That was the weekend that was: February 20, 2022

THAT WAS THE WEEKEND THAT WAS

Sitting at the podium answering questions from the media Saturday afternoon, Tyree Appleby and Colin Castleton were still beaming from being in the middle of the storm-the-court mayhem at the O-Dome. It was a day of firsts. The first time in O-Dome history that the Gators had knocked off either the No. 1 or No. 2 team in the country and the first time since a 1986 buzzer beater NIT win over Southwest Missouri State that the fans had poured over the O-Dome rails to celebrate with the team on the court.

Florida couldn’t have scored Saturday’s 63-62 win over No. 2 Auburn without Appleby erupting for 20 second half points or without Castleton providing a constant inside presence on both the offensive and defensive ends. Appleby finished with 26 points (5-10 from the 3-point line, 7-8 from the foul line), one rebound, two assists and one steal. Castleton, Florida’s lone big man who did battle against Auburn’s three bigs – 7-1 Walker Kessler, 6-10 Jabari Smith and 6-11 Dylan Cardwell – scored 19 with eight rebounds, one assist, three blocked shots and a steal.

They were warriors on the court. In the media room, they were kids, enjoying what might be a once-in-a-lifetime moment. In between insightful answers, they grinned and giggled. As they got ready to leave for the showers, Appleby was asked if he has many more games like this would he be expecting an NIL deal with the Applebee’s restaurant chain?

“I wish! I wish!” came the reply.

“I’m going to call their CEO,” Castleon chimed in.

“I’ve been trying to get with them all year,” Appleby added.

Then came Castleton’s reply that broke up everyone in the media room.

“Is White Castle for me?” he asked. “The closest ones are in Orlando so I have to drive there!”

Winning is fun. Winning when you, your teammates, coaches and family might be the only ones who believe in you is twice the fun. That’s what happened Saturday when a team that suffered a devastating loss on the road to a Texas A&M team that played its best game of the season after losing the previous eight in a row.

That was an emotional beatdown.

“Our guys were as dejected in the locker room in College Station the other night as I’ve seen them, probably any locker room in a couple, if not a few years, for a regular season game,” Florida coach Mike White said. “It’s different than the NCAA Tournament. It’s over. It was that type of feeling.

“But you’ve got to bounce back. You’ve gotta bounce back quickly and this is a resilient group. Now, if we don’t find a way to hold on to this one [Auburn], it would be even harder to bounce back. We didn’t finish it strong. We didn’t, but that said, what an incredible, physical, intensity-level effort for 40 minutes led by Colin and Tyree. Auburn’s got a chance to win the whole thing and we just beat them.”

Auburn is that deep, that talented and that good. Beating the Tigers would have been a longshot even if the Gators had beaten the Aggies last Wednesday night. Beating them shorthanded and off the loss to the Aggies? Let’s just say the game had a rather impossible dream feel to it, particularly since the Gators closed out the first half unable to score in the final 4:03. It had one of those here we go again feelings in the first four or so minutes of the second half when they found themselves in a 9-point hole.

That was the turning point. Rather than give in and give up, the Gators began to scratch and claw their way out of a mess that was of their own making. It’s a funny thing about effort. It gets the adrenaline flowing and when you add it to a full house in an arena where fans are willing to yell, scream and provide the decibels, dreams start to have a come true feel.

When Appleby went into a shooter’s coma and the basket started looking the size of Lake Alice, a new energy transformed the entire building. Appleby felt it. He was everywhere on the court, pushing the ball, stutter-step dribbling through Auburn’s trees, launching threes that turned the O-Dome into a Deaf-Dome.

With 10:33 left in the game and Florida trailing by eight, Appleby went to his knees when he tried a crossover dribble. Instead of killing his dribble when he got to his feet, Appleby caught Auburn flatfooted by continuing his dribble, spinning past one defender and then driving to the rim. Expecting Appleby to dump the ball off to Castleton, Dylan Cardwell took a step toward the Florida big man. Big mistake. Appleby dropped in a layup that made it a 46-40 game.

