my God, it’s about to take a backwards bounce,’ because that’s just what her shot does… That was a moment that Jeriah has earned.”
Florida will return to the hardwood this Thursday for a road contest against the Texas A&M Aggies. Tip-off time there is set for 8 p.m. ET.
Contact Jack Meyer at jmeyer@alligator.org. Follow him on X @jackmeyerUF.
Jack Meyer is a fourth-year journalism major and the Sports Editor for The Alligator. In his free time, he enjoys reviewing music, spending time with friends, playing video games and going to the gym.
