Notable
- The Gators rallied from 14 down in the first half and six down with 1:30 to play to force overtime as Myreon Jones knocked in a pair of late 3-pointers to force the extra session. Florida also bounced back from a seven-point deficit with 2:00 left in overtime to take a one-point lead with 11 seconds remaining, but Tolu Smith’s late basket lifted Mississippi State to the win.
- Riley Kugel led Florida with 14 points, extending his double-digit scoring streak to nine straight games. He owns a 17.8 points per game scoring average over that span.
- Jones scored all 11 of his points in the second half, shooting 4-for-5 and 3-for-4 from 3-point range in that session. He also grabbed a team-leading seven rebounds.
- Kowacie Reeves also chipped in 11 points off the bench.
Southeastern Conference
Men’s Basketball Tournament
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Florida Gators
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Bridgestone Arena
Coach Todd Golden
Riley Kugel
Kowacie Reeves
Postgame Press Conference
Mississippi State 69, Florida 68 OT
THE MODERATOR: We’re ready to at this point with
Florida. We’ll ask Coach Golden for thoughts on the game,
then take questions for the student-athletes, then we’ll
finish up with Coach.
Coach Golden.
TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, obviously a tough loss today for
us. But with that being said, I was really proud of the way
our guys continued to battle. Obviously didn’t get off to a
great start, down 14, six and a half minutes to go in the first
half.
Obviously that could have gone one of two ways. We got
that thing back to having a three-point lead with 13 minutes
to go in the second half.
Thought we did a great job of finding our stride, especially
on the offensive end, during that segment. Two chances at
the end of regulation, then overtime to win that game.
Came up a little short.
Considering what we’ve gone through in terms of Colin’s
injury, having to reinvent ourselves later in the season,
incredibly proud of the strides these guys have made, the
rest of our team, getting back to this level where we’re
competitive.
A team, Mississippi State, an important game for them to
get to the NCAA tournament today. I thought we did a
great job of doing everything we could to be the spoilers. I
know our guys can hold their heads high after that effort
today.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.
Q. Hey, Kugel. Struggled a little bit shooting for the
night. What were you able to do to stay with the
system and keep making impact?
RILEY KUGEL: Yeah, like you said, I had a rough start
shooting the ball. Taurean Green, he picked me up, he
told me all about my game is scoring. I can facilitate, make
plays for others. He said, Let the game come to you.
I got full faith in all my teammates. I really just started
facilitating. Whatever happened to me…
Q. What were the challenges with trying to deal with a
guy like Smith in the low post when you guys are
undermanned?
RILEY KUGEL: Yeah, I’ve been knowing Tolu in the past.
Tolu is a great player. We knew we had to put a body on
him. J, Symie, Fudge, they fought hard. The guards had a
rotational blockout.
I just feel like the key was not letting him get deep paint
touches. He kind of got that. That’s really it.
KOWACIE REEVES: Yeah, I think that we just made it
tough on him. He finished the game well. But I think our
guys fought, like all our bigs got in there and made him
earn it. At the free-throw line, we made him make a lot of
free throws.
You got to tip your hat. They’ve got a lot of good players.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll excuse the student-athletes and
continue with questions for Coach.
TODD GOLDEN: Good job, guys.
Q. What were the options on the last play?
TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, obviously wanted to get the ball in
the front court as fast as we could. Applied a little bit of
that pressure. We couldn’t get a catch with the run.
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I thought Loft made a good play getting it right back to M.J.
with a little bit of steam. Would have liked to get a little
deeper penetration, then a pass.
With four seconds, the message is you got either two
dribbles and one pass or three dribbles and a shot, and
then you got to get that thing up. You would like a higher
percentage shot only being down one. But you have to get
one up, period. Got to live with it a little bit. Obviously to
try to get deeper paint, too, in that situation.
At the end of the day, we got two of those up. You hope
one of them falls to find a way to win that game.
Q. Talking about sort of the latter half of the first half
and the second half, talk about the adjustments your
team made defensively.
TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, I thought we did a really good job
of limiting second chances in that stretch. I think they only
had one offensive rebound the first 10 minutes of the
second half. That’s the whole deal against these guys.
