See ya later, Mike White. (Photo credit: Florida Gators)
Mike White has a history of slinking out of the Stephen C. O’Connell Center with his tail tucked between his legs in defeat (he even lost to an 0-7 Texas Southern team once). Today’s game was no different: his team fought hard in spurts, but got manhandled on the boards and couldn’t hit enough shots down the stretch. And, predictably enough, he lost.
Well, actually, scratch that. Today’s game was different in one major sense: White was coaching not the Florida Gators, but their arch rival Georgia Bulldogs. And as a result of that, White’s defeat helped the Gators in a major way.
Imagine that.
Micah Handlogten dropped in 23 points, Zyon Pullin added 23 and Will Richard pitched in with a tremendous showing on both ends of the floor as the Gators withstood a late Georgia surge to win, 102-98, in overtime. As a result, the Gators now own a nine-game winning streak over Georgia on the hardwood.
The Gator victory also handed Mike White his fourth straight loss in the O’Dome. Florida beat Georgia in each of the Bulldogs’ two trips to Gainesville under White, and White lost his final two games in the O’Connell Center as the Gators’ coach in 2022. White’s last victory as a coach in Gainesville came on February 19, 2022, when his Gators upset then-No. 2 Auburn.
Since that day, though, much has changed for Florida, Georgia, and Mike White.
Fed up with the fanbase demanding that his Gators finish in the top four of the SEC standings every now and then, White bolted for rival Georgia. Scott Stricklin then decided to replace him with Todd Golden, who struggled mightily in his first year but seems to have things headed in the right direction in his second season. White, for his part, has undoubtedly guided Georgia to a better state than it previously languished in under Tom Crean, but the Bulldogs’ inability to win enough big games figures to leave them on the outside looking in come Selection Sunday yet again.
Today those two teams clashed in a “prove-it” game. And Florida used the opportunity to remind its former coach that there was a reason he was run out of town.
Will Richard was phenomenal at both ends of the floor on this day, racking up three steals and dropping in 18 points. Riley Kugel– who chose to play for Florida over Georgia— burned the Bulldogs with some deep backdoor cuts. The Gators also dominated Georgia on the glass, outrebounding Georgia 48-27– another trademark Mike White weakness (remember how he signed exactly one center in his first four years in Gainesville? Gorjok Gak? That was fun). And trailing by five with :47 showing on the clock, Georgia sealed its own fate by letting Florida dribble out half the shot clock before Jabri Abdur-Rahim suddenly decided to swarm Walter Clayton– an 86% free throw shooter– and send him to the line on his fifth foul.
However, Florida also displayed a frightening inability to finish. And that’s a real reason for concern.
The Gators dominated every facet of the game for the first 27 minutes, building a seemingly insurmountable 68-47 lead with 12:52 remaining, when suddenly they stalled out offensively and let Georgia get back into the game with a 12-2 run that cut the margin down to 70-59 with 9:14 remaining. Somehow, Florida recovered and rebuilt a 15-point lead over the next few minutes. With 7:47 to go, the Gators led 77-61.
But then they totally collapsed, missing three easy layups and turning the ball over four times in that final 7:47 as Georgia roared all the way back to tie the game at 85 and send it into overtime. The most egregious miscue came with two minutes to go when Florida essentially just took a knee, running out 30 seconds of game clock without ever really seeming to have a plan of attack on that possession. That possession, of course, resulted in a turnover, and Georgia’s Blue Cain made them pay with a three that cut the Gators’ lead to 85-83. A missed Zyon Pullin jumper and a Cain layup later, and the game went into overtime.
To its credit, Florida dominated the extra session. The Gators built a seven point lead with 55 seconds remaining and then held on, despite a mortifying blunder in which Walter Clayton Jr. aimlessly rainbowed an inbounds pass down into the empty backcourt with eleven seconds left. Georgia’s RJ Melendez tracked it down and quickly nailed a three with :05.5 showing on the clock, bringing the deficit back down to two. But Pullin then salted the game away with two free throws to provide the final margin of 102-98.
As a result, the Gators now sit in a pretty good spot.
Florida is 4-3 in the SEC, 14-6 overall, and should edge closer to the top 40 in the NCAA’s NET rankings, which the NCAA Selection Committee puts a lot of weight on to fill out the 68-team field. Typically, teams in the top 30 are a lock for the NCAA Tournament, teams in the top 35 are generally safe unless there are a lot of bid-stealers from conferences in which the regular season champion is going dancing either way, and teams in that 36-40 range are more likely than not to get in.
And though a tough three-game stretch looms, featuring a return trip to Kentucky, a road trip to a solid Texas A&M team, and a home game against a top ten Auburn team, after that, things get very, very manageable. History tells us that SEC teams with an 11-7 record in the conference are guaranteed to go dancing, and teams that finish 10-8 are still very likely to go. Even 9-9 might do it. And with a home game against LSU, a road game at Georgia, a home game against Missouri, a road trip to South Carolina, and two games against Vanderbilt and Alabama apiece left, reaching that 9-11 win range looks very doable.
