TALLAHASSEE - On a night when the Seminoles student section taunted Nick Calathes with poker chips and gambling references, the last card fell in favor of FSU.
With the Gators down two and the clock slipping away under five seconds, Dan Werner took a cross-court pass from Calathes and put up a prayer.
But Lady Luck was still in Atlanta.
Werner sent the ball off the front iron and as it fell to the floor, garnet and gold confetti floated alongside it.
The Seminoles (8-1) ran their winning streak against rival UF (6-2) to three in a row Sunday night with a 57-55 win in Tallahassee.
"It felt good," Werner said. "I thought it was in."
After trailing 39-30 with just less than 13 minutes left in the second half, the Gators rallied back to tie the game at 42 inside of eight minutes.
Calathes, who was investigated several weeks ago for running up a significant debt playing online poker, sparked the run with a step-back three and closed the gap with an alley-oop to Alex Tyus.
The two sides would go on to trade baskets down the stretch until Ryan Reid drilled a turn-around jump shot in the face of Werner (10 points) with 33 seconds left to put the Seminoles up 54-51.
"Just because they beat us two times in a row didn't mean they were going to beat us again. It was a different year and a different team. But they did," Werner said. "Do they have our number? I don't know."
The Gators struggled to contain the towering Seminoles frontcourt. Reid (13 points) and 7-foot-1 center Solomon Alabi (11 points) outmuscled Werner and Tyus for most of the night.
In the face of constant antagonism from the rowdy FSU crowd, Calathes nearly willed UF to victory.
The sophomore scored 16 points and dished out six assists amid chants of "Full Tilt Poker.com" and "You owe me 600 bucks."
"I thought we got the shots that we wanted. We just didn't knock them down," Calathes said. "I'd trust Dan to take that shot any day."
Donovan chose to play freshman Ray Shipman and not senior Walter Hodge in the game's waning minutes.
While Hodge, who hit a game winning 3-point shot against Washington earlier this season, watched from the bench, Shipman (6 points) scrapped his way to several critical rebounds in the final seconds.
"At the time, I thought we needed a little more size," Donovan said. "Ray gave us some really good minutes."
