PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas -- Talk about trouble in paradise.
Florida trailed Alabama-Birmingham by two points with just over three minutes to play. The 18th-ranked Gators weren’t hitting shots, weren’t making free throws and weren’t doing much of a job stopping the Blazers either, as UAB’s confidence exuded both on the floor and on the bench.
UF appeared on the verge of Paradise Island Lost.
But something happen. The Gators sprinkled in a series of stops with a couple baskets and seven straight free throws to score the game’s final 11 points and stave off what could have been a really, really bad defeat and instead pull away for a 56-47 victory in the loser’s bracket of the Battle 4 Atlantis.
Six different UF players accounted for those 11 points, with Chris Walker, Jon Horford, Michael Frazier and Kasey Hill combining to go 7-for-8 down the stretch from the free-throw stripe, both Hill and Dorian Finney-Smith converting field goals and Horford coming up with a huge blocked shot when the UAB was down four with a minute to go.
Basically, the Gators made plays down the stretch on a night when few were made in the 36 minutes leading up to the decisive flurry; and they were made by some guys who didn’t make them in numbing late-second losses to Miami last week and Georgetown less than 24 hours earlier at Imperial Arena.
“That was huge tonight for us,” said Frazier, who had 14 points and eight rebounds, of the his club’s collective finishing act. “I think we took a step. As a team, just getting stops when we needed to get stops, we’d been struggling with that. So I was happy to see us do that tonight.”
Happy just to get a win, especially the way things went the night before -- with Georgetown guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera bombing in a 21-footer with three seconds left in overtime for the win -- and giving the Gators (3-2) a date against No. 5 North Carolina (4-1) Friday night at 8.
With junior Eli Carter sidelined by soreness in the left foot he sprained last week, freshman guard Chris Chiozza sparked UF off the bench with 13 points, three assists and six steals, while helping pace an offense seemingly grinding its way between first and second gear. Horford had eight points, eight rebounds and his huge blocked shot, while Walker tallied seven points, six rebounds and a block in just 11 minutes.
In fact, let’s talk about two of Walker’s points.
The Gators trailed 47-45 when the 6-foot-11 center made a move to the basket and was raked back to the floor. At that point, Florida was 6-for-15 from the line for the game. So here came Walker, just a 46-percent shooter there for his collegiate career, stepping up with a chance to tie the game.
He swished both.
On UAB’s ensuing series, Florida played great defense and forced a desperation 3-pointer as the shot-clock expired. It missed, Chiozza rebounded and Horford was fouled in the halfcourt. He knocked down both his free throws to give the Gators a two-point lead.
Once again, more great defense hurried the Blazers (2-4) into a late-clock situation and an errant shot. At UF’s end, Hill made a nice baseline move and finish to push the margin to four.
Another Florida stop led to a Finney-Smith dunk with 50 seconds to go for a six-point lead, and the Gators went on to complete the deal.
“We put ourselves in position to win,” UAB coach Jerod Haase said. “[But] there were defining moments late in the game.”
The Gators did the defining.
“One of the things you want to see in an event like this with a quick turnaround -- after an emotional loss yesterday -- is could we play better today? And I thought we improved in some areas,” Donovan said. “Some times, offensively, we’re getting bogged down, but other times we’re getting good looks.”
Most of the time, they're not going in.
UF shot just 34 percent for the game and at one point just before the late flurry was at 27 for the second half. Given the Gators problems putting the ball in the basket, Chiozza’s contributions off the bench all the more critical. Not only did he bomb a 28-footer as the shot-clock expired for one basket in the first half, he also had a steal earlier in the game that led to a driving layup where he faked a behind-the-back pass, cuffed the ball and laid it in with a defender on him.
“I just did what Coach Donovan told me to do before the game,” said Chiozza, who swiped all six of his steals in the first half, coming two shy of Clifford Lett’s 25-year-old school record of eight in a game. “Just go out there and play defense and have a defensive mentality and try to anticipate on defense.”
His teammates, eventually, took his cue.
Just in time.
UAB was hitting at a 59-percent clip until going on that 0-for-7 finish to the game.
“We’re 3-2 right now, but we could have won every single game ... and we could have lost every single game,” Donovan said. “That’s the reality of it.”
Another reality is another game -- against the Tar Heels, no less -- in 20 hours.
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