After a hard fought first half, the Florida women’s basketball team (11-12, 3-7 SEC) watched a home win against the No. 6 Tennessee Volunteers (20-3, 10-0 SEC) slip out of their hands due to second half breakdowns, 64-56.
The Gators had a hard time getting things started in the first half. They committed the first five fouls of the game, but were able to pull it together and force the Vols to commit the next seven fouls and cut their lead to three points with 7:52 left in the half.
The Gators defense was a huge factor. They forced 12 Volunteer turnovers and held the nationally ranked team to only 35% shooting from the field. Florida entered the half leading 30-28 with Cassie Peoples leading Gator scorers with eight points.
The second half began similar to the first as Tennessee started the half on a 12-6 run putting the Gators down 40-36 with 12 minutes left to play. And after that, Tennessee did not let up. With 7:02 left, the Gators had already committed 19 turnovers.
“We had a couple of breakdowns on our transition defense and those occurred because of turnovers. We had a rash of turnovers from the start of the half. We also had chances to separate ourselves a little bit because they were turning the ball over as well but we didn’t capitalize on them,” said Florida coach Amanda Butler.
It wasn’t until a Cassie Peoples 3 pointer with 3:54 left in the game sparked some offensive momentum for Florida as it cut the Tennessee lead to seven. But that momentum quickly died out. The Vols went on a 5-2 run and easily stretched their lead out to 10 points with 1:16 left.
From there the Gators began to foul and they watched Tennessee make their final free throws to give them their 12th loss of the season.
Despite the loss, Senior Kayla Lewis feels that this game had some positives to take from it.
“You see that we’re right where we are supposed to be. We have what it takes to play on the court with these teams and that we are just inches away from pulling that big upset. Today was the highest amount of fight consistently for 40 minutes that this young team has played.”
Florida enters their last six conference games ranked 11th in the SEC. Next up is a match up against No. 22 Georgia Thursday night on the road. You can listen to the game right here on ESPN 850 WRUF, with coverage beginning at 6:45.
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