WATCH: Todd Golden reacts to Florida's 76-74 loss to FAU
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Gators suffered their first loss of the Todd Golden era Monday against Florida Atlantic. The Owls upset Florida 76-74 behind the 3-point line, making 13 of their 24 attempts.
Four of UF’s five starters finished in double figures, led by Colin Castleton with his second straight 30-point game. However, FAU’s benched outscored the Gators 34-5.
“I don’t think our bench played great scoring the ball,” Golden said after the game. “We tightened up a little, but Colin played pretty well. I thought Kyle [Lofton] played pretty well. … He was playing off of Kyle a lot. I thought Kyle did a really good job in our ball screens. That was kind of what we were doing to kind of capture that lead.
“We went away from it a little bit, took some quick shots trying to bury them and we just missed them and allowed them to get out. They hit some big threes and that was where the momentum swung. … They played a guy tonight who hadn’t played all year off the bench [Michael Forrest], who is probably their best player, their best scorer and he had 20.”
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In the video below, Golden discusses his team giving up 13 treys, the Gators’ shot selection, their late-game rally and transition defense.
Todd Golden reacts to UF’s first loss
Tolden Golden on 3-point defense
“From my early observation, them going 13-24 from three was the difference in the game. We did a pretty good job at minimizing the amount of threes they took, 24 out of 69 is about 37 percent, something like that, against a team that is lethal from behind the arc. But the fact that they were so efficient, 54 percent, we just got bombed out tonight. A lot of it was in transition. I thought they did a really good job locating shooters in transition. The way they play, it’s a difficult guard. They play about four guards usually. Johnell Davis is, I would call, kind of like a hybrid wing-guard. He can handle it. He really shoots it well as you guys saw tonight,” Golden said.
“So, transition was an area where we got bopped pretty good. I thought our endline, out of bounds defense wasn’t great either. We laid on a lot of screens tonight, we weren’t able to fight over, and make these guys curl going towards the basket which was kind of the game plan. They were 16-47 from two, they weren’t really efficient shooting twos. In a game like tonight, we talked about it with the team at halftime, they bombed us in the first half 8-13 from three, we said, ‘We have to limit them to seven or less attempts in the second half.’ And if we do that, I thought we would win. Well, they got 11 up, they made five more of them and we lost by two.”
