At the 8:26 mark of the first half of their 2017 NCAA Tournament second round game on Saturday, the Florida Gators and Virginia Cavaliers were separated by just two points, after a Darius Thompson layup that halved what was a four-point Florida lead — tying the largest by either team in the game to that point — to 17-15 in favor of the Gators.
From that moment onward, basically everything was in favor of the Gators.
From there, Florida ripped off a 14-2 run to head into halftime, with a 12-0 segment into the break later extending to a 21-0 spurt that buried Tony Bennett’s team, then kept shoveling, finally settling for a 65-39 victory that looked for all the world like a flat blade to the temple.