Officials miss apparent elbow by Alabama's Mohamed Wague on Florida's Alex Condon
As Alabama and Florida battled for a rebound in the first half on Wednesday, Alex Condon found himself in the middle of the scrum. He took an elbow from Crimson Tide forward Mohamed Wague, although the refs called the foul on the Gators.
Wague was among the group battling for a loose ball, and he appeared to lower his arm on Condon in the pile after the two collided going for the ball. However, the officials called the foul on Florida, and play went on from there.
At the time, it was a back-and-forth affair. But the Gators turned on the jets and led by as many as 10 points in the second half before Alabama made a run to tie things up and take the game to overtime at Coleman Coliseum.
Florida came in at No. 24 in the AP Top 25 this week after winning seven of its last eight games, including three straight. The Gators pulled off the 88-82 victory over Georgia over the weekend to improve to 18-7 overall and 8-4 in SEC play this season.
As for Alabama, the Crimson Tide entered Wednesday night alone in first place in the conference after Tennessee fell to Missouri on Tuesday. Nate Oats’ group has been red-hot through SEC play, bringing a 10-2 record into the game against Florida with victories in five of six games.
Against Florida, though, Oats said Alabama had to wreak havoc on defense to generate some turnovers. That was going to be the key if the Crimson Tide wanted to take a one-game lead in the standings and get their 11th conference victory.
“We’ve got to turn them over more, so there’s less shots to get rebounds. We didn’t do a great job against A&M with that,” Oats said, via BOL’s Charlie Potter. “We need to keep them off the glass. We didn’t do a good job of that – they had 26 O boards. But we also said when they do get a rebound, they don’t get points for it. We’ve still got to get stops.
“To give up 26 O boards and to only get out-scored by five, I think, on second-chance points was not bad. So I did think we did a decent job still getting stops. (Andersson) Garcia has eight offensive rebounds and only scores three points total. We did a decent job continuing to play, guard, not being deflated when you give up an O board. We’re going to have to do that.”