For Florida, it had to feel like instant replay and deja vu: Sitting on 68 points, with next to no time on the clock, the Gators were in position to steal a game from a Big Ten team that it had battled for 15 rounds.
The difference this time? Tyree Appleby missed.
Appleby’s stepback three with seconds remaining clanged off iron in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Sunday — unlike his three to sink Ohio State in Fort Myers in November — and so Florida fell, 70-68, at the end of a 40-minute war with the Terrapins.