Nashville–They feel as if this is just a precursor.
Todd Golden’s Florida team has won six in a row–with a double-digit average margin of victory–since Mar. 1. They’ve beaten No. 17 Texas A&M, No. 21 Missouri, No. 8 Tennessee and No. 5 Alabama twice in that stretch. If there was any doubt that this Florida team could do it, the Gators have answered the call as the calendar has flipped to the most important month of the year.
The Gators are pretty clear what exactly “it” is they want to do when it’s all said and done. They’re not satisfied with the wix-game stretch and SEC Championship run that’s started their postseason. They want to be winning at the end of it, too.
“We want to win a championship,” Florida guard Will Richard told Southeastern 16.
“Cut down some nets, do some angels in confetti,” Gators guard Alijah Martin said of Florida’s goals.
Golden’s players weren’t just talking about the SEC Championship that they pulled off in a Sunday win against Tennessee. They mean the whole thing, too.
With what they’ve done to this point, why can’t they?
Florida has been ranked top five in the AP Poll for eight out of the last 10 weeks. It’s ranked fourth in the NET rankings, second in KenPom’s overall efficiency metric, third in offensive efficiency and seventh in defensive efficiency.
“This is the best team I’ve coached,” Golden told Southeastern 16. “I’m excited to see what happens over the next couple weeks.”
Golden’s group has the inside track to grab a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament on Sunday night as a result of Sunday afternoon’s championship win. Whether the Gators are a one seed or take the unlikely fall to the two line, they believe they appear to have all the pieces needed to cut down another net in a few weeks.
Florida has First-Team All-SEC guard Walter Clayton leading the show alongside a litany of old, experienced guards like Martin and Richard. It also has a four-big rotation of Alex Condon, Micah Handlogten, Rueben Chinyelu and Sam Alexis, who is working his way back from an injury. Alexis or not, Florida believes as if the only thing that can get in its way is itself.
“As far as we want to,” Clayton told Southeastern 16 when asked how far this Florida team can go. “We’ve proved that we can win games in multiple ways. We gotta keep doing that and find a way to win each night.”
Whether Clayton goes for 22–like he did in Florida’s 104-82 trouncing of Alabama in Saturday’s SEC Tournament quarterfinal— or 10 points–like he had in a February win over South Carolina–Florida has a chance to win.
It can win with its potential All-American running the show, but it can also win with a big outing from Condon like had in Florida’s first March win over Alabama. Florida can win big. It can win small. It can win a grinder. It can win a track meet, too.
That’s what you’ve gotta be able to do to win it all.
“We’ve been in all types of situations, faced all type of adversity and we always came out on top,” Martin said. “We’re mature. We get punched, we get back up, we don’t cry, we don’t look for nobody to help us. We get up and we fight back.”
For most of this team, that comes as second nature. Clayton, Richard and Martin got their starts at Iona, Belmont and Florida Atlantic, respectively. Handlogten–who had just five offers out of high school–is freshly back from a gruesome compound fracture in his leg that he suffered in last season’s SEC Tournament.
Perhaps if these guys got all they aspired to have right away then they wouldn’t be in the position to do what they’re doing now.
“Coach says it to us, we know how everybody was recruited,” Florida forward Thomas Haugh, who was decidedly a three-star recruit as a high schooler, told Southeastern 16. “Nobody was highly rated, highly ranked or anything like that. We’re just a bunch of scrappier guys and we just come in here and show it.”
It’s not just a few scrappy guys, either. It’s waves and waves of them. Guys like Haugh as well as sophomore guard Denzel Aberdeen could go elsewhere and take on bigger roles. So could freshman guard Urban Klavzar. They didn’t, though.
That’s paying dividends for Golden’s group.
“It’s a great thing when your issue is that you don’t have enough minutes for each guy because you have so many different guys that can match up with so many different people,” Handlogten told Southeastern 16. “It’s a great issue to have.”
Of all the issues Florida could have, its abundance of personnel certainly isn’t one. Its level of motivation isn’t, either.
As Florida moves into its most important games of the season and is amplified more than it’s ever been, it still feels as if it has to play with a chip on its shoulder. It still acts like the same group of under recruited guys. Don’t tell them that people are saying they can win it all if everything goes right.
The Gators are ranked as a top five team in the country, but are still wondering why they’re not No. 1.
“We’ve been getting slapped in the face all year,” Martin said. “We take it personal and we show it on the court. We’re some underdogs. Everybody in this program is underdogs and we grew up getting slapped in the face.”
Perhaps it’s time to stop slapping Golden’s group in the face. Perhaps it’s time to give them their due.
Florida looked like a national title team on Saturday. Its history suggests that it could look like that the rest of the way, too.