It’s make or break time for the Florida Gators.
Something has to change for a team that once sat atop the SEC standings, but has now lost four of its last six games.
The team that looked like it was headed straight for the Final Four at the start of the season is long gone. For whatever reason, Florida never reached its ceiling in 2017-18.
Maybe it was the failed attempt to change an offensive minded team into a defensive minded one.
Maybe it was lack of work ethic from the players.
Maybe this team was never actually as good as it appeared to be.
Or maybe it was a combination of it all.
Whatever the seed of the issues is, head coach Mike White takes full responsibility for it.
“All of it, it’s all on us,” White said. “Every year you go into a season and your ultimate goal is, obviously, to get better every day and take it one day at a time. But at the end of the year you want to at least be close, if not all the way, to reaching your team’s potential. It’s been a rollercoaster ride … It’s been a very, very unique year. A lot to learn from, a lot I don’t understand right now. Obviously, I haven’t pushed all the right buttons.”
With only four games left in the regular season, there aren’t a lot of buttons left to push. The last thing White and his staff can do is challenge the players, and it’s up to them to accept it.
There’s not a lot of time, but there are a lot of opportunities in the next two weeks. The remaining four teams on the Gators’ schedule are Tennessee, Auburn, Alabama and Kentucky.
What Florida does with those opportunities will determine where it’s playing in March.
“Our guys have been told there’s a chance we can go to the NCAA Tournament and there’s a chance we can go to the NIT,” White said. “Unfortunately, I think if you talk about that too much, you become too results oriented. I want to be results oriented in transition defense and blocking out and calling a switch and actually switching when you call a switch, blocking out a guy at the foul line. If we’re focused on those things for 40 minutes in Nashville, we’re sitting here in a much better situation.”
Unfortunately for the Gators, that focus wasn’t there on Saturday at Vanderbilt, and it hasn’t been there much at all over this poor stretch.
Florida held an 11-point lead with 15 minutes to go last game, but inability to finish struck again.
According to White, it is because this team lacks competitive drive, a trait that made last year’s team so dangerous.
“The whole mentality there should have been let’s get up 13, let’s get up 15, let’s get another stop,” he said. “That was last year’s group. The competitiveness level is so different. It’s about holding on and hoping we can win by one. That can’t be what it’s about.”
Again, that’s something that can’t be coached, especially at this point. These players either have a will to turn the season around and refocus or they don’t.
That will become very clear over the next couple weeks.
“I feel like he’s [White] done just about everything you can do,” said junior center Kevarrius Hayes. “I feel like at this point it’s on us as players to kind of get it together for him, and for ourselves, to see exactly how far we can go as a team.”