GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Coaches talk about it all the time, regardless if they are the leaders of petite gymnasts or 300-pound offensive linemen.

They talk about culture and its importance to success. If the culture is good, magic can happen. If bad, disaster lurks around every corner.

Team chemistry is the five-star recruit you don’t sign. You have to create it from scratch.

“That takes forever to build,” Gators lacrosse coach Amanda O’Leary said Sunday. “That’s not just a snap of the finger.”

But when the culture is good, when a team believes and a coach trusts, watch out. Moments like Florida’s 13-12 double-overtime victory over Stanford can happen.

Afterward, O’Leary beamed over what the Gators did, how they dug deep and relied on each other in a high-pressure moment on a muggy and drizzly Sunday afternoon at Dizney Stadium. How they came back in the fourth quarter, and how after they lost the lead, they refused to fold.

“This is just a fun group to coach,” O’Leary said. “They are a coach’s dream because they are willing to put the effort in. They will do everything you ask them to do, and they will go above and beyond. If I told them they needed to jump off that brick wall, they would all line up and jump – and probably do a flip or something.

“They are just a super special group.”

No player was more superior on Sunday than junior midfielder Kaitlyn Davies, who won it for the Gators with a goal in traffic with 1:35 left in the second overtime. Davies scored a game-high five goals, won four draw controls and single-handedly took over the game early in the fourth quarter when the Gators trailed 9-8. Davies scored three goals in a span of 2:19 to help Florida take a 12-9 lead, including grabbing a loose ball off a draw control, sprinting toward Stanford goaltender Lucy Pearson like Sovereignty on the stretch in the Kentucky Derby, and firing in a score.

Still, Stanford showed it has a strong culture too, tying the game on goals from Aliya Polisky, Martha Oakey and Ava Arceri to force overtime.

“They’re warriors,” Cardinal coach Danielle Spencer said. “We’ve been in that position before. I wasn’t surprised at all to see our team come back and fight back. That’s the way they have been all season. They play really hard for each other.”

In a back-and-forth battle in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, the No. 4-seed Gators (19-2) advanced in dramatic fashion on Davies’ goal in the second overtime, lifting Florida to a 16th consecutive win and the Elite Eight.

The Gators gained possession when Josie Hahn won the draw control to start the second overtime. Florida milked the clock before a foul call on Stanford’s Allison Baldwin gave Gianna Monaco a free-position shot to win it. Monaco’s shot missed wide, but the Gators kept possession when Frannie Hahn scooped up a ground ball and delivered a pass to Davies in heavy traffic in front of the goal.

That is when a dose of postseason drama engulfed Dizney Stadium.

Davies fired a shot that bounced off the right thigh of Pearson, who had made a critical save in the first overtime to keep the Cardinal alive. However, the ball ricocheted off Pearson’s leg, and as she attempted to corral the rebound, Pearson deflected the ball with her stick back across the goal line. Following a five-minute official review: game over.

Davies said she was seeing stars after fighting through heavy traffic and muscling a shot off as the shot clock ate precious seconds.

“You’ve just got to give it your all,” she said. “It was all or nothing. We put everything into this game. The last play was just a broken play. “It was either win or go home, and we weren’t going home. I didn’t even know how much time was left on the clock. I was just like,’ I gotta finish it.’ “

The Gators advanced to the NCAA quarterfinals for the second consecutive season and will host Duke on Thursday. The Blue Devils upset No. 5-seed Virginia on the road Sunday. Florida will host a NCAA Tournament quarterfinal game for the first time since 2014 as it tries to make it back to the Final Four for the second consecutive season.

While a wild celebration on Florida’s side of the field erupted, Stanford (15-6) huddled nearby wrapped in dejection as its season came to a close. The Cardinal defeated Denver in Friday’s first round for their first NCAA Tournament win in nine years.

Spencer, in her sixth season as Stanford’s coach, credited the way her team refused to wilt despite the heartbreaking finish.

“It stinks,” she said of the final play. “I think they had to make a determination of the ball going over the line in the air, as opposed to on the ground, which is really tough. It’s a tough way to end, but we had our chances. I probably would do some things differently, myself, but the players can’t have any regrets. They put it all on the line. They emptied the tank. They played their hearts out.”

Much like the Cardinal did to get back into the game and force overtime, the Gators dug deep when it mattered most.

“We all were going with kind of the mindset that we weren’t going to let them beat us,” said defender Celeste Forte, who forced a game-high four turnovers to help disrupt Stanford’s attack. “We knew that they were going to be gritty. We knew they were workhorses, too. We just came out and we were like, ‘we’re not going to let them dictate how we play this game.’ We came in composed and we didn’t let them go on runs.”

Florida led 6-4 at halftime despite Stanford owning a 9-3 advantage on draw controls. The Gators dominated on the draw (13-5) in the second half, but as each team bent but never broke, it came down to a battle of wills.

The Gators have been on the wrong end in the past. This time, they outlasted the Cardinal to move on in the quest for the program’s first national championship.

Davies played the role of hero. But Forte had a strong supporting role.

“You want to talk about a workhorse,” O’Leary said. “She does the dirty details. The things that no one else wants to do, she’s willing to do every single day. And then you have performances like that, where you’re like, ‘wow, that’s pretty special.’ “

When it was over, O’Leary’s hair was wet, she had on a T-shirt that was rain-soaked, and her shoes were muddy.

In her view, a perfect Mother’s Day. The Gators showed what a strong team culture looks like when it matters most.

“I thought we competed from start to finish,” she said. “I think when we look at what this team brings to the table, it’s that we have each other’s backs. It doesn’t matter whether we’re up by four, down by four, overtime. That’s taken us really far.

“I just never want to stop coaching them.”

She gets to for at least one more game. The Gators seek to make it three more.