{"id":177319,"date":"2026-03-04T04:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/177319\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T04:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:30:10","slug":"final-no-5-florida-108-mississippi-state-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/177319\/","title":{"rendered":"FINAL: No. 5 Florida 108, Mississippi State 74"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Happened
\nGAINESVILLE, Fla.\u00a0 \u2013 Forward Alex Condon<\/a> scored 26 points,\u00a0guard Xaivian Lee<\/a>\u00a0and center Micah Handlogten<\/a>\u00a0enjoyed memorable “Senior Nights” and\u00a0Todd Golden<\/a> won his 100th game as Florida’s coach, as the fifth-ranked Gators, minus their best player, shook off a slow start Tuesday night and smashed Mississippi State 108-74 to claim\u00a0the 2026 Southeastern Conference championship all to themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With junior forward and leading scorer Thomas Haugh<\/a> getting a night off for precautionary reasons, the entire roster picked up the slack, with six\u00a0players scoring in double figures and another two with at least eight points. Condon went 12 of 19 from the floor. Lee had 19 points, five rebounds, six assists and just one turnover. Center Rueben Chinyelu<\/a> set the program record with his 18th double-double, finishing with 11 points, 16 rebounds and three blocks.\u00a0Handlogten, getting the start for Haugh in his senior farewell, posted 10 points, nine rebounds (all but one on offensive end) and three\u00a0assists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Golden needed 139 games to reach 100, making for the fastest in\u00a0UF history for a coach to hit the milestone. It took icon Hall-of-Famer Billy Donovan 154 games to do it. \u00a0<\/p>\n

UF, which shot 55% for the game and posted 25 assists to just five turnovers,\u00a0actually clinched the outright SEC title by halftime, courtesy of Georgia’s 99-89 defeat of second-place Alabama, but the Gators finished the job on their own and ended\u00a0the night with a fat three-game lead in the conference standings with one to play in the regular season.<\/p>\n

MSU punched UF early. The Bulldogs knocked down 10 of their\u00a0first 12 field-goal attempts and led 24-14 after nearly nine minutes. That’s when the Gators took off on a SEC season-high 18 consecutive points, with seldom-used freshman guard CJ Ingram<\/a>\u00a0(8 points, 2 rebounds, 3 assists) summoned to eat up some of Haugh’s minutes, igniting the team and building by burying consecutive 3-pointers that drew UF within a point.<\/p>\n

Four minutes later, UF led by eight and was on the way to a 47-35 edge at intermission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs cut the margin\u00a0to nine a couple times, but a 9-2 UF run worked the margin to 16. Soon it was 20, then 30 with four minutes to go and eventually as large as 37.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nRueben Chinyelu\u00a0(9) cleans the glass during Tuesday night’s action.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Turning Point\u00a0
\nDuring the 18-0 run, seven different players scored. And, remember, Haugh was out there.
\n\u00a0
\nStaggering Statistic
\nThe victory was UF’s first this season when trailing by double digits. The Gators were 0-4 in those circumstances coming in. Also, Florida finished the season 14-1 at home and improved to 43-3 at the O’Dome since November 2023. That’s a home court winning percentage of .935.
\n\u00a0
\nUp Next
\nFlorida (24-6, 15-2)\u00a0will wrap the regular season Saturday afternoon on the road at Kentucky (19-11, 10-7) in a rematch of their meeting last month in Gainesville. The Gators won that one 92-83. The Wildcats, who lost at Texas A&M 96-85 Tuesday night.\u00a0Mississippi State (13-17, 5-14) will be home against Georgia Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Email senior writer\u00a0Chris Harry<\/a> at\u00a0chrish@gators.ufl.edu<\/a>. Find his story archives\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What Happened GAINESVILLE, Fla.\u00a0 \u2013 Forward Alex Condon scored 26 points,\u00a0guard Xaivian Lee\u00a0and center Micah Handlogten\u00a0enjoyed memorable “Senior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-177319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}