{"id":177419,"date":"2026-03-04T06:15:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T06:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/177419\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T06:15:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T06:15:16","slug":"florida-108-74-mississippi-state-mar-3-2026-game-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/177419\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida 108-74 Mississippi State (Mar 3, 2026) Game Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — \u2014 Alex Condon<\/a> scored 26 points, Xaivian Lee<\/a> added 19 and No. 5 Florida celebrated its first Southeastern Conference title since 2014 with a 108-74 romp over Mississippi State on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey presented the Gators with the regular-season trophy before their home finale, and Florida formally secured the outright championship when Georgia closed out No. 16 Alabama earlier in the night.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, coach Todd Golden\u2019s team wanted to finish the season \u201cthe right way\u201d \u2014 with a 10th consecutive win.<\/p>\n

This one looked a little shaky early but ended like the others \u2014 with the Gators pulling away in the second half. It felt over when senior Micah Handlogten<\/a> scooped a ball heading out of bounds to Urban Klavzar<\/a> for a corner 3-pointer that put Florida up 19 with a little more than 11 minutes remaining.<\/p>\n

Golden won his 100th game at Florida (24-6, 15-2), becoming the fastest to reach the milestone in school history and breaking the previous mark set by Billy Donovan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rueben Chinyelu<\/a> finished with 11 points and 16 rebounds for his 18th double-double of the season, breaking the school record set by Bob Smyth in 1976.<\/p>\n

Josh Hubbard<\/a> led the Bulldogs (13-17, 5-12) with 21 points. <\/p>\n

Playing without leading scorer Thomas Haugh<\/a> (precaution), Florida fell behind by 10 points in the early going. Mississippi State made seven consecutive shots while building a 24-14 lead.<\/p>\n

The Gators responded in a big way, though. They used an 18-0 run spanning six minutes \u2013 their longest in SEC play this season — to flip the scoreboard and start looking like the team that had won nine in a row by an average margin of 22 points.<\/p>\n

Seven Florida players scored during the spurt. The Bulldogs, meanwhile, missed 11 consecutive shots.<\/p>\n

The rest of the night was essentially another party in the O\u2019Connell Center. Florida, which handed out hands and T-shirts and cut down the nets following a 34-point drubbing of Arkansas, put on another scoring display against Mississippi State.<\/p>\n

Up next <\/p>\n

Mississippi State: Hosts Georgia on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Florida: At Kentucky on Saturday.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GAINESVILLE, Fla. — \u2014 Alex Condon scored 26 points, Xaivian Lee added 19 and No. 5 Florida celebrated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-177419","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\/177419","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=177419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}