Florida Gators hands full with physical Tennessee defense

The Florida Gators haven’t had much time to catch their breath over the last two weeks, and it doesn’t get any easier this week with Tennessee coming to town next.

The Gators are 1-3 over the last four games, with the lone win coming in dramatic comeback fashion over Ole Miss.

And while Tennessee football is in the middle of jumping off Jeremy Pruitt’s sinking ship, its basketball team is off to an incredible start to the season. The Volunteers are 10-1 (4-1 SEC), and that success can largely be accredited to their tenacious defense.

Tennessee is currently the No. 2 rated defense in the country, and has held nine of its 11 opponents to fewer than 70 points.

“Defensively, they just fight you for every inch on the court,” said head coach Mike White. “They’re very sound, they’re very physical. We’ve got to play better than we did in Starkville, especially offensively, to have a chance.”

Led by star senior Yves Pons, a player White dubbed the best defender in the country, Tennessee is a dangerous combination of talent and experience. But according to White, the thing that really separates the Volunteers from other teams is their level of effort and energy.

“I mean this as a compliment, there’s probably a few more talented defenses out there in terms of overall size and length,” he said. “These guys are elite with swarming to the basketball, with attention to detail, with physicality … These aren’t seven-footers, but these are guys that just get after it. They’ve got good length and great foot speed and they play really hard. That’s what good defensive teams do.”

Florida is 1-5 against Tennessee under White, and it will be extremely difficult to improve that record this time around.

The indefinite loss of Keyontae Johnson and the continued absence of Scottie Lewis (due to health and safety protocols) make the hill even bigger. The Gators looked like they may be able to recover from the blow of Johnson early in the SEC season, but have struggled to find any kind of consistency as of late.

“I think some things were masked a little bit in those first couple,” White said. “I think we were playing a lot on emotion and rallying around the trauma that these guys experienced. We’ve kind of came back down to Earth a little bit. We’ve played some really good defenses lately without arguably the best driver in our league.”

Without their two All-SEC players, the Gators are at an offensive impasse. This team’s identity is essentially predicated around those two guys, and it is difficult to adjust that in the middle of the season.

“We can’t revamp our offense yesterday and today because we’ve got to spend a lot of time talking about Tennessee and walking through defending them and how they’re going to guard us,” White said. “But we’re going to keep swinging at kind of reinventing ourselves to a certain extent offensively.”

Tennessee’s well-established defense will look to take advantage of a Florida offense attempting to reinvent itself on Tuesday night.

Should the Gators find a way to win, it could be the boost they need to right the ship and become a tournament-caliber team in the second half of the season.

Bailiegh Carlton
A lifelong sports fan, Bailiegh Carlton knew from a young age that she wanted to work in sports in some capacity. Before transferring to the University of Florida to study journalism, she played softball at Gulf Coast State College. She then interned for Gator Country for three years as she worked toward her degree. After graduation, Bailiegh decided to explore other opportunities in the world of sports, but all roads led her right back here. In her time away, she and her husband welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world. When she isn't working, she can almost always be found snuggled up with sweet baby Ridley, Cody and her four fur babies.