Records: Florida 24-11, 11-7 SEC; Auburn 27-7, 13-5 SEC
Next up for Florida: NCAA Tournament
Injury update: Center Micah Handlogten suffered a fractured lower left leg and is expected to undergo surgery at Vanderbilt University on Sunday.
Notable
* Despite Sunday’s loss, Florida picked up 3 wins at the SEC Tournament for just the fifth time in team history and advanced to the championship game for the 11th time.
* Walter Clayton Jr. earned All-SEC Tournament Team honors, averaging 18.5 points over the four games.
* Zyon Pullin led the Gators on Sunday with 15 points, while he and Alex Condon co-led the Gators with seven rebounds.
* Florida could not overcome a tough shooting day, going .364 from the field and 1-for-13 from 3-point range. The Gators had shot .478 from the field and .429 from 3-point range through their three SEC Tournament wins.
* Florida rallied from double digits down in the first half to get within one in the second half before Auburn pulled away.
* Florida set the following program records for a single SEC Tournament: Individual points, Walter Clayton Jr., 74; team points, 349; team rebounds, 162; team FG made: 111.
* With 13 points Clayton moves from #8 up to #6 on UF’s all-time single-season scoring list with 600 points this season, surpassing Kenny Boynton (588, 2011-12) and Stacey Poole (589, 1991-92).
* Clayton becomes just the fifth player in Florida history to record a 600-point season, joining Andy Owens, Neal Walk (twice), Vernon Maxwell and Nick Calathes.
* With a 6-for-6 day at the free throw line, Clayton has made 32 in a row, tied with Egor Koulechov (2017-18) for fourth-longest on record, trailing Canyon Barry (42, 2016-17), Taurean Green (37, 2005-06) and Michael Frazier II (33, 2014-15).
* Florida played four games in four days for the first time since Dec. 14-17, 1942.
Southeastern Conference
Men’s Basketball Tournament
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Florida Gators
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Bridgestone Arena
Coach Todd Golden
Zyon Pullin
Tyrese Samuel
Postgame Press Conference
Auburn 86, Florida 67
THE MODERATOR: We’re ready to begin with Florida.
We’ll ask Coach for some general comments, then take
your questions.
Coach.
TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, obviously a disappointing
outcome for us today. First and foremost, I’m incredibly
proud of my team. I feel like they’ve done a great job just
fighting and staying the course. We didn’t play our best
today, but our effort was there, our intent was there, our
heart was in the right place, head in the right place. Just
ran into a team that was playing really, really well. They
just beat us today.
That’s okay. It happens. We’ll kind of dust ourselves off
and get back up and get ready for the NCAA tournament.
Obviously disappointing. I feel for Micah. Obviously he
fractured his leg.
Our program is really appreciative of our medical staff, the
SEC medical staff, and even Auburn’s group for how
quickly they responded, comforted him, were able to kind
of get him under control, take care of him. We’re thankful
for that.
I think he’ll probably have surgery later today, tonight.
Hopefully he will have a quick and speedy recovery.
Tough one for us today. Again, for us to get to this
championship game this year, to knock off the teams we
did, still incredibly proud of our team. I’m excited to get
back on track for the tournament next week.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for either of the
student-athletes.
Q. How difficult was it to regroup and catch your
bearings after what happened to Micah so early in the
game?
ZYON PULLIN: I mean, yeah, it’s definitely tough to see
him go down like that, a guy like that, stuff like that. We
just tried to rally together and kind of focus on staying
together. We were going to check on him after the game.
TYRESE SAMUEL: Yeah, like Micah is so valuable for our
team, especially on the offensive rebounding side of things.
Losing him early kind of affected us a little bit. We were
trying to win the championship for him. We really care
about him. He’s part of our family.
We going to go out there next week and keep on playing
for him, so…
Q. This is your fourth game in four days. How did you
feel out there fatigue-wise?
TYRESE SAMUEL: Like obviously we’re tired. Also
Auburn, they’re tired, too. They probably played one less
game than us. Everybody is tired. A lot of basketball in a
short period of time.
At the end of the day, it’s about grinding it out. It’s March.
Not a lot of rest time in between. We have to come ready
to play. Today, Auburn came and did that.
