As has become common over the last several years for the Gators, the 2021-22 season has been marred by extremely high highs and extremely low lows.
They started the season 6-0, a stretch that included quality wins over Florida State and an Ohio State team that is currently ranked 16th in the Associated Press poll. They shot up to No. 14 in the AP poll themselves after their torrid start to the season.
Then they lost three out of four games, including embarrassing losses to Texas Southern and Maryland. The bad momentum carried into the new year, as they lost their first three SEC games, all against teams that were ranked at the time.
The Gators bounced back to win three games in a row before dropping back-to-back contests, including a blowout loss at Ole Miss, one of the worst teams in the league.
Now they appear to be on the upswing again. They’ve won three consecutive games, all in come-from-behind fashion, and gotten injured center Colin Castleton back into the starting lineup.
All of that is what makes Florida’s game with Georgia on Wednesday night frightening. The Bulldogs (6-17, 1-9 SEC) are quite possibly the worst team from a major conference. They dropped games to East Tennessee State and Gardner-Webb in nonconference play and have lost league games by 15 points to Kentucky, 16 to Mississippi State, 23 to Auburn and 17 to South Carolina.
Georgia ranks 10th in the conference in scoring offense, last in scoring defense, last in field goal percentage defense, 12th in three-point percentage defense and last in turnover margin. They’re also last in blocked shots and one of just two teams in the league with a negative rebounding margin.
The bottom line is that the Bulldogs aren’t really good at anything and that the Gators should be able to beat them without much trouble.
However, given the rollercoaster ride that this season has been, this feels like it could be the beginning of the next downslide if the Gators don’t show up ready to play.
Point guard Tyree Appleby said that playing well in the game on Wednesday night starts with how they practiced in the two days leading up to the game.
“You practice how you play in a game,” Appleby said. “If we come out here and don’t have the right practice or practice sluggish, I think we’re going to come out and play sluggish or play down to the competition. I think for us to keep the juice going, we just have to come into every practice with a mindset that we’re going to get better, just keep growing as a team and our coaching staff and everything like that. I think just keeping a positive mindset in practice and going hard in practice so that it just feels normal in the game.
“Some games that we lost, we didn’t feel like we practiced very prepared. We just felt like we came to practice to get through practice. I think we just have to come into practice with a positive mindset. We’ve got to just come in with a positive mindset, ready to practice, ready to learn and do whatever we can to get the next win for the next opponent.”
While Georgia’s record and statistics aren’t pretty to look at – or actually, they might be really pretty to look at for Gators fans – the Bulldogs have played their best basketball of the season lately. They beat Alabama a couple of weeks ago for their lone conference win, and No. 1 Auburn had to make a game-winning shot in the final seconds of the game to get past them on Saturday.
This is a Georgia team that’s probably going to enter the O’Connell Center with some confidence, which makes them dangerous.
“Playing really well, maybe coming off their best performance of the year,” UF coach Mike White said. “Really could have easily won against Auburn the other day in Auburn, a team that could legitimately win the whole thing, and Georgia was right there and had a chance to beat them, could have. Every one of these is really difficult.
“They have our full attention, of course. Playing really well, beat a good Alabama team, of course. So, all of these are really difficult, and we’ve got to focus equally as much on ourselves and our growth and continuing to clean some stuff up that we can get better at.”
Like the Gators (15-8, 5-5), the Bulldogs are a backcourt-driven bunch. One of their best frontcourt players, Jailyn Ingram, tore his ACL in early December. He was averaging 10.7 points and six rebounds per game at the time.
In his place, center Braelen Bridges has had to take on a larger workload. He ranks 18th in the league in scoring at 12.5 points per game, and he leads their active players with 5.9 rebounds per game. He’s shooting 61.7 percent from the field but hasn’t attempted a three all season, which should make him a good matchup for Castleton in his second game back.
Nobody else in their frontcourt is averaging more than 7.3 points or 3.2 rebounds per game. This should be a game that’s won on the perimeter.
In the backcourt, Kario Oquendo ranks 11th in the SEC with 13.4 points per game, while point guard Aaron Cook is averaging 10.5 points and six assists per game, the latter of which ranks second in the league.
Noah Baumann is by far their biggest three-point threat at 42.1 percent. Forward Jaxon Etter is shooting 45.5 percent from deep but has only attempted 33 shots from out there.
“Their offensive push is as good as any in our league off of makes or off of misses,” White said. “I think they’re the best cutting program in our league. They just do a phenomenal job year in and year out of cutting off of the basketball, hitting cutters off save bounces, off live bounces. I think Oquendo is playing with as much confidence as anyone in the league.
“Bridges is really getting it downhill to his left hand, of course. They have a couple of elite shooters. We have to make sure we know where those guys are at all times.”
More than anything schematically, though, this game is a mindset game for the Gators. If they don’t overlook Georgia because they’re coming off of three straight wins and have a date at Kentucky on Saturday, they shouldn’t have anything to worry about. If they come out flat, then they can expect this rollercoaster to take at least one more nosedive.
White doesn’t anticipate staying focused being an issue for his team.
“Our guys understand that Georgia is really capable like every team in our league, and they’re playing as well as they’ve played,” White said. “We’re not a team or a program at all, regardless of what our record is, whether we’re coming off a win, a loss, whatever, this is about one game. It’s us and Georgia here [Wednesday] night. Our guys understand, and we’ll continue to make sure they understand that it’s whoever plays better for 40 minutes [Wednesday] night.”