Out-toughed and overwhelmed, No. 5 Gators beaten at their own game at home by Missouri

[ad_1]

GAINESVILLE — Florida coach Todd Golden didn’t see it coming.

He hopes he doesn’t have to witness it again.

Tuesday night’s no-show against Missouri came a day after the No. 5 Gators (15-2, 2-2 SEC) rose to their highest ranking since 2017 and a week after a historic drubbing of top-ranked Tennessee. Most troubling to Golden following a 83-82 loss was the unranked Tigers out-toughed and overwhelmed his team on its home court, where UF had won 16 straight.

“This team has been pretty consistent with the effort and the physicality,” Golden said. “To Missouri’s credit, I thought they laid it on us in the first half, and we seemed like we were a little surprised, caught off guard. I don’t know if we felt like we could just kind of go play and that it would all work out.

“They set the terms of the game early on, and it took us too long to battle back.”

A second-half comeback fell short as the Gators — a 10.5-point favorite — failed to capitalize on opportunities, were beaten on the backboard and could not contain Missouri veteran sharpshooter Caleb Grill. The 24-year-old graduate transfer finished with a team-high 22 points behind 6 3-pointers and a pair of free throws with five seconds remaining to make it 83-79.

Before Grill’s game-clinching shots, the Tigers (14-3, 3-1) were 14 of 26 from the foul line. But the Gators themselves missed 10 free throws on 31 tries during a marathon game that lasted two hours and 33 minutes.

The killer misses were consecutive clanks by point guard Walter Clayton Jr. after he was fouled on a 3-point attempt. Clayton is a career 87.6% free-throw shooter who was 6 of 6 when he stepped to the line with UF trailing 75-70 and 2:38 remaining.

“Very uncharacteristic,” Golden said. “But the reality is that was one possession of a probably 75-possession game. That was definitely not the reason why we lost.”

After Clayton sank his third attempt, Grill drilled his final 3 on the next possession to push Missouri’s lead to 78-71,…

[ad_2]
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/toughed-overwhelmed-no-5-gators-000000007.html

Author : Orlando Sentinel

Publish date : 2025-01-16 00:00:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.