We were confident that we’d be able to have a pretty good
first-shot defense against Mississippi State.
But their talent is on the glass, their athleticism, physicality,
strength. Obviously we got out-rebounded by nine on the
offensive glass.
We talked about it at halftime, we were down seven in
terms of offensive rebounds. We were down 10, so that’s
seven points, basically. We told our guys if we could kind
of limit their opportunities the second half, cut it down to
two or three second chances, we would give ourselves a
chance to win. We certainly did that.
We needed one or two more defensive rebounds to finish
that job. That’s really where the difference was. We held
them under 40% all game. Sent them to the line a little too
much. Our defense and first shot was good. Again, we got
beat up on the boards a little bit.
Q. (Question regarding the NIT.)
TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, absolutely. Any time you get an
opportunity to compete, you better step up and grab it. As
long as I’m the head coach at Florida, we’ll compete.
We’re excited to see. I think we have a great shot to make
it, getting to 16 wins, having a top 10 strength of schedule
in the country, wins against Tennesee, wins on the road
against Mississippi State, at home against Missouri. We
have a lot of things we can hang our hat on. We were
trending to be a tournament team prior to Colin’s injury.
We’ll be prepared for whatever happens on Sunday.
Q. I know you’re still trying to process, but looking at
the season as a whole, where do you feel y’all have
grown the most?
TODD GOLDEN: I think we’ve become as a program a lot
more competitive. We weren’t very good at it early in the
year. Thought we had moments where we didn’t push
through, do a great job that way.
But over the course of the back half of December into our
conference schedule, I thought we did a fantastic job that
way. Obviously took us a little bit to get over Colin’s injury,
figure ourselves out. We had a game or two where we
weren’t in a tight one late.
Other than that, you look at any game we had on our
schedule in conference play, I thought we were in it to the
wire. In most of those games we had a big deficit, we did a
good job rallying back, finding a way to compete. I thought
today was a great example of that as well. That level and
understanding what it takes to keep yourself on the floor in
our program.
In our program, you got to compete regardless of the
results, be consistent that way. I thought our guys have
done a really good job of growing that way over the course
of the year.
Q. Just to build on you talking about how your team
has grown. Myreon hit the last nine points to send the
game into overtime. Talk about how he’s grown
throughout the season.
TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, he’s done a good job, man. Our
issue early on is we had a lot of guys that were beating
each other out on any given day. Hard to separate. We
had injuries with Will and Kyle early. Took us a little bit to
figure out a rhythm. Myreon wasn’t really in there this
aggressively early on.
Once we got into conference, we felt like his leadership,
the fact that he’s been through it before, along with his skill,
his ability to make a shot, make a pass, would really help
us.
Him and Kyle have done a really good job anchoring that
backcourt for us over the course of the year. So, again, he
was huge for us in that Georgia win last weekend, 12
rebounds. He’s done a really good job of doing ‘the little
things’ to help us win. That’s what you expect from a
fifth-year senior.
Q. How does the adversity of Colin going down, kind
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of seeing growth in you being able to reinvent
yourself, help you all going forward, building the
foundation?
TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, well, obviously Colin was
instrumental on both sides of the ball for us. So he gets
out. Now it’s not like losing a guy where your bench needs
to pick it up. This is losing your leading scorer, the anchor
offense your defense. Two through 13 have to step up and
take on more responsibility and roles.
We weren’t ready to do that against Arkansas. I thought
we competed against Kentucky. At Vanderbilt we didn’t do
a great job.
Getting into the last week of our schedule, everybody just
lifted each other. Starting with that Georgia game,
everybody picked each other up, shot it well, we were
competing to finish defensively. Thought we did a great
job that way second half against LSU and thought we did a
great job today for the most part.
It was that opportunity that was provided to others. We
had to obviously ask a lot more out of everybody. It took
us a little bit to figure it out. But I think we got back there
for the most part.
Again, this is a team we’re playing today, life-or-death
game to play in the NCAA tournament. I think they won
seven out of the last eight, playing one of the best teams in
the league. We gave them all they wanted, had a
one-point lead with 10 seconds to go. I was proud with the
effort our guys showed.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
