ORLANDO, Fla. -- It was not a clean game. It was far from it.

No. 8 Florida was able to hold off Miami to take the 24-20 win. The Gators also turned over the ball four times, missed plenty of tackles, and had multiple penalties that extended drives for the Hurricanes.

"It seemed like we had to win the game about four different times," Dan Mullen told reporters at the end of the game.

After five lead changes, the Gators were able to make one stick, when Feleipe Franks threw a beautiful 65-yard pass to Josh Hammond.

Florida would score the go-ahead touchdown three players later.

"When we needed to get points, we came out there and got points," Franks said. "When we needed to get a stop, we got a stop. We depended on each other, and I think that's the great thing about our team: we support and we all can get the job done, both sides."

Franks made that throw after bouncing back his interception just a drive earlier.

"It says a lot. I mean, I think Feleipe is going to be one of the best quarterbacks in the country when it’s all said and done," said wide receiver Van Jefferson. "That just shows his character, that just shows his mindset and how mentally strong he is. For him to do that and bounce back, it was great to see."

Florida was certainly resilient.

"I really loved the way that our guys continued to battle, continued to compete, continued to try to find a way to win for the entire four quarters," said Mullen.

The Gators did make it difficult for themselves. In addition to turning over the ball four times, the defense had a few lapses on Saturday night.

Despite causing havoc in the trenches by recording ten sacks, the defense just kept giving Jarren Williams and the Miami offense chances to get back into the game.

Both Marco Wilson and Trey Dean were called for pass interference on the final Miami drive - one coming when the Hurricanes were facing fourth-and-34 and the second when the Canes faced a third-and-12.

"The last five minutes of the game I think I aged like ten years," joked Mullen about the final Miami drive.

That doesn't even count some of the missed tackles we saw in several of Miami's explosive play, including the second half touchdown that gave Diaz' team the lead.

However, the Gators head coach saw several things he liked about the final result.

"You go back and talk about how we want to (win), our plan to win games, we certainly didn't do that tonight with turning the ball over, with not scoring touchdowns when you get down in the red zone, some critical penalties at critical times," he said. "We had some missed tackles.

"But I'm going to tell you what, our guys competed. They competed and they competed and they kept competing, kept battling."

"I think it was just the first game," said Jefferson. "Us coming in kind of nervous and stuff like that. I don't think it was anything they did, I think we just didn't execute to the way we do in practice and things like that. Once the game got going on, I think we got comfortable a little bit."

"This is a good win overall," added Jefferson.

"Our guys compete. They competed and they competed and they kept competing and kept battling," said Mullen. "I'm really proud of that. I think it goes a lot to the work our guys put in over the summer, the conditioning, what Nick Savage and his staff does to get our guys ready to continue to play all the way through the end that way."

The Gators will hope next week's bye will allow the team to clean up the mistakes before their first home game in two weeks.

“I think it’s great because we can go coach off all the little things that we did wrong, all those different mistakes, but I don’t have to coach about the effort and the strain and how to finish and how to go play as hard as you can," said Mullen. "I don’t know that I have to coach those. That’s hard to coach. What we can coach on is do some fumble drills with the ball out, try to fall on it, some ball security, some different decision-making. Really good because we had a lot of young players play, a lot of veteran players, but there were some young players getting some action and now they’ve kind of gotten their feet wet a little bit. The nice one is we get a little bye week and get everybody a little recovered, then we’re at home for four of the next five games. That will be fun.”