For a half, it looked like Auburn had been able to bottle the momentum built by Saturday’s win over Mississippi State and taken it down to Florida on a road trip for the first time in SEC play. At the half, the Tigers led 30-27, but one of Auburn’s cold spells set in sometime during the break. In the first 18 minutes of the second half, Auburn only scored 11 points, and against a high-scoring team like the 11th-ranked Gators, that kind of cold spell plus an injury to the Tigers’ best player, Kenny Gabriel, effectively ended Auburn’s chance to put together back-to-back wins over ranked teams for the first time since 1986.
“You’re not going to beat an explosive offensive team like Florida is when you’re not knocking down shots,” Auburn coach Tony Barbee said. “We did a good job holding them to seven points under their average, but a big key was that we were going to have to score.”
The Tigers (14-13, 4-9) faced the same problem that has plagued them in road games across the SEC all season long. Auburn is not very good offensively, and when Frankie Sullivan and Varez Ward are both off their game, the Tigers can’t score enough points to close out games.
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- A couple of weeks ago, a TV color analyst remarked in passing that Kenny Gabriel might be more important to his team than any other player in the SEC. Auburn may have to find out this weekend. Gabriel left the game with an injury to his back — the Mobile Press-Register reported from the game that he likely had a bruised back but still needed to be evaluated — with 11:25 left in the game and eight points, three rebounds and two blocks, but he hurt himself before that. Without Gabriel, Auburn lost its best defensive player, and Florida tore up the Tigers’ defense down the stretch. ”Kenny’s one of our better players,’ point guard Varez Ward said. “When you lose one of those, somebody else has to step up. I didn’t step up tonight and neither did some other guys. It was unfortunate.”
- Adrian Forbes is going to have to put together more games like that one if Gabriel misses time the rest of the way down the stretch. Forbes had 11 points, six rebounds and three steals. He doesn’t have Gabriel’s athleticism — far from it — but he will have to set the Tigers’ tone for toughness if Gabriel’s back forces him to miss Saturday’s game against Arkansas.
- Frankie Sullivan is a streak shooter, and when he hits a bad game, it’s not pretty. Coming off of a four-game stretch in which Sullivan was averaging 15.8 points-per-game, he only made 2-of-10 shots and scored six points against the Gators. Considering that Florida’s trio of Kenny Boynton, Bradley Beal and Erving Walker scored 20, 13 and 13 points, respectively, Sullivan had to provide some firepower from the perimeter, but he never found his shooting stroke, and it left the Tigers without a go-to scorer down the stretch. “We ended up shooting 33 percent and you can’t come down here and expect to win, especially on their home court, shooting 33 percent,” Ward said.
- Rob Chubb all but disappeared in his 23 minutes on the court. Chubb only took three shots, missed all three and failed to make the rebounding impact he made against Mississippi State on Saturday. Florida outrebounded Auburn 22-11 in the second half alone, and the 6-10 Chubb only had four boards.
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Forward Josh Langford still hasn’t played since the last time Auburn faced Arkansas. During that game, Langford smacked the back of his head on the ground and suffered a concussion that has kept him out of the lineup since. Part of the reason for Langford’s slow recovery is the part of his head that impacted the ground. Concussions are always at their worst when the body hits that spot, because it’s near the brain stem and that part of the head rarely impacts the ground. Langford’s recovery has already been slow, and he didn’t make the trip to Florida this week.