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LAS VEGAS – They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Masters can live with that. What happened Saturday in the Las Vegas Bowl at Allegiant Stadium wouldn’t have mattered if he had been hit in the head with a shovel, shot in the heart and buried in a desert section outside the city limits.
Yes, that was forgettable. And no, it’s not that simple.
Not when the highlight of Florida’s 30-3 loss to Oregon State was a 40-yard field goal. Adam Mihalek With 37 seconds left, the Gators’ 34-year streak of not being blanked on the scoreboard.
“I mean, what are the percentages of success on fourth and over?” Gators coach Billy Napier A last-minute field goal on fourth-and-goal from the Oregon State 23-yard line. “So take the points. Give Adam a chance to get some experience.”
The Gators finish Napier’s first season with a 6-7 record, which was sparked by last season’s Gasparilla Bowl loss to UCF that dropped the Gators to .500.
The Gators managed 2 yards of offense in the second quarter after a 91-yard opening drive, but the game was close at halftime. Jack Miller III’s First career start. Miller drove the Gators to the Oregon State 31 on Florida’s second consecutive play, but a third-and-6 turned into a third-and-16 on back-to-back false starts by offensive linemen. Camryn Waites (to start the first job) and Kingsley Iguacu.. Mihalek missed a 52-yard field goal on a fourth down fumble, and the Beavers drove 65 yards in eight plays. Oregon State took a 7-0 lead on an 8-yard touchdown run by Tejon Lindsey.
Mistakes and missed opportunities proved a recurring theme in the Gators’ lowest scoring bowl game since the 1975 Gator Bowl shutout by Maryland.
The Gators committed 11 penalties for 82 yards. The Beavers sacked Miller four times. Punter Jeremy Crawshaw In the third quarter, when the ball went out of the teammate and the attack with two heads Montreal Johnson Jr (14 m) and Trevor Etienne (14 yards) for 28 yards on 19 carries. Oregon State also turned a crucial layup into a score. On Florida’s only scoring drive, the Gators had first-and-goal at the Oregon State 6 after Miller connected. Tai Chiaokyo-Bowman for 38 meters. Then they went back.
It was such a day before the announced population of 29,750.
The Gators talked all week about how excited they were about their trip to Vegas, but Saturday wasn’t the last show they had in mind. While the Beavers and their fellow Tigers celebrated their first victory over Missouri in two out of two Southeastern Conference games in the Big 12, the Giants stumbled into the locker room with a third straight bowl loss.
“It’s my job to get the team ready to play, and we weren’t ready to play as much as we wanted,” Napier said. “The penalties that hurt me, some of the situational mistakes in the game, really are a lot of things that we can do from a coaching standpoint. I think we hung in there defensively. We didn’t do much offensively, but I thought our defensive players hung in there.”
The hosts were still in the game, trailing 10-0 Jordan Young Everett blocked Hayes’ 33-yard field goal on the final play of the first half. But instead of charging back in the third quarter, the Gators stuck to neutrality, gaining 5 yards on nine plays.
Meanwhile, the Beavers went from Ben Gulbranson to Silas Bolden and Gulbranson’s 7-yard run on a 15-yard touchdown pass increased the lead to 23-0. Oregon State (10-3) put the game away early in the fourth quarter when Jam Griffin’s 2-yard touchdown capped a 13-play, 98-yard drive.
Leading up to Saturday’s game, most of the headlines focused on Florida arriving in Las Vegas without a starting quarterback. Anthony Richardson (declared for the NFL Draft) and 21 total players who appeared in a single game this season due to waivers, transfers or waivers.
In the end, none of them seemed to matter. Miller, a third-year freshman who transferred from Ohio State after last season, finished 13 of 22 for 180 yards to open the game after a three-and-out.
“I think Jack showed a little bit of grit,” Napier said. “You think about what he’s been asked to do, he had a thumb injury at the end of training camp to come back four or five weeks ago, actually the first time he started, and he just had to be ready for this game.
I think maybe the things we can do as a staff to help him, get the players around him to play better, he can play better, but more importantly, we can coach better. This is a strong dynamic and he took it. .”
With Miller under constant pressure and the running game shut down (39 yards on 33 attempts), the Beavers limited the Gators to a season-low 219 yards of total offense. The Beavers reached 10 wins for the third time in program history and the first time in 16 years.
It was a disappointing end to the season for the Gators after a dominating 38-6 home win over South Carolina five weeks ago. Florida finished the regular season with losses to Vanderbilt and Florida State.
Senior defensive tackle Gervon Dexter, who played Saturday after declaring for the NFL draft, is confident the program will be headed in the right direction under Napier, despite what the scoreboard said Saturday.
The back-to-back losing seasons were Florida’s first since the Carter administration when the Gators went 4-7 in Doug Dickey’s final season (1978) and 0-10-1 in Charlie Peel’s first season (1979). The Masters are a program in transition right now.
“There were a lot of emotions,” Dexter Napier said in the postgame locker room, where he recognized the team’s veteran leaders for their contributions in the first season. “But mainly I’m proud to be here. Honestly, I’m proud to see the transition from last year to this year. I feel like we left better than we got.”
Fourth year junior receiver Ricky Pearsall He led the Gators with four catches for 65 yards, the same total he posted last season in the Las Vegas Bowl as a member of the Arizona State team that lost to Wisconsin. Pearsall has not decided whether he will return, but said he enjoyed his first season at UF and sees bright days ahead.
“I think we can look back and see what we’ve done all year. Fighting until the end is what this team has been doing,” Pearsall said. “You can’t really teach effort, and I think that’s the most important thing that we can build on going into next year. We have a lot of young guys that are hungry and eager to play, so I think Gator Nation should be excited. Here’s to the future.”
Napier will turn his full attention to National Signing Day on Wednesday. The Gators currently have a recruiting class in the top 10 nationally.
His first season fizzled at the finish line, but if the Gators continue to recruit well, the highlight of their next bowl game might not be a last-second field goal to keep their NCAA record streak from ending at 436 games. .
But first, Napier graced the team for the first time in Florida.
“Sometimes I think the results don’t show the progress we’ve seen.” I think we’re always working on the culture part, but we’ve made a lot of progress in that area. What I noticed in that locker room was probably a completely different ball club compared to some of what we saw when we got here.
The next step is to register a ball club that finishes with a winning record.
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