AUBURN | Coming into Saturday's matchup against No. 6 Florida, Bruce Pearl installed a game plan to keep the ball out of the hands of the Gators' top scorer, Walter Clayton Jr. In the first three minutes, that idea worked.

But it didn't take long for Clayton to find his way to the ball.

"After the first couple of possessions, you would never know that that was our game plan," Pearl said. "We did it the first couple of possessions, and then we stopped doing it."

The Florida guard went off for 16 points in the first 20 minutes, including a stretch of eight-straight points for the Gators in just more than a minute as the visitors took a 10-point lead into halftime.

"I think Clayton went off a little bit in the first half and gave his guys confidence," Miles Kelly said. "Ultimately, we impacted ball screens and got the ball out of his hands, but other guys made shots."

And while Auburn kept Clayton to just three points in the second half, he was still efficient on the offensive end, dishing out seven of his nine assists and coming down with four of his six rebounds. Those nine assists by the guard were part of 22 by the Gators as a team.

"They did a great job of making plays out of their ball screen," Pearl said. "They did a great job of throwing it out of their ball screen. They were properly spaced. We had a game plan that we thought was going to be effective. It wasn't. We kept on trying to get the guys to execute that game plan instead of maybe we could have made some adjustments."

As for why his team wasn't able to execute their plan to try and keep the ball from Clayton, Pearl was straightforward with his response.

"It required multiple effort," he said. "It just required multiple effort, and we just didn't give it."