GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A week ago, Tennessee coach Rick Barnes sat in the exact same spot, conducting his postgame autopsy after Florida drilled the No. 1-ranked Volunteers by 30 points. The loss, Barnes said, would help his team.

This time it was the Florida coach Todd Golden in the losing seat late Tuesday night. He didn’t get as far as Barnes, but the way Missouri shut down its fifth-ranked Gators, building a 19-point lead and surviving a furious comeback by the home team to secure an 83-82 road win, might be worth it will prove to be a real kick in the head for the Gators (15-2, 2-2) and all their good feelings lately.

Given the current state of the powerful Southeastern Conference, it would be better that way.

“I don’t think we’ll ever look at it with joy, but if we can get back to being the determined, competitive team that plays with a chip on our shoulder and is the more physical team – which we have.” “That “It’s been pretty much every time we’ve played this year – then it won’t be the end of the world,” Golden said after the team’s first home loss in more than a year, ending a 16-game streak at the O’Dome . “We have to. We simply have no other choice. If we don’t recover and find that (mentality), we’re going to get through the rest of this conference season.”

Tigers backup guard Caleb Grill immediately came off the bench to score a team-high 22 points, thanks largely to his six three-pointers, which accounted for more than half of the Tigers’ 11 points, seven of which came in the first half , which represented the Gators’ worst 20 minutes of the season.

Mizzou drained 14 of its first 22 shots, including seven three-pointers, to take a 42-23 lead with seven minutes left in the first half as Grill shot 4-4 from distance. Florida managed to cut the lead to 10 with five minutes left, but failed to score and turned the ball over four times in the remainder of the period, making the score 50-34 at the break.

“We just didn’t match their enthusiasm. We didn’t match the physicality,” Golden said. “We allowed them to come into our building and make themselves comfortable, which just doesn’t happen often.”

UF, meanwhile, seemed uncomfortable. The Gators turned over eight times in the first half, leading to 10 Mizzou points, while the Tigers failed to score a point with just three turnovers, the first of which came almost 18 minutes into the game.

“Our goal is to stay under 12 turnovers – under six and a half – and obviously we didn’t do that, and they got a few shots off of them, so it’s like giving the other team points,” the senior said Florida Guard Walter Clayton Jr. said after leading all scorers with 28 points, five rebounds and three steals. “We have to do better.”

As a result, they were better in the second half, but still had a lot of ground to make up. The Gators scored the first five points of the quarter to cut the lead to five, but then Grill hit a 3.

For Florida, it was like that the rest of the time. Two steps up, one step back.

UF got within three points three times but failed to get the next defensive stop. The last time Clayton hit a three-pointer was with 3:38 left, but forward Trent Pierce tied it with three goals of his own at 3:14.

Mizzou’s lead was five with 2:38 left when Clayton was fouled while shooting a 3. Clayton, an 87.8 career free throw shooter at the line, had a chance to tie the Gators within two minutes but missed the first one And Secondly, they have to be content with a deficit of four points. UF only had a 21-31 lead on the night (67.7 percent).

Eighteen seconds later, Grill drained his sixth 3-pointer to give himself a seven-point lead. Television replays showed that Grill had one foot on the line and that his shot should have been a 2, but the UF coaching staff was not made aware of this until after the fact.

“We didn’t see it,” Golden said. “That’s up to me.”

Whether it would have played a role, no one knows, but Aliyah Martins Floater with 38.5 seconds to play made it a 79-77 game. Florida’s defense couldn’t force a turnover, however, as Mitchell made two free throws with 28.2 seconds left and – after a layup from Alex Condon (8 points, 6 rebounds) – Grill hits two more with 5.0 seconds left.

Martin’s 3-pointer from logo range at the buzzer gave the final one-point margin of victory and the Tigers earned their second win over a top-five team this season. Mizzou defeated No. 1 Kansas on Dec. 8 in Columbia.

“It was an incredible game, a great atmosphere,” said Tigers coach Dennis Gates about his team’s shooting percentage of just 33 percent in the second half and the missed eleven free throws. “I am proud of our team. … Going out in this conference and holding the lead for 37 minutes is a very difficult thing. And our boys did it. It’s just one.’ Of those things, we started hitting shot after shot after shot.

Way too many for the Gators to recover from.

“Yeah, it’s definitely not a good feeling, but it’s definitely something to learn from,” the UF senior guard said Will Richard said. “You can’t take nights off in this league, and after a first half like we did, something like that can’t happen again for the rest of the season.”

Email the senior author Chris Harry at [email protected]