The O-Dome was never the same. Jet engine takeoffs had nothing on the 42-year-old arena. Contained by the arena, there was no place to go for the noise, so it simply torqued up the energy level of the Gators. That play, essentially, was when the Florida rally and the Florida fans became one and the same.

The Gators were suddenly in their yes we can mode. The fans were thinking the same thing. The sensed the upset that no one expected was becoming an unexpected reality. The 1,500-2,000 Auburn fans must have felt the same thing. They came to the O-Dome thinking blowout, especially when the score was 35-26 and the Gators were struggling out the second half gate.

Appleby’s layup told them they were in for a rock fight.

Nine points disappeared and when Phlandrous Fleming Jr. nailed a shot clock running down three to give the Gators a 48-46 lead, Auburn needed an answer. Freshman Jabari Smith, the likely first pick when the NBA drafts in the summer, had been answering all afternoon. When he drove to the rim with 6:53 to go it seemed like a sure thing that he would either dunk or get fouled. Smith, you see, rarely comes away empty-handed whenever he takes it to the rack. He lost this time.

Smith went high. Castleton went higher. The dunk Smith thought he was going to thunder down was met by Castleton, who got his hand on top of the ball for a clean block. There was no contact as Smith crumbled to the floor. Auburn fans screamed for a foul but replays were clear. The block was as clean as it gets.

Smith scored 28 points in the game, most of them on 3-pointers (he was 4-5) or at the foul line (10-11). He’s a great talent, but Colin Castleton owned the paint. Another great talent is Walker Kessler, who leads the nation in blocked shots and is thought to be the odds-on winner of national defensive player of the year. An emerging offensive talent, Kessler did score 11 points, but one of them was a 3-pointer. Of the other four made shots, none were directly challenged by Castleton.

As for Kessler and shot blocking, he tried ever so hard to jam one back in Castleton’s face but he never got one. For just the second time all season he didn’t block a single shot.

Because the Gators were so good offensively in the game’s final 10 minutes, what UF did defensively tends to be overlooked. As good as Castleton and Appleby were, they got plenty of help from Fleming, Anthony Duruji, Niels Lane, Myreon Jones and Brandon McKissic. While Smith certainly got his, they made sure the other Auburn players didn’t get theirs.

With 7.5 seconds remaining and the game on the line, we got a microcosm of what a total team defensive effort looks like. Auburn had the ball and all five players on the court were legitimate candidates to take the last shot. For Florida to stop the Tigers would take a perfectly executed defensive plan with all five Gators carrying out their assignments, and that’s exactly what happened. Everybody communicated. Everybody rotated. Rather than a final shot at a game-winner, Auburn turned the ball over.

Mayhem followed. The Rowdy Reptiles ignored the pleas to stay in the stands. They climbed over the rails and courtside seats, pouring onto the court to surround Saturday’s heroes.

“I enjoyed myself,” Appleby said.

“Everybody enjoyed that one,” Castleton added.

And now it’s back to work. Arkansas comes to the O-Dome Tuesday. The Hogs aren’t a top ten team but they’re ranked and a Florida win, coupled with the win over Auburn, most likely puts the Gators in the NCAA Tournament.

UAA Photo

ANOTHER SEC SWIM CHAMPIONSHIP: THAT’S 10 STRAIGHT The streak is alive.

Florida closed out a dominating week at the SEC Swimming and Diving Championships in Knoxville with the men winning the title for the tenth straight year by a mere 476 points over second place finishers Tennessee and Alabama. The Gators won five relays and got gold medal performances from Kieran Smith (200 backstroke, 400 IM), Trey Freeman (1650 freestyle) and Adam Chaney (100 backstroke), plus silver medals from Eric Friese (100 butterfly) and Smith (500 freestyle).

What makes Florida’s win all the more impressive is that it was done without two-time Olympic gold medalist and 9-time SEC gold medalist Bobby Finke, out due to health protocols. Finke is expected to rejoin the Gators for the NCAA championships where the Gators are expected to finish in the top ten once again.

