Florida basketball’s five-game winning streak came to an end on Saturday as the Auburn Tigers rode an explosive first half by Keyshawn Hall to their first victory inside the O’Connell Center in 30 years, 74-67.
The Plainsmen came out swinging, throwing bodies in the paint and draining shots from all over the court, while the Gators struggled to get their offense in gear. The visitors took a 15-point lead into the locker room at the half; the home team was able to tie things up with under 10 minutes remaining and appeared to take the lead before a goaltending call on a Thomas Haugh layup was reversed.
After that, the Tigers held the lead until the final horn.
After the disappointing conclusion to Saturday evening’s events, Todd Golden spoke with the sports media about what transpired on the court for the Orange and Blue. Take a look below at what he had to offer.
Todd Golden’s opening statement
“Any time you lose you are disappointed, but we had been playing pretty well. I don’t think we played great, but I first want to credit Auburn. I thought they took the fight to us today. That’s something that we take a lot of pride in doing.
“We had been pretty consistent with that over the last couple of weeks. Throwing the first punch and the majority of the punches. The first half they were just better than us that way. They were quicker to balls, more physical. They did a great job on the glass. We were down six on the glass at halftime.
“Obviously, Keyshawn Hall had an incredible individual performance in the first half offensively. Sometimes you have to tip your cap that way. We didn’t do a good job of guarding his three or keeping him off the line.
“It’s a long season. There’s ups and downs. We have been through a lot of those already this season. It obviously starts with me. Anytime you get to a point where you got things rolling a little bit and the moment you feel like you are on the right track, you get punched in the mouth. That’s what happened to us today.
“Credit to Auburn, we have some things that we need to clean up before we get on the road to South Carolina next week.”
Did attention of national media impact them?
“I think it was a little human nature in the sense that I thought we had great prep after the LSU game. We’re pretty consistent the way we go about the nature in our program.
“I thought we had a good practice yesterday. I thought we were locked in this morning. Maybe that showed up when we started the game. We’re out here and had a great crowd. Things are just going to go our way and they certainly didn’t in the first half. It was similar to Missouri last year here at home.
“There’s a lot of really good teams in this league and Auburn is one of them. They have really good talent. We pride ourselves on being a physically and mentally tougher team. I don’t think we were either of those tonight, and again we did not respond quickly enough to their early punches. We just couldn’t get back on track in the first half.”
What disappointed Golden the most
“That we lost.”
On Auburn stopping Alex Condon
“They had a different game plan than most teams. They just weren’t guarding him on the perimeter and plugging him in the paint. Obviously, he’ s not shooting the ball great right now. We weren’t able to take advantage of that. I was more disappointed in our inability to get them down low.
“But they were showing bodies any time we threw it inside. Where his game disappointed me was the four turnovers. You’re not going to score it every night. You’re not going to be great that way, but you can’t turn the ball over four times when you’re a guy that we run the majority of the offense through. He just got outplayed tonight.”
Did Florida expend its energy tying the game?
“Yeah, I think that was a big part of it. We dug ourselves in an 18-point deficit, crawled all the way back to take a two-point lead, get a tough reversal on the goaltend. And they made a couple tough shots after that, but we had dug ourselves in too big of a hole with defense in the first half, and obviously, the free-throw shooting.
“As I explained to the team, if we had made our free throws at a decent rate up until that point, instead of it going from two to being tied with their ball, it would have been from six to four and we could still with a little bit of a lead and a little bit of confidence.
“But I do think a big part of it was the fact that we had to expend so much energy getting back in the ballgame.”
On offensive adjustments made at halftime
“Again, we had to value the basketball a little more. I thought we didn’t do a good enough job down on the block of handling the double teams and the digs. We didn’t shoot the ball well enough. There were a number of things that we had to clean up from the first half.
“And again, in the second half we did a decent job that way. We turned it over less. I thought we were playing with a little more purpose. But we still missed some open shots and we missed our free throws.”
What can be learned from how Auburn packed the paint?
“We gotta find ways to counteract it and do a better job of taking advantage of being wide open on the perimeter and wide open in the middle of the floor. I think that’s going to be a hard way to live for teams to play us that way. I think more often than not, we’re going to be able to take advantage of that better than we did today.
“But again, they’re quick, they’re long and they did a good job counteracting our bigs inside today.”
On Auburn scoring 17 points off turnovers
“We did a decent enough job taking care of the basketball. I think the biggest thing was the free throws. We left some points on the board, missed some open shots when we needed to.
“And again, our first-half effort on Keyshawn Hall, he deserves a lot of credit for the shots that he was making, but we have to find a way to prevent him from getting 22 in the first half. We did a better job in the second half. He only scored two, so we were capable. We just didn’t do a good enough job showing bodies, going vertical. We sent him to the line and gave him 3s in the first half.”
Follow us @GatorsWire on X, formerly known as Twitter, as well as Bluesky, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Florida Gators news, notes and opinions.
This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Florida basketball’s Todd Golden talks about Auburn home loss