ZYON PULLIN: I mean, kind of the same thing with him. I
mean, definitely tough playing four games. They had to
play three. Just trying to dig deep. Championship on the
line. Got to dig from within, so…
Q. Defensively what does Auburn do that causes so
much problems? Did the fatigue set in with shooting
three-pointers?
TYRESE SAMUEL: Yeah, probably. Like they’re very
aggressive. In passing lanes, they push you off your spot.
It disrupts offense. A really good offensive team.
Yeah, like obviously the fatigue got to us a little bit. We’re
just going to bounce back, go back to practice, go back to
the drawing board, make sure we come prepared for
whoever we’re going to play next week.
ZYON PULLIN: I thought they did a good job being
physical, making our looks tough. I mean, they’re
converting on the other end some of the stuff. Did a good
job on some of the stuff.
We just got to find ways to learn from it.
Q. What needs to happen now in terms of flushing this
and regrouping, moving forward with the tournament
approaching?
ZYON PULLIN: Knowing we got one more game
promised, I think it’s just staying together. Learn from this.
Give ourselves the best chance to win and go on a run
here.
TYRESE SAMUEL: It’s like a new season now. Nothing
matters from before pretty much. Just kind of going into
practice, finding new tactics and ways just to complement
each other without Micah.
Yeah, just go out there and play hard. I feel like when we
play hard, rebound, play in transition, I feel like we’re one
of the best teams in America.
Q. Tyrese, how do you feel like you did offensive
rebounding? Even without Micah, you still won that
battle today.
TYRESE SAMUEL: Yeah, we still did pretty good. We still
pursued the ball pretty well. But I feel like our defensive
rebounding, they were scoring a lot, and our defense
wasn’t there today. That’s all right. We’ll be back. We’ll
get back.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll excuse you and continue with
questions for Coach.
Q. Is Micah likely going to be staying in the hospital
tonight, or is that information you don’t have yet?
TODD GOLDEN: I don’t know exactly.
Q. When that happens in a game, how hard was that to
overcome? What was the immediate message after it
occurred?
TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, I mean, it’s not something you can
necessarily prepare for. It kind of took the wind out of our
sails a little bit. The biggest part is that Micah has good
relationships with his teammates. Those guys love him.
He’s an incredible teammate. Even when he’s not playing
his best, he has great energy on the bench, is always
supporting all the guys on the floor.
Losing him so early to such a serious injury, just human
nature took over a little bit. Guys were emotional. We had
guys, whether it was players or staff members, in tears on
the sideline, just trying to kind of compose ourselves.
Having that variable in the equation against one of the best
teams in America is tough to deal with. We fought. I
thought we did a good job of trying to compete. Got it
down to one in the second half early on.
We didn’t play our best. We didn’t shoot the ball very well.
Fatigued or not, Auburn just played very well. I thought
they were just simply the better team today.
Q. Your optimism is always out front. Is this going to
hurt that? How are you going to move on mentally
from this? What is the message going to be?
TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, it’s tough, man, ’cause he’s a
great kid (tearing up). You just hate to see it for him
because he does everything the right way. He works hard.
That’s a super fluky injury that you don’t see very often in
this game.
Especially when a young guy like him that’s worked so
hard to get to this point, playing in a big-time game like
this, to go out that way, I just feel for him.
Q. You came out of the locker room with a 14-4 run.
Do you feel like from there you ran out of gas?
TODD GOLDEN: We had an opportunity to compose
ourselves at halftime a little bit. We kept it within eight.
We got in there, I think we were able to take a breath and
realize that we can still get back in this game, we’re all
right.
We came out playing that way. We were super
aggressive, getting downhill in transition, putting pressure
on the rim. Cut it to one. I can’t remember exactly what
happened in those possessions, but we missed some free
throws, a couple turnovers that led to transition run-outs for
them.
Once they kind of got that thing back up to eight or ten, felt
like it was going to be hard to cut that lead back again.
It’s one of those things, we’ve been fortunate enough to be
able to come back from those deficits the past couple days.
But this is a different team, different level team than we
played the last couple days. Even though we were able to
get it to one, we just didn’t play quite well enough, and we
didn’t have the ability to keep at it that way.
Again, they took advantage of our mistakes, like good
teams do. Combination of us maybe not having everything
we need to get it all the way back, and them just not
allowing us to do that was the difference.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
TODD GOLDEN: Thanks, guys.
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