Florida 77, Georgia 44: Gators chomp Dawgs to bits in SEC opener

It wasn't much of a fight, because Georgia never had its hands up. But Florida will take knockouts like the 77-44 win the Gators scored against the Bulldogs on Wednesday.

Florida led 11-0 at the under-16 timeout in the first half, after Casey Prather began the game on a personal 6-0 run, and it was never a contest from then on: Florida led 19-4 in the first half, and 54-26 early in the second, before cruising to the 33-point margin of victory.

Mike Rosario led all scorers with 19 points, Patric Young added 11, and Prather had 10 on five shots to go with seven rebounds and three steals. Erik Murphy chipped in 11 points off the bench, and all eight Florida players who scored finished with at least five points. Yes, even the guy on the end of the bench.

With more than a minute left, walk-on Jacob Kurtz put in a lay-in, the first of his Florida career, and got a "JA-COB, JA-COB!" chant from the crowd. Announcer Dave Baker then called his hometown of Oviedo "Oh-VIE-dough," which Kurtz responded to with his first three.

Kurtz outscored all but two Georgia players, and that's a fitting fact from a night on which Florida was just far better than its foe.

The Gators forced 19 turnovers, allowed four assists, made 12 threes, had 10 steals, and thoroughly outclassed a team that isn't even the SEC's worst. Whether or not Florida's the SEC's best team, the distance between the conference's middle class and its penthouse is probably very, very large.