Gators snap their 7-game losing streak against rival Seminoles

GAINESVILLE — Florida beat Florida State at its own game to snap the Seminoles’ stranglehold on the Gators in men’s basketball.

Mike White’s squad played suffocating defense and relied on balanced scoring to end a seven-game losing streak dating to 2013 in the series with a 71-55 win Sunday in the O’Connell Center.

“They out Florida State-ed Florida State,” Seminoles’ coach Leonard Hamilton. “They did the things to us that we’ve been accustomed to doing to other people.”

Big man Colin Castleton led the way with 15 points, a career-high 16 rebounds, six blocked shots and an abundance of energy.

“We really didn’t care about what they were going to bring,” Castleton said of the Noles. “It was about us and how hard we were going to play — how tough we were, how much heart we had. We brought more of that than they did.”

A remade roster with four incoming transfers vowed to play with the kind of effort often seen only in spurts by most teams but the foundation of many top programs, like Hamilton’s in Tallahassee. During a 74-61 win Tuesday against Elon, Florida exerted inconsistent effort but at its best showed promise.

The Gators (2-0) knew they’d need their peak performance to defeat the Seminoles fresh off a 105-point showing against Penn and coming off three straight Sweet 16 appearances. But the Seminoles (1-1) also were replacing four of their top five scorers, including NBA rookie star Scottie Barnes.

FSU entered the day with fourstraightdouble-digitwins during the series and history onitsside.TheGatorsbrought a mental edge and emotional scar tissue to exorcise following an 83-71 last December overshadowedbytheon-court collapseofGators’starKeyontae Johnson.

Johnson recovered but still cannot return to the court as doctors continue to investigate the cause of his health scare.