This was a brilliant performance for the Gators and coach Anthony Nesty, who will be the United States team head coach for the 2022 FINA World Championships. You have to wonder just how good the Gators would be and just how well Nesty could recruit if the Gators had decent facilities. The O-Dome pool is satisfactory, but this program could be so much better if UF had a pool of the same caliber as the ones at Georgia, Auburn and Texas A&M in the SEC, Texas and Stanford nationally.

Gator Bait Media Photo by Chris Spears

GATORS EARN A SHARE OF THE SEC GYMNASTICS TITLE

It took a 9.95 by Nya Reed followed by a perfect 10 by Trinity Thomas on floor and a 9.975 by Thomas, a 9.95 by Megan Skaggs and a 9.925 by Sloane Blakely on the balance beam for the Gators to pull out a 197.575-197.350 win over Kentucky Friday night in Lexington. With the win, the 2nd-ranked Gators clinched at least a share of the regular season Southeastern Conference championship, their fourth straight.

The Gators, who host 3rd-ranked Oklahoma Friday night in a non-conference meet that will be the national headliner, can claim the outright SEC title in two weeks at Auburn.

For Thomas, it was the fourth perfect 10 of the 2022 season and the 12th of her collegiate career. She has a perfect score five times on floor, three times each on balance beam and uneven bars, and once on vault. Currrently, she ranks 5th nationally on vault, 18th on bars, 11th on balance beam, 1st on floor and 4th on all-around.

Reed ranks 8th nationally on vault and 2nd on floor.

As a team, the Gators rank 2nd nationally on vault, 4th on bars, first on balance beam and tied for 3rd on floor.

UAA Photo

AND SINCE WE’RE TALKING PERFECT …

Tim Walton’s softball Gators are off to a 10-0 start after taking the T-Mobile Tournament at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium with wins over 14th-ranked Duke, Villanova, Louisville and Florida A&M. It was an impressive weekend because four different UF pitchers got wins and the offense came through with 30 runs despite wind gusts that made every fly ball an adventure.

Elizabeth Hightower, Natalie Lugo, Lexie Delbrey and Rylee Trlicek all got wins. Hightower went six innings in relief Friday night when Delbrey struggled with her control. Lugo pitched a 2-hit shutout Saturday morning and then Delbrey went the distance against Louisville. Trlicek allowed two hits in a run-rule four inning game Sunday.

Delbrey is Florida’s only real power pitcher and when she’s in the strike zone, she’s very difficult to hit, but even in the win over Louisville, she walked five and hit a batter. She’s quite a talent but Walton is going to have to coach the tendency to over-throw every pitch out of her. That’s not uncommon for freshmen who were accustomed to simply throwing the ball past every batter when they were in high school.

The hitting star of the weekend – and probably the first 10 games of the season – is freshman left fielder Kendra Falby, who played for the Canadian national team. She’s Florida’s fastest leadoff hitter since Kelsey Stewart. A single or a walk is almost as good as a double as she is 10-10 so far on stolen bases. Falby was 8-14 for the weekend with a double, two triples and three RBI. She’s hitting .548 with 17 hits including two doubles, two triples, a home run and seven RBI.

A slap-hitter who has relied on speed to beat the ball into the ground and then outrunning the throw to first, Falby is discovering that she can dig in and hit effectively. In the tournament opener against Duke, the Blue Devils followed the analytics, moved their second baseman in to become a fifth infielder and shifted the right fielder to center field. That left the entire right field open. It didn’t matter on the first at bat because Falby struck out on a bad ball off the plate. The second at bat was a totally different story, however.

With Duke going to the shift again, Falby drilled the ball deep to the right center field fence. By the time the ball got back to the infield, she was standing on third with a very easy triple.

“I thought to myself that if I get a middle-in pitch, I’m putting it in right field just to show them I can do more than just put the ball in the infield,” Falby said.

Since arriving at Florida and working with hitting coach Aric Thomas, Falby has developed her game at the plate to the point that she has an entire arsenal of tools at her disposal.

“I kind of grew up being a slapper and just relying on my speed and then coming here, he’s ways said ‘You can hit the ball. Hit the ball! You can be a triple threat,’” Falby said. “So, being able to bunt, slap, hit and kind of perfect all those and use those tools whenever I need to helps a lot. If there are five people in the infield I can do something different.”