The season isn’t over after all.
Despite a crazy finish where Florida basketball almost seemed as if it was giving the game away, this time the Gators did not.
Instead, it was a huge win over the second-ranked team in the country, so big that the students did something we’ve never seen at the O’Dome.
They stormed the court.
Actually, it was more of a drizzle, not a full-out storming. But there they were celebrating on the sacred Billy Donovan Court with a team that had been counted out.
Florida had a miserable start to the second half trailing by eight and unable to handle Jabari Smith, who has a track record for taking over games in the second half.
“We had a different level of energy at the start of the second half,” Florida coach Mike White said. “We had some hard conversations with each other at the first media time out.”
The Gators then outscored Auburn (24-3, 12-2 SEC) 29-13 the rest of the way as guard Tyree Appleby went off and a sellout crowd of 11,250 went nuts.
Florida almost blew it again at the end when Phlan Fleming’s pass was too high for Colin Castleton (19 points, eight rebounds, three blocks) and was picked off by Smith with nine seconds to go. But the Gators geared up defensively, not allowing Auburn to even get a shot off.
Florida had its second straight game with an anemic first-half performance – UF’s 14th half this season scoring below 30 points – and still led 22-21. The Gators gave up a 7-0 run near the end of the half and went the final 4:03 of the half without a point.
And when the No. 2 team in the country puts a 19-10 run on you and looks like it wants to pull away, even on the home court things can go wrong in a hurry.
But these Gators, now 17-10 and 7-7, started hitting shots and getting stops.
It was the 14th straight win for Florida at home against Auburn and certainly tightened up the SEC race.
The win didn’t guarantee Florida anything as far as the Big Dance goes, but it certainly was the kind of Quad 1 win they desperately needed.