The Gators’ loss to No. 18 Arkansas at home on Tuesday night seems to have significantly narrowed their path to a potential NCAA Tournament berth.
The consensus among bracketologists seems to be that they’ll need to take care of business on the road against a pair of SEC cellar-dwellers in Georgia and Vanderbilt (always easier said than done) and pull off a stunning upset of No. 6 Kentucky at home. Even then, they might need to win a game in the SEC Tournament to feel good about their postseason chances.
That’s a whole lot that needs to go right over the next couple of weeks for this proud program to participate in its fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament.
You can give yourself a headache by thinking about all of the various scenarios that could play out.
So, coach Mike White is taking the less-is-more approach with his team. They haven’t talked about needing to win a certain number of games to make the tournament. Instead, White is trying to keep their objectives small and simple. They need to play as well as they can on Saturday afternoon at Georgia.
“No conversation [about] postseason, NCAA Tournament, NIT, SEC Tournament, Vandy, Kentucky,” White said. “None of that matters right now. None of it matters. We control this morning having a pretty good practice. It wasn’t our best practice; it wasn’t a bad one. It was pretty good, though. We got off to a rough start and finished really strong. Film [Friday night], focusing on that.
“We’ll focus on having a great shootaround [Saturday] morning, focus on trying to do the best we can against Georgia. How do you do that? You’ve got to get off to a great start. We’ve got to be locked in on their transition offense, their actions in the halfcourt. [Braelen] Bridges is playing well; he’s a handful. They’ve got guys that can really shoot it. Defensively, they’re going to swarm to Colin Castleton. We’ve got to figure out how to generate points, of course.”
Even with three conference games left, the Bulldogs (6-22, 1-14 SEC) are already guaranteed to finish no better than tied for last place in the SEC. They’ve lost eight games in a row, with five of the defeats coming by 12 or more points.
But, given what happened the first time that these two teams met in Gainesville and the Gators’ tendency to play to their level of competition, no one should expect this game to be a cakewalk for the Gators.
In that first meeting on Feb. 9, the Gators led by 14 points with less than eight minutes to go but allowed the Bulldogs to make it a three-point game with around three minutes remaining. The Gators hung on to win, 72-63, but it very easily could’ve gone in the other direction. This game being played in Athens could put Georgia over the top if the Gators aren’t careful.
“We were really fortunate to hold on at home,” White said. “They cut it to three, I believe, with under four to go. The best cutting team in our league, in my opinion. The best transition offensive push in our league off makes or misses. [Kario] Oquendo’s coming off arguably his best game. They continue to scrap and fight. They’ve lost a bunch of close ones, of course, and they continue to be competitive. We’re expecting a really competitive game. We’ve got to play really well. It’s hard to win on the road in this league. We’ve got to play well.
“When we score, we’ve got to sprint back and match up, contest shots, hit, go rebound the ball with two hands. There were probably 12 50-50 balls in that game against Arkansas, and I bet they got 10 of them. Transition defense killed us. So, those were the messages. Those were a couple of big factors in the last one that will carry over potentially to this one, so that’s what we’re focusing on.”
This is a must-win game for the Gators (17-11, 7-8), as will be the Vanderbilt game on Tuesday and the Kentucky game four days after that. That’s the position that they’ve put themselves in.
It may seem like a daunting task, but the Gators will try to conquer it one day, one hour and one bounce of the basketball at a time.
“It’s all about being in the moment,” White said. “Everything else will take care of itself. I do know if we spend a lot of time talking about what’s going to happen in the future, we’re not present, we’re not where our feet are, we’ll probably have less of an opportunity to play well [on Saturday].”