Despite entering as underdogs and seeing their halftime lead disappear just minutes into the second half, the No. 5 Florida Gators made program history Wednesday night walking out of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with a 99-94 win over the No. 7 Alabama Crimson Tide.

The Gators improved to 26-4 (13-4 SEC) on the season — the team’s second-best start through 30 games ever — and moved back to No. 2 in the SEC standings with one regular-season game remaining.

Florida taking down Alabama gave the visitors two road wins against teams ranked among the top 10 of the AP Top 25 in the same season for the first time. Previously this campaign, UF made program history beating a No. 1 team (Tennessee) during the regular season and doing so again just weeks later (Auburn).

Let’s take a look at what went down with some Fastbreak Takeaways.

The Gators trailed by five in the early going of the second half as the teams continued jockeying for position, but they flipped their deficit into a 5-point advantage with an 8-0 run. Florida then executed a 13-4 scoring stretch with key triples and consecutive transition alley-oops slammed home by Condon — to take a 14-point lead inside 6 minutes.

Alabama made six straight free throws to cut its deficit to 5 points with 1:25 remaining as UF missed shots on three consecutive possessions and allowed a 3-pointer out of a shanked free throw.

The Gators increased their advantage back to 9 points, but despite making most of their free throws, they twice allowed the Tide to drain wide-open triples, reducing UF’s advantage to just 4 points — its lowest over the final 13 minutes of the game — with 21 seconds left.

First half focus: Florida jumped ahead 15-8 after 5 minutes of play, but an 11-0 run by Alabama flipped the advantage as the visitors started 1 of 5 from 3-point range and wasted numerous possessions with rushed offense and poor passing — particularly in transition.

The entire first 20 minutes played out in this manner. The Gators answered with a 9-2 scoring burst — led by six points from sophomore center Rueben Chinyelu — to retake pole position. The Tide responded by posted eight straight. UF and Bama then literally exchanged 9-0 runs before Florida scored the final 5 points of the period to take a 1-point lead at the break.

Exceptional efforts: Condon shook off the court rust and then some. Returning to form following his ankle injury, Condon scored a career- and team-high 27 points buoyed by three alley-oops in the second half on lobs from senior point guard Walter Clayton Jr. Condon made 9 of 16 shots, 2 of 4 triples and 7 of 9 free throws while posting a double-double with 10 rebounds and adding 2 blocks in 30 minutes.

Clayton scratched and clawed for 22 points with 8 assists (just a single turnover — huge improvement) and 5 rebounds, but his shooting struggles continued as he went 8 of 20 from the floor and 2 of 8 from downtown. He’s only made 37% of his field goal attempts over the last four games, and on Wednesday, he also missed two crucial free throws in the final minute that would have otherwise put the game away earlier.

Chinyelu (9 points, 11 boards) finished just shy of a double-double, and redshirt senior guard Alijah Martin scored five of his 10 points in the final 3:20 (three at the line) to help close out the game.

Odds & ends: Florida improved to 73-79 all-time against Alabama with a 23-50 mark on the road … the Gators improved to 52-9 (20-0 this season) when leading at halftime, 60-5 (24-0) when leading with 5 minutes remaining, 46-10 (20-3) when outrebounding an opponent, 45-8 (18-2) when shooting 45% or better from the field, 59-7 (23-1) when outshooting an opponent and 41-15 (17-1) when winning the bench scoring battle … UF improved to 5-2 this season against AP Top 25 opponents, 11-12 since Golden took over the program … Clayton extended his program record making a 3-pointer in his 51st consecutive game

What it means: Florida had its with turnovers (eight) and transition scoring in the first half, but it hunkered down in a serious way over the latter 20 minutes.

The Gators only coughed the ball up twice in the second half and led a fastbreak scoring barrage to the tune of a 22-10 margin. They also completely dominated the boards with a 50-35 rebounding edge (16-10) offensive leading to 19 second-chance points and 52 points in the paint. It was simply too much for the Tide to overcome despite the hosts making a game of it in the contest’s latter stages.

Taking over the No. 2 seed in the SEC Tournament with one game remaining, Florida is sitting pretty for a double bye. It also gave its NCAA Tournament resume a boost with another tough road win over a top 10 team and at 7-4 against Quadrant 1 opponents, UF is hanging on to No. 4 in the NET Rankings keeping alive hopes of a No. 1 seed in the postseason. Every Gators team that played this well — or close to this well — through 30 games has at least advanced to the Final Four. Now, UF must slam the door shut behind it back inside the Stephen C. O’Connell Center.

What’s next? Florida will conclude the regular season on Saturday when it hosts Ole Miss for a 6 p.m. ET tip off with the game airing on SEC Network. Though the Rebels are not ranked, they were as recently as two weeks ago sporting a 20-9 record on the season.