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No. 12 Florida clamps down in second half, beats Auburn

Feb 22, 2012 - 4:45 AM Gainesville, FL (Sports Network) - Kenny Boynton scored 20 points and No. 12 Florida pulled away in the second half to beat Auburn, 63-47, on Tuesday.

Bradley Beal and Erving Walker added 13 points apiece for the Gators (22-6, 10-3 SEC), who outscored Auburn 36-17 after halftime to win their third game in a row.

Florida made 11 three-pointers in the game, including seven in the second half.

The news wasn't all good. Forward Will Yeguete broke his left foot during the game and is expected to miss the remainder of the season. He started 10 games this season.

Adrian Forbes scored 11 points to lead Auburn (14-13, 4-9) while a banged-up Kenny Gabriel had eight. The Tigers, who had a 30-27 lead at the break, have lost six of eight.

Gabriel, the team's second leading scorer entering the game, came down hard on his back in the lane after he was called for a charge midway through the first half. He played just 20 minutes.

Recently dominant in the series, Florida beat Auburn for the fourth straight time. But the Gators needed a big second half to do so.

They shot better than 48 percent after halftime, including 7-of-12 from three- point range, while Auburn shot just over 30 percent and was 1-of-7 from long range.

"You're not going to beat an explosive offensive team like Florida when you're not knocking down shots," said Auburn coach Tony Barbee. "We did a good job holding them to seven points under their average, but a big key was that we were going to have to score.

"We had 11 points in the second half up until two minutes to go in the game. You're not winning the game on their floor when they are a veteran, seasoned team. We knew they were going to make a run, and we just didn't have the firepower to counter-punch it."

Florida's first five makes in the second half were three-pointers. Boynton had three of them, including the capper on a 15-7 run that gave the Gators a 42-37 lead.

They never trailed after that. Walker and Beal had back-to-back layups later on to make it 51-39 with 6 1/2 minutes remaining and Auburn was never closer than 10 the rest of the way.

"The way we played the second half was much, much better," said Florida coach Billy Donovan. "We dug ourselves a hole and then we contributed to a lot of Auburn's success in the first half with offensive rebounds and turnovers."

Auburn had a three-point lead at halftime despite shooting just 35.5 percent from the field to Florida's 62.5 percent.

The difference was in the number of shots: Auburn went 11-for-31, including 5- for-10 from three-point range and the Gators were a more economical 10-for-16 overall and 4-of-9 from long range.

Forbes led all players with nine points in the half for Auburn, while Boynton scored eight for Florida.

Game Notes

Auburn leads the all-time series 87-72, but Florida has won 14 of the last 15 meetings...Donovan is 17-4 versus Auburn, including 8-0 at home...Florida has three regular season games remaining: at Georgia and Vanderbilt, then home versus No. 1 Kentucky...Auburn's remaining games are vs. Arkansas, at Alabama and home against LSU.