Gators Fall to West Virginia in Oregon
West Virginia 84, Florida 55 Phil Knight Legacy Chiles Center | Portland, Ore.
Records: Florida 4-3 | West Virginia 6-1 Next up: vs. Florida A&M, Wednesday, 8 p.m., SEC+
Notable
* Kyle Lofton scored a season-high 17 points, his second game in double-figure scoring this season.
* Jason Jitoboh scored a season-best eight points off the bench, logging a season-high 17 minutes as Colin Castleton was limited due to foul trouble.
Head Coach Todd Golden On where the game went wrong for Florida...
"I thought we did a really poor job of dealing with adversity in the first half. There could've been a couple calls that went against us that could've gone our way and maybe would've changed things, but we did a very poor job of handling that adversity and fighting through it. I thought we did a good job at the end of the first half of hanging on and cutting that thing down to eight where I thought we'd have a good shot to get back into it at the beginning of the second half. It looked like Colin was really out of sorts and didn't give us a lot after sitting on the bench for a while, then they got off to a 20 to two run to start the second half, and we just weren't able to recover."
On Colin Castleton and Jason Jitoboh battling foul trouble... "It was a difficult game. I thought it was very physical on both ends. Unfortunately, it was our two bigs that were paying the price in terms of getting into foul trouble. Clearly, it took us out of a rhythm. Both those guys weren't able to play like themselves. Jason did a decent job of coming back in the second half and putting some [shots] in, but Colin's really important to us and we need him on the floor to be successful. We also need him to be able to battle through foul trouble and play better through adversity."