Valentines day started well enough. I went to work, got off early and came home around gametime to a valentines present of a delicious 12 pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. To top that, when I asked what the girlfriend wanted to do, she replied &watch the gator game, what do you think?&. The next few hours I watched UF play two very different halves of basketball.

For the 4th time this season, the gator men's basketball team lost by 3 or less. This would be ridiculous, but we've also won 3 games by the same margin. That said, losing to a Georgia team that has been down ever since they were put on probation is always a bad loss.

The player that hurt us the most was Terrance Woodbury. Scoring a season high 32 points in 36 minutes he proved to be a matchup problem down low as well as from the arc shooting 70 percent field goal and threes, and perfect from the line. Walter Hodge (runner up for OPOTB) played his best game of the year scoring 22 points in 37 minutes shooting 75 percent from the arc. This could be a turnaround point for him considering he played well at Kentucky until he was ejected. Nick &Billy's love child& Calathes (OPOTB) had what I thought was his 3rd triple double out of 4 total in UF's history scoring 16 with 13 assists and what I thought was 10 rebounds (the box score shows 9, they are probably right).

In the first half we were down by as much as 14 but ended the half down by 7 at 47-54. At this point I was pretty confident about the game thinking there was no way Georgia would keep up this pace scoring 50+ points in the second half. They did not keep the pace up, but maintained their lead well enough to force us to a &do or die& possession being behind by 2 with time running down. The ball ended up in Erving Walker's hands, who is generally a great one on one player, but could not shoot over one of Georgia's big men to tie the game. I like this option better than relying on Calathes every game to shoot the last shot, but moving the ball around more probably would have been beneficial. Walter Hodge got the offensive rebound but was guarded closely and missed a desperation shot at the end of the game.

Any time we lose to Georgia in any sport is a bad day for the Gator Nation, however, this loss was more substantial considering we will now have to win at least 3 of the next 4 home games, win our 2 remaining away games and go deep in the SEC tournament to be likely for an invitation to the dance. I think we still have a shot. As I said before, we've lost 4 games by 3 or less, and our only blowout conference loss was to a good Tennessee team.

Next game: Alabama at home 2/18 7:00pm. My prediction UF 70 Alabama 62