Billy Donovan’s Florida Gators are coming to Athens to play Georgia on Wednesday. And judging from their showing to this point in the season, there’s a good chance they will be back this way in a couple of months when the Final Four gets under way in Atlanta.
The No. 8-ranked Gators (14-2, 4-0 SEC) are that good. They already knocked off the Bulldogs (7-10, 1-3) 77-44 on January 9 in Gainesville. But they’ve registered even more impressive victories since then, including a 31-point victory over then 17th-ranked Missouri on Saturday and a 21-point win over Texas A&M in College Station last week. In fact, Florida has won its last three games by an average margin of 24.6 points.
“The Florida team we saw and the one I’ve watched on tape is way better than every team we’ve played, and we’ve played some good teams,” said Georgia coach Mark Fox, who played an Indiana team that was ranked No. 1 at the time, and UCLA and Missouri when they were among the top 15. “They have a terrific club, they really do. Since I’ve been here at least, this has been the best Florida team and the most complete Florida team I’ve seen.”
That’s saying something. Even during Fox’s relatively short UGA tenure (3½ years), the Gators have reached the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight round twice. And, of course, they won back-to-back national championships in 2006 and 2007 and have been an almost constant NCAA tournament presence under Donovan, making the tournament every year from 1998-2007 and from 2010 to present.
But what separates this Florida team from some of those is its defensive tenacity. The common denominator in the Gators last three victories is their opponents scored an average of just 50.3 points. They enter the Georgia game ranked third nationally in scoring defense (51.7 ppg), holding eight opponents to fewer than 50 points and a dozen under 60.
“They’ll guard you better than some of those teams,” Fox said of Florida's past greats. “They still score it well. They’re very balanced. And to their credit, they handle success very well.”
That has been a real key, according to Donovan. He has convinced his team that it’s not about what they’ve done or even what they’re doing. It’s about continuing to improve and doing what it takes to be a truly elite team.
“It all comes down to our ability and our mentality to get better,” Donovan said. “Looking at the Missouri game and Texas A&M and last time we played Georgia, there are still areas we can get better in; there are still areas we can improve on. . . . The process of preparing to play Georgia on Wednesday is what this is about, us trying to get better from the last time we played Georgia.”
That has to be a scary thought for the Bulldogs, considering the blowout they suffered only two weeks ago. But they’ve executed dramatic turnarounds against the Gators before. Just last season, Georgia lost by 22 in Gainesville only to win by 14 when Florida came to Athens later in the season.
And the Bulldogs played at the O’Connell Center without Donte Williams and Kenny Gaines, who were suspended, and without injured forward Marcus Thornton. Only Thornton will be missing this time.
“By far, in my opinion, they are the best team we’ve played,” said Georgia’s leading scorer, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. “But any team is beatable. We’ve got to play hard for 40 minutes. Down in Gainesville, we just kind of gave up after a couple of minutes in the second half and just let them beat on us. Now that we have them at home, we’ve just got to come out and compete hard and limit our mistakes.”
Florida will be without Casey Prather, a 6-foot-6 wing and the team’s sixth-leading scorer (6.8 ppg). But the problem with the Gators is they’re so balanced. Their four returning starters – Kenny Boynton, Mike Rosario, Erik Murphy and Patric Young – are their four leading scorers and less than two points separates them, from Boynton’s 13.3 points per game to Young’s 11.4. And their new starter at point guard, sophomore Scottie Wilbekin, has proven to be a defensive terror.
All in all, Florida looks to be the class of the SEC this year and one of the nation’s “most likely to succeed” candidates when it comes to March’s madness.
“Lots of things,” Fox said when asked what it’d take to beat the Gators. “We need to be able to handle their pressure and stay poised offensively. We need to make some baskets. And we need to figure out a way to guard them. They’ve got an inside-outside attack and guys that score at every position. That’s a challenge, so we’re going to have to play, very, very well.”
