Troy never could recover from a disastrous first-half stretch and fell to the Florida Gators 104-74 Wednesday night at Trojan Arena.

The Trojans led the Gators 11-8 early in the first half, but saw Florida go on a 21-0 run in a four-minute stretch to take a commanding they would never surrender.

Troy head coach Chanda Rigby said her team started well, but couldn’t keep the early momentum going.

“We came out strong,” Rigby said. “I thought we had control of the game for the first two or three minutes. Then we kind of took a step back when they went on a run. We never had a bounce in our step from there on.”

Outside of the bad stretch in the first half, Troy played with Florida for much of the contest, but the Trojans never could recover from the dooming opening stint.

“To me that is a sign of a young team,” Rigby said. “And by young, I mean a team that needs to grow up and learn how to compete no matter what. They took the air out of sails with the run they made.”

Troy went just 4-27 from three-point range, well under their season average.

The Trojans came in to the game averaging nearly 8 three-pointers a game, and was making over 36 percent of the long-distance shots for the season.

Troy shot just 14 percent from behind the arc in Wednesday’s loss.

“We are a shooting team, and we shot 14 percent from the three and that is unheard of us,” Rigby said. “That is a mental thing as well. We have people that usually hit over 60 percent in a game and tonight we couldn’t buy a basket. That would have changed things, if you could’ve made shots.”

Ashley Beverly-Kelley led Troy on offense.

The sophomore guard finished the night one rebound shy of a double-double, with 19 points and nine boards.

Beverly-Kelley said there are lots of things to learn from a night like Wednesday.

“We have to learn from it and get ready for Sunday,” said Beverly-Kelley. “I feel like we competed for the first three minutes of the game, but we need to compete for 40 minutes. We can’t hold our head down when somebody goes on a run. Teams are going to go on runs, we just have to make more runs.”

Troy returns to the floor Sunday afternoon against the Evansville Purple Aces.

Tip off is set for 2 p.m.