Gators Women’s Basketball with another Conference win over Auburn

The Gators Women’s Basketball team earned themselves another SEC win at home on Thursday night.

Gators Women’s Basketball12-5 (2-2)

The Florida Women’s Basketball team is coming off and impressive SEC win on the road in College station over Texas A&M 97-89 in double-overtime. Marking that their first conference win of the season and top 25 ranked opponent victory.

The Gators returned to the O’Connell Center hosting the Auburn Tigers who themselves have been struggling to start conference play.

Florida started off to a good start leading the Tigers and ending the first half 37-30. Beginning of the third quarter the Gators got right back to where the left off leading the Tigers making increasing their lead to one of the biggest leads of the game 13, but deep in the 4th quarter Auburn made a late game comeback  against the Gators going on an 8-0 run. Forcing Florida to sink couple of  late game free throws to seal the 68-63 victory over Auburn.

Three Gators landed in double-figures for the match up  as Alberte Rimdal and Nina Rickards combined for 28 points. Rimdal with her 14 points performance against the Tigers marked it as her career-high in a Gator uniform. Also, Rickards grabbed five rebounds along with shooting a 8-of-8 from the free throw line.

The Gators were lead by Kiki Smith who had an outstanding 19 points. It was a slow paced game for the graduate guard in the first half but picked it up in the second half of the game to lead Florida to a Victory.

KiKi Smith on her what her team improvements:

Head Coach Kelly Rae Finley on trusting Kiki Smith:

𝗚𝗔𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗦 𝗪𝗜𝗡! 🙌

Presented by @WellsFargo | #GoGators pic.twitter.com/z3tD5RExdw

— Gators Women’s Basketball (@GatorsWBK) January 14, 2022

Lavender Briggs Setting Transfer

Gators guard, Lavender Briggs who’s season came to an end a week ago after announcing that she will be shut down due to an ongoing leg injury. Following yesterday victory, in a postgame conference, interim head coach Kelly Rae Finley announced that Briggs will be parting ways from the Florida Program.

Lavender Briggs was the Gators leading scorer at one point averaging 12.5 points for the 2021-22 season. Briggs was on pace to scoring her 1,000 point in a Gators uniform.

Head Coach Kelly Rae on Briggs transferring:

The Auburn Tigers (8-7, 0-4 SEC)

Auburn entered this match up still looking for their first SEC conference win on a 0-3 losing streak. For this match up, Auburn  w lead by Aicha Coulibaly with 24 points and eight rebounds.

Next up for the Gators

The Gators hit the road this weekend too Tuscaloosa. Being hosted by Alabama Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m.