Florida Forces Alabama Into Season-High Turnover Performance in Blowout

No. 23 Alabama's roller coaster season continued on Sunday with a lackluster performance in a 100-77 blowout loss to No. 19 Florida. The Gators worked themselves into a double-digit halftime lead and cruised to victory, creating Crimson Tide questions entering the final two months of the year.

Alabama Dominated by Florida for Fifth Straight Time

"They turned us over 18 times," Nate Oats said after the loss. "Boogie [Fland] ends up with eight steals, you've got to credit their guards. They played well. Everybody's afraid of Florida's front court, rightfully so, I mean, they're tough, they're good, they're skilled. [Rueben] Chinyelu is one of my favorite players in the league, and he ends up with 14 and 17, which is ridiculous, 17 rebounds, but the guards really controlled this game here. I'm a little disappointed we didn't have better guard play with the amount of turnovers. They didn't turn the ball over on their side at all. We forced two turnovers the whole game, and only one of them was on their back court.

"You look at our backcourt, it was 14 turnovers. We had a lot of turnovers in our backcourt. It's hard to win a game when you're minus 16 in the turnovers and minus six in the O-boards. You talk about trying to win a possession game, they destroyed us in the possession game. They scored 100 points and only made three 3's, but you don't have to take many threes when you're getting dunks and layups off turnovers. 25-0 on points off turnovers, not sure I've ever been associated with a game like that. It's disappointing, and it's also a credit to Florida's game plan. They went to the switching. We didn't handle it well, their physicality on the switches caused our guards some major problems. We did a terrible job adjusting to it."

Florida forced Alabama into 18 turnovers in Gainesville to serve the Crimson Tide their fourth conference loss of the season. The 18 were a Crimson Tide season high for giveaways, and the Gators turned those 18 into 25 points, outpacing the Crimson Tide by scoring 26 fast break points to Alabama's three. The Florida ball pressure allowed the Gators to take 16 more field goal attempts, and with that, they dominated Alabama inside, outscoring the Crimson Tide 72-26 in the paint.

Every Alabama guard dealt with turnovers on Sunday as Florida's ball pressure was elite. Labaron Philon led the team with five on his own, making it his fifth game this year with five or more turnovers.

"Yeah, a lot of his [Labaron Philon] turnovers came early, I thought." Oats said. "But he definitely had a few in the second half. He ends up with five turnovers. He's had five turnovers way too many times this year. When he turns the ball over this much, it's hard. You'd like to go play Holloway, and Holloway isn't turning the ball over very much and he turned it over himself three times today. They did a really good job switching. I don't necessarily think it was him pressing as much as him not handling the physicality of their bigs once they switched."

The Crimson Tide has a short turnaround as they welcome the SEC leading Texas A&M Aggies into Coleman Coliseum on Wednesday. The Aggies look to follow in Florida's footsteps and bring the heavy ball pressure to Alabama as first year head coach Bucky McMillian has his program at 26th in the nation at forcing turnovers.