LAS VEGAS — They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
The Gators can live with that. They won’t care if what happened at Allegiant Stadium on Saturday at the Las Vegas Bowl gets hit over the head with a shovel, shot through the heart and buried somewhere outside the city limits in a remote part of the desert.
Yeah, it was that forgettable. And no, it’s not that easy.
Not when the highlight of Florida’s 30-3 loss to Oregon State was Adam Mihalek’s 40-yard field goal with 37 seconds remaining that kept alive the Gators’ 34-year streak without a scoreless score.
“I mean, what are the percentages of being successful in the fourth and stuff?” Gators coach Billy Napier said after the last-minute field goal on fourth-and-goal from the Oregon State 23-yard line. “Then, take the points. Give Adam a chance to get some experience.”
The Gators finished Napier’s first season in charge with a 6-7 record, the same record as last season when a loss to UCF in the Gasparilla Bowl dropped the Gators under .500.
Adam Mihalek sets up for his 40-yard field goal in the final seconds of Saturday’s loss to Oregon State in the Las Vegas Bowl. (Photo: white ann/UAA Communications) The game was close at halftime despite the Gators managing just 2 yards of offense in the second quarter after 91 in the first quarter in the first career start of transfer quarterback Jack Miller III. . Miller led the Gators to Oregon State’s 31 on the second drive of the Florida game, but a 3rd-and-6 turned into a 3rd-and-16 after back-to-back false starts by offensive lineman Kamryn Waites (making his first career start ) and Kingsley Eguakun. Mihalek missed a 52-yard field goal to the left on fourth down, and the Beavers drove 65 yards in eight plays on the next possession. Oregon State took a 7–0 lead on Tyjon Lindsey’s 8-yard TD run.
Mistakes and missed opportunities proved to be a recurring theme for the Gators in their lowest-scoring bowl game since Maryland eliminated them in the 1975 Gator Bowl.
The Gators committed 11 penalties for 82 yards. The Beavers sacked Miller four times. Kicker Jeremy Crawshaw blocked a punt in the third quarter when the ball deflected off a teammate and the two-headed rushing attack from Montrell Johnson Jr. (14 yards) and Trevor Etienne (14 yards) combined for 28 yards in 19 carries. Oregon State also converted a critical fake punt that led to a score. On Florida’s only scoring drive, the Gators had a first-and-goal at the Oregon State 6-yard line after Miller connected with Thai Chiaokhiao-Bowman for 38 yards. They went backwards from there.
It was that kind of day in front of an announced crowd of 29,750.
The Gators have been saying all week how much they enjoyed their trip to Las Vegas, but Saturday wasn’t the final scene they envisioned. As the Beavers and their fans celebrated their first win over a non-two Southeastern Conference opponent against Missouri when the Tigers were in the Big 12, the Gators 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 as ready to play as we needed to be,” Napier said. “The things that let me down are the penalties, some situational errors in the game, certainly a lot of things we can do from a coach’s perspective. I think we held there on defense. We didn’t produce much on offense, but I thought our defensive players stayed.” there for a while.”
The Gators were still in the game at halftime, trailing 10–0 after Jordan Young blocked Everett Hayes’ 33-yard field goal attempt on the final play of the first half. But instead of charging back in the third quarter, the Gators stayed neutral, gaining 5 yards in nine plays.
Meanwhile, the Beavers increased their lead to 23-0 on Ben Gulbranson’s 15-yard touchdown pass to Silas Bolden and Gulbranson’s 7-yard run. Oregon State (10-3) ended the game early in the fourth quarter when Jam Griffin’s 2-yard touchdown run capped a 13-play, 98-yard drive.
In the lead up to Saturday’s game, most of the headlines focused on Florida coming to Las Vegas without starting quarterback Anthony Richardson (declared for the NFL Draft) and 21 total players appearing in a game. this season due to cancellations, transfers, or layoffs.
In the end, none of it seemed to matter. Miller, the junior freshman who transferred from Ohio State after last season, settled in after three-and-out to lead off the game and finish 13-of-22 for 180 yards.
“I think Jack showed some determination,” Napier said. “You think about what he was asked to do, obviously he had the thumb injury at the end of training camp to come back four or five weeks ago, really the first time he started and just reps to get ready for this game.”
“What I think is that maybe we can do things as a coaching staff to help him, have the players around him play better, he can play better, but more importantly, we can train better. It’s a difficult dynamic and he took it on.” . .”
Miller was under constant pressure, and with the running game close (39 yards on 33 attempts), the Beavers held 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.
For the Gators, it was a disappointing season finale after a dominant 38-6 home win over South Carolina five weeks ago dropped them to 6-4. Florida ended the regular season with losses at Vanderbilt and Florida State.
Senior defensive tackle Gervon Dexter, who played Saturday after declaring for the NFL Draft, is confident the program is headed in the right direction with Napier despite what the score said Saturday.
The back-to-back losing seasons are 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 Charley Pell’s first season (1979). The Gators are a program in transition now as then.
Gators quarterback jack miller iii he threw for 180 yards in his first career start Saturday. (Photo: white ann/UAA Communications) “It was a lot of emotions,” Dexter said of the postgame locker room where Napier recognized the team’s veteran leaders for their contributions in his first season. “But mostly I’m proud to be here. Honestly, just looking at the transition from last year to this year, I’m proud of that. I feel like we left it better than we took it in.”
Fourth-year junior receiver Ricky Pearsall led the Gators with four catches for 65 yards, the identical totals he had last season in the Las Vegas Bowl as a member of the Arizona State team that lost to Wisconsin. Pearsall said he hasn’t decided if he’ll return, but he enjoyed his first season at UF and sees brighter days ahead.
“I think we can look back and see what we’ve been doing all year. Fighting to the finish is something this team has been doing,” Pearsall said. “You can’t really teach effort, and I think that’s a really big thing that we can build on for next year. We’ve got a lot of young guys who are hungry and excited to play, so I think Gator Nation should be excited about it. future here.”
Napier will turn all his attention to National Signing Day on Wednesday. The Gators have a recruiting class currently ranked in the top 10 nationally.
Their first season crashed at the finish line, but if the Gators can continue to recruit well, the highlight of their next bowl game might not be a last-second field goal to extend their NCAA-record streak of not being excluded 436 games. .
But first, Napier paid tribute to his inaugural Florida team one last time.
“Sometimes I think the result doesn’t necessarily show the growth that we’ve seen,” Napier said. “I think our issues on the pitch have been specific to execution. I think we’re always working on the cultural side, but we’ve made a lot of progress in that area. What I observed in that locker room compared to some of the things we observed maybe when we came here for the first time, it’s a whole different ballclub.”
The next step is to place a ball club that ends with a winning record.
Source: news.google.com