South Carolina men’s basketball led No. 5 Florida for 38 minutes and 32 seconds of the 40 minutes, and spent another 1:23 tied.

Those other five seconds? The final notes of another heartbreaking loss.

South Carolina coughed up a 14-point lead in the second half, allowing Florida to steal a 70-69 win at Colonial Life Arena by taking its first and only lead of the night on a Will Richard drive with five seconds remaining.

Jacobi Wright’s last ditch shot at the buzzer missed wide to the left, and South Carolina (10-9, 0-6) is still searching for its first conference win after a third loss by three points or less in the last four games.

After taking a 14-point lead with 12:46 remaining and still led by 13 with 8:49 left, Florida (17-2, 4-2 SEC) head coach Todd Golden switched to a three-quarter court press with some corner traps.

And with that, the Gamecocks melted.

"We weren't aggressive," Lamont Paris said about his team's handling of the press. "They took the ball from us, we were passive in it, we weren't strong in it, we weren't strong with the ball."

South Carolina turned the ball over a staggering nine times in the final 8:49, looking completely overwhelmed and confused by the press. The turnovers came in all shapes and sizes, from poor inbounds passes, sloppy dribbling, questionable cross-court passes. The Gamecocks only hit three field goals over that stretch, failing to even get into their offense most of the night.

"We got fragile," Zachary Davis said. "We've got to do better. Things like that can't happen. Pracitce tomorrow, and we've got to work on those things. Because the next team we play [Mississippi State] is the same way."

It was an all too familiar ending for this team, and a waste of one of the best halves the team has played all year.

Right from the start, Collin Murray-Boyles took over. He scored five points in the first 54 seconds of action, canning a straight-on 3-pointer and scoring on a finger roll on the first two possessions of the game. South Carolina quickly amassed a seven-point lead, an advantage it maintained all night mostly thanks to Murray-Boyles and the sharpshooting Davis who scored 22 points and was the main beneficiary of Murray-Boyles finding passing lanes out of his single coverage.

Defensively, it was a return to the best version of South Carolina. The Gamecocks were tenacious throughout the night and especially active in the first half, holding one of the best offensive teams in the nation under one point per possession and as Florida floundered for most of the first half.

And it was not much better for most of the second half. South Carolina built the lead as high as 14 points midway through the second half, before Golden finally changed things up.

South Carolina had no response to the press, and as a result still does not have a conference win.

"Those things were ability related for the most part," Paris said. "So the natural tendency is to question yourself.

"We just went out and played and outplayed them,. It's too bad."

South Carolina has now tied its worst start to SEC play in program history at 0-6, and will have to beat Mississippi State on Saturday to avoid setting the program-worst mark.

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