The Florida Gators are finding some rhythm, now on a three-game winning streak, but this is a team that has struggled all season to maintain any type of consistency.
The Gators tend to look like a different team from game-to-game, and have even looked like a different team at points throughout the same game. Nothing told that story better than Wednesday night’s matchup with Vanderbilt.
Florida saw a 22-point lead cut to just four points in the final minutes. Though the Gators ultimately pulled out a 78-71 win, what could have been a statement victory turned into just another day trying to survive.
“To give up more in the last 10 minutes than we gave up in the first 30 kind of speaks to our mentality,” said head coach Mike White. “It’s not the correct mentality to have in terms of growth and development, and getting better. It doesn’t speak to a lot of success down the road if we’re not able to flush that and move beyond that and be more mature than that.”
And that stat is no exaggeration. After scoring just 35 in the first 30 minutes, Vanderbilt went on to put up 36 to close it out.
As Florida moves on to face the West Virginia Mountaineers in the SEC/Big-12 Challenge, White is still evaluating how this team should play the remainder of the season.
He chose to experiment with a bigger lineup in the last two games. Colin Castleton and Omar Payne started together for the first time on Wednesday, but White was not pleased with the outcome.
The Gators didn’t quite gel offensively and managed to struggle rebounding despite the added size. After grabbing 41 rebounds at Georgia, Florida had only 29 boards against Vanderbilt.
Though White is not against trying his bigs together some more, he did not seem as optimistic as he did earlier in the week.
“Open to it, but evaluating it,” he said. “We’ll evaluate today how we play. Didn’t rebound it real well. Starting those two guys together we thought we would have an uptick in rebounding, but we went the other way, surprisingly so.”
No matter what lineups the Gators run out there on Saturday, No. 11 WVU will be one of their toughest tests yet.
Led by one of the nation’s top guards, Miles McBride, White praised the Mountaineers’ offense that complements an even better defense.
“They’re always going to have a collection of guards that collectively defend you at a really high level,” White said. “They’re always going to share it. They’re going to have drivers. They’re always going to be elite on the offensive glass. They’re going to execute. They’re going to sit down and guard the heck out of you.”
The single word Florida assistant coach Darris Nichols used to describe Bob Huggins’ team was “relentless”.
Nichols knows WVU’s style all too well as a former player (2004-08) and graduate assistant (2010-11) for the Mountaineers.
Though Nichols only played under Huggins for one season, he has coached both for and against him, and said his teams bring the same energy every single time.
Nichols already has two wins under his belt against his former team as Florida defeated WVU at home in 2016 and 2018. This one will be a little different though, as he makes his first trip back to Morgantown in years.
“It means a lot,” he said. “Just for the simple fact that a lot of the people that are going to be on the other side of the court, on the other bench, are people who have helped me get to where I am today. To me, that is a homecoming.”
Though Nichols will have friends and family in the stands, the focus remains on securing a resume-building victory.
While Florida has struggled with consistency, this team seems to have a new edge since defeating Tennessee. A road win over another Top-25 team would ensure the Gators are headed in the right direction in this final stretch.