TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Four nights ago, a Texas A&M squad known for its physicality, defensive prowess and playing low-scoring rock fights came to Gainesville and was handed a lopsided 19-point loss. On Wednesday night, the Florida Gators went on the road to face Alabama, the highest-scoring, fastest-paced team in the country and left with one of the best road wins in college basketball this season. 

Yeah, another one. 

Any style. Any place. Anybody, apparently. The now-healthy Gators are high-balling into the month of March and now need to be talked about – seriously – as one of the top contenders for the national championship. 

“I think we’re one of the best teams in America,” UF coach Todd Golden said after the fifth-ranked Gators dealt the seventh-ranked Crimson Tide a 99-94 defeat in their top-10 Southeastern Conference shootout at sold-out Coleman Coliseum. “To [be] that you have to go on the road and beat good teams.” 

Sophomore forward Alex Condon, back in the starting lineup, scored a career-high 27 points and grabbed 10 rebounds for his sixth double-double of the season, while senior guard Walter Clayton Jr. threw in 22 points, grabbed five rebounds and dished eight assists over his 36 minutes, all the while dictating pace for an offense that shot nearly 49 percent. Sophomore forward Thomas Haugh came off the bench for the first time in five games to score 12 points, all in the second half, including a couple 3s. Fifth-year guard Alijah Martin added 10 points and five rebounds in the program’s first road win in the series since 2019.

The Gators (26-4, 13-4), winners of eight of their last nine, pulverized the Tide (23-7, 12-5) on the glass, out-rebounding them 50-35, including 16-10 on the offensive end on the way to 19 second-chance points. Center Rueben Chinyelu had a game-high 11 rebounds in 20 minutes, four on offense. Florida did not make a field goal over the final 3:20, but made 12 of 15 free throws to help put things away after Bama tried to lengthen the game by fouling and sending UF to line under pressure. Eight days after missing 11 free throws in a tight loss at Georgia, the Gators were up for the challenge this time. They were 21-for-29 on the night (72.4 percent). They also turned the ball over just twice in the second half. 

The victory was UF’s second over a top-10 team on the road this season (joining the 90-81 defeat of No. 1 Auburn on Feb. 8), marking the first time in program history the Gators put two such wins together in the same season. That statistic in itself – as well as clinching second place in the nation’s best league (with the accompanying No. 2 seed and double-bye in next week’s SEC Tournament) – should get the attention of the folks who seed the NCAA Tournament’s field of 68.

If Florida, which equaled the second-most regular-season wins in program history, doesn’t have the look of a No. 1 seed, no one does. 

“We think we’ve done enough. We think we’ve been winning games and shown who we are,” said Clayton, who snapped a career-high streak of 11 games without scoring at least 20 points. “If it happens, it happens. If it don’t, it don’t. We’re going to go into the tournament regardless, with the same mentality, and try to beat whoever is in front of us.”

Condon, looking full-go (and then some) in his third game back from a Feb. 11 ankle sprain, made the most of his first start in three weeks. Over 30-plus minutes, he hit nine of 16 shots, with a pair of 3s, blocked two shots, grabbed half of his rebounds on the offensive end and went seven of nine from the free-throw line just four days after going 1-for-5 in the 89-70 rout of 12^th-ranked Texas A&M. 

“I got a hundred up two days in a row,” Condon said of his time in the free-throw lab. “Just getting my routine down.”

As routines go, the Gators displayed a smooth, confident, business-like approach to this trip. Despite eight first-half turnovers, they never looked shaken or rattled in a hostile environment against a Tide team coming off a crushing, buzzer-beating loss at No. 5 Tennessee and headed this weekend to top-ranked and rival Auburn to wrap the regular season. Bama needed this one badly.

“Give Florida a lot of credit for the way they came in and played us tough. They looked like they had more energy than us,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said after his third straight loss to the Gators. “They obviously destroyed us on the glass, they doubled us in second-chance points and we gave up 26 fast-break points – about half of their points came on second chances or in transition, so we have to be better. It doesn’t matter what your game plan is if you don’t get back on defense and can’t get a rebound.”

The first half was back-and-forth, but basically a stalemate. UF took a 41-40 lead to the locker room, with Condon having set a physical, aggressive tone underneath with 12 points and five boards.

“The first little section that I played I was just getting my feet back under me, getting used to starting again,” said Condon, who last week at Georgia was a rusty 1-for-7 from the floor and grabbed just three rebounds. “Credit to our guys. I think they did a good job of getting me in the right spots tonight.”

The Tide, who got a game-high 30 points from point guard and All-America candidate Mark Sears on his “Senior Night,” worked ahead by five four minutes into the second half, but a 13-3 run by the Gators – with 3s from Clayton and Haugh, plus an old-time 3-point play from Clayton – reversed the count and put the visitors up by five with just over 13 minutes to go. 

“We talked about it before the game, how they were going to go on runs,” Clayton said. “They’re a great shooting team, great offensive team. They’re going to have their runs, so we had to battle through that adversity and went on a run of our own.”

Then the Gators had to withstood the inevitable Bama push to get back in the game. Condon scored 13 points over a seven-minute stretch, with a couple lob slams on rim rolls off great feeds from Clayton, but a UF lead that got as fat as 14 with 5:55 remaining began to shrink, with Oats ordering fouls to extend the game. 

UF was mostly up for the free-throw challenge, but the Tide kept coming. Bama made six straight free throws to get within five with 1:25 left. Then Condon and Haugh made four straight from the line for some (temporary) breathing room. Bama bracketed 3s from Labaron Philon (19 points) and Jarin Stevenson around two free throws by Martin to draw within four, 94-90, with 20.5 seconds to go. 

Then Haugh made two more at 19.2, and after a Bama bucket, it was backup junior Denzel Aberdeen sinking two at 12.4. That was that. 

Two huge and thoroughly impressive Quadrant 1, resume-building victories back-to-back against two outstanding, highly ranked opponents who could not be any more different. 

The common denominator in the two outcomes was Florida’s versatility. 

“Obviously, contrasting styles, [but] I think our group does a really good job of being able to execute different game plans,” said Golden, who praised his collection of poised guards for their ability to penetrate the Bama defense, eat space and make reads (14 assists worth). “As coaches, we can do what we can to put our guys in good positions, but at the end of the day it’s up to these guys to go out there and make plays. They did a wonderful job of that for 40 minutes tonight.”

Email senior writer Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu