PORTLAND — Florida coach Mike White was huddling with his father, Duke athletic director Kevin White, in a Moda Center hallway on Sunday night when Mike Krzyzewski walked by. Krzyzewski stopped, put an arm around his coaching counterpart and leaned in toward White’s ear. “Don’t change a (bleeping) thing,” Krzyzewski said. “You guys are great. We were lucky.”

Words like that from the all-time wins leader in men’s college basketball history had to be encouraging. But they could not erase the sting for White and his Gators, who let a golden opportunity slip by in an 87-84 loss to Krzyzewski’s Blue Devils in the PK80 Motion Bracket final. Florida squandered a 17-point second-half lead and a chance to beat the top-ranked team in the regular season for the first time in school history, a result that would have resonated all the way to Selection Sunday.

The consolation prize came in what the Gators gained during this tournament: respect and most likely more fans, at least among the Left Coasters, insomniacs and straight-up basketball junkies who stayed awake to watch their late-night tips. They played fast and fearless, spreading the floor with four guys who could shoot, penetrate and punch above their weight. They proved they’re an elite team that belongs in any discussion of national title contenders with one of the most devastating offensive attacks around. Right up until it sputtered to an untimely halt.

Duke had rallied from 16 points down to beat Texas in overtime on Friday, but Florida – with its veteran guards and relentless scoring ability — didn’t seem likely to fall prey to a similar comeback. However, a team that hit 32 3-pointers in its first two PK80 games and was connecting on 47 percent from behind the arc coming into the game would make only one shot from distance in the second half. Two uncharacteristic turnovers in the final 1:15 led to Duke free throws. Jalen Hudson, an 81 percent free-throw shooter, missed the front end of a key one-and-one. The Gators failed to score in the final 2:38.

White’s players clearly lacked something down the stretch, less than 48 hours after a 111-105 double-overtime win over Gonzaga. Point guard Chris Chiozza, who logged 46 minutes in that game and was dealing with an assortment of minor injuries including a bruised rib, admitted that he and his teammates had emptied the tank. “We tried the best we could to get a lot of rest (on Saturday),” Chiozza said. “You could tell in the second half we didn’t have enough gas to finish it off. We missed shots we normally make, probably because we didn’t have any legs left.”

White didn’t like hearing Chiozza’s comments, because he didn’t want to make any excuses. He pointed out that Duke played an overtime game on Friday as well, though it came several hours earlier in the day. Yet he wondered aloud if his team would have been better served by walking the ball up and milking the shot clock more when it had the big lead in the second half.

That’s not the way his guys play, however. They attack. A perfect example of that came earlier in the half. Two Gators got tangled up going for a defensive rebound and hadn’t crossed halfcourt when Hudson launched from two feet inside the 3-point line. For most teams except maybe Alabama, that three-against-five long jumper was the textbook example of a bad shot. It went in.

“That’s what we do,” White said. “I want to stay aggressive and play the way we play.”

When things are clicking, that style can be devastating. Chiozza is one of the smartest distributors in the country, and closing out on shooters like Hudson and KeVaughn Allen only opens the lane for penetration. Florida scored 1.37 points per possession on Thursday night versus Stanford, 1.23 against Gonzaga and was on pace for that kind of number against Duke before the late lull.

There’s also a downside to starting four guards and the 6-foot-8 Keith Stone, and it rears its head down low. Gonzaga big man Johnathan Williams burned the Gators for 39 points and 12 rebounds on Friday. Then came Marvin Bagley III on Sunday. Florida simply had no answer for the sensational freshman, who finished with 30 points and 15 rebounds. In the second half, White used 6-foot-5 guard Egor Koulechov as the primary defender against Bagley. It’s safe to say that Koulechov never faced that kind of defensive assignment while playing the last two years at Rice.

Some inside help could arrive in January, when 6-foot-11 senior John Egbunu is expected back from a torn ACL. But teams like Texas A&M and Kentucky will pose the same kind of length problems in the SEC.

“It’s a big concern for us,” White said. “We’ve got to figure something out. Whether it’s man-to-man or if we need to be more creative, we’ve got to figure some stuff out.”

One way to counter the lack of size is simply to outshoot the opponent, to trade 3s for their 2s. It eventually worked against Gonzaga and nearly did versus Duke, which switched between zone and man-to-man defenses in an attempt to disrupt Florida’s spacing and shooting. With apologies to Steve Spurrier, these are the new Fun-N-Gun Gators. But being so perimeter-oriented can also create lots of runs. They went through dry spells in the Gonzaga game and turned a 14-point first-half advantage on Sunday into a seven-point deficit before storming back to lead again at halftime.

That’s a dizzying way to live, but when Florida’s guys were going full steam early against Duke, they were swarming passing lanes and crashing the glass in waves.

“We just showed that we’ve got some toughness in us,” said Chiozza, who all but waddled into the postgame news conference on his drained legs. “That was the question coming into this tournament. I think we showed that we’re one of the toughest teams in the country.”

Krzyzewski seemed to agree. He told reporters that Florida is “as good a team as we’ll play, I think.” There are plenty of reasons for the Gators to be encouraged by what happened in Portland, even if White would still like to change a few things.

(Top photo: Brian Murphy/Associated Press)