In one breath, Florida's 93-87 loss to Arizona isn't the end of the world. The Gators had an open three with less than a minute to play to tie the game, and the Wildcats surprised people with their own play, including freshman Koa Peat.
But Todd Golden isn't into moral victories, and after the loss on Monday, he let it be known he expected more from his squad.
Todd Golden not settling after loss
In his postgame press conference, Golden cut straight to the chase and didn't hold back when assessing his team's play:
"Disappointing. There were things that we did out there that were a little uncharacteristic. Credit to Arizona. I thought, you know, they were very physical. We've talked a lot about how good our frontcourt is, and we just didn't deliver tonight. I thought they were more physical than us. They beat us on the glass.
And that's something that, you know, for us to be the best we can be, we gotta win the battle on the boards every night. And I thought we were really, really loose with the ball in the second half, you know? We have good ball control guards, we have bigs that can handle it.
And in a game like this where you're playing a team that has potential to be a second, third weekend team, you can't have nine turnovers in the second half.
You know, giving them runout dunks and just not capitalizing on some opportunities. So those are things that, you know, I think we can get right. That should be a strength of our team, but tonight we just didn't do those things well enough to win."
Big's for Florida must be better
To Golden's point, the big men for Florida were supposed to be a strength of the squad, but were quickly overwhelmed by the size Arizona countered with.
While Thomas Haugh had a big night, Micah Handlogten, Alex Condon, and Rueben Chinyelu did not, with the latter two fouling out of the game.
The good news for Florida is that a loss like this can serve as a wake-up call, and it's not like the Gators are "that" far away.
But based upon Golden's comments, we can't imagine film study this week is going to be fun for Florida.