Just five players on the Florida Gators basketball roster were on the team the last time the Gators were ranked in the Top 25. November 24, 2014, was the last time an AP Basketball Poll included the school that once was one of the most prominent basketball programs in the country.
Mike White inherited the program with players and fans desperate to bring Florida out of the shadows. Now, in the fourth week of his second season with the Gators, White has finally built this team to be back in the national rankings. With a 6-1 record, Florida is the No. 24 team in the country in the latest AP Poll.
While climbing into the rankings for the first time in two years is a major accomplishment, White, and the Gators aren’t getting too excited just yet.
“I think it speaks to trending in the positive direction,” said White. “It’s exciting for our fans and for our players, but ultimately it doesn’t mean a whole lot. Obviously, it has nothing to do with the next game or the rest of your schedule. It’s never a predictor for how you finish your season or how you compete in league play or anything like that, in terms of being ranked this time of year, but have we been pretty good thus far? Yeah, we have, but we’re still focused on a daily basis on getting better and right now focused on North Florida.”
Kasey Hill is the only player left on Florida’s roster from the 2013-14 team that made a Final Four appearance and was the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Gators have missed out on the tournament for two consecutive years since then, leaving his career going on a much different path than he had likely hoped for.
Florida is now back in a position to likely make and do well in the tournament this season, depending on how the rest of the year unfolds, but Hill is keeping the same mindset as his coach. “It’s cool,” he said. “I mean we won a couple big games, but it doesn’t mean anything. We’ve just gotta keep playing together as a team and don’t let any noise come in. Just worry about each other.”
Being ranked could be a huge distraction for a team that hasn’t tasted that kind of success in a very long time. This is a very mature team with a lot of guys who have played in a lot of basketball games. Florida players and coaches are working hard to be sure no distractions sneak into the locker room, but time will tell as the Gators suit up as a ranked team for the first time in two seasons at UNF on Thursday night.
“We haven’t talked about it,” White said. “We’re not going to talk about it because it doesn’t mean much. We have a saying in our program, ‘no noise’ and I walked in yesterday as we were preparing to watch the film for the first time since the weekend and we simply wrote it up on the board, enough said. Our guys know where I’m getting with that … That’s where our mindset it is right now. That’s where it needs to be. I can’t guarantee that we’re gonna have an incredible mindset now that we are ranked, but that’s where it should be. I don’t anticipate us veering too far from where we were heading into last weekend with our focus. We’ve got a good group of guys. I’d be surprised if we get out of character tomorrow night.”