So now what?
A year ago today, the UF men's basketball team blew out Vanderbilt.
The 22-point margin fueled talk that maybe the Gators hadn't completely dropped off the map after back-to-back national championships.
The ensuing collapse has been well-documented.
Sunday, the Gators went to Nashville, Tenn., and kicked the Commodores around again.
Chandler Parsons played a game he won't soon forget.
But besides Parsons playing well, the game didn't really teach us too much.
Or did it?
It all depends if you're one of those glass-half-empty or glass-half-full people.
The pessimists will say UF shot 57 percent from the floor, which included a mind-numbing 15-of-25 (60 percent) from 3-point range, and that type of performance can't be counted on every night.
Most people already knew that when the Gators are shooting well, they will almost definitely win.
If common sense wasn't enough, the statistics back up such a notion.
With Sunday's victory, UF improved to 10-0 when sinking at least eight 3-pointers in a game.
The critics will persist that this Vanderbilt team isn't even one of the better Southeastern Conference squads, sitting at 1-4 in league play.
And besides that, the SEC is terrible this year, ranking sixth among leagues in the current RPI standings. It ranks behind the five other BCS conferences and is narrowly edging out the Mountain West Conference (0.5564 to 0.5521, according to RealTimeRPI.com).
But what say you, ever-optimistic Gators fan?
You might claim that the team has found its identity after a heart-breaking loss at South Carolina. This team is now resolved and will finally play so that the whole is better than the sum of its parts.
Some have even made beyond-absurd comparisons between the loss against the Gamecocks and the football team's loss to Mississippi.
(Side rant: I could write a whole separate column about this, but I'll resist. It's simply not true. The 2008 football team was highly talented and needed something to light a fire. The basketball team, frankly, isn't one heart-breaking loss away from winning it all.)
You might point out that do-it-all guard Nick Calathes had "only" 15 points against Vanderbilt. The key here is that it marked only the fifth game this season in which Calathes wasn't one of the Gators' top two scorers.
Unsurprisingly, UF is 5-0 in such games.
So maybe this was a turning point for Parsons. Perhaps something changed in the sophomore after he choked at the free-throw line and stayed at the gym hoisting shots until the wee hours of the night.
It certainly would be a great climactic turning point for him, but he's going to have to continue proving it the rest of the season.
So, where do I stand? I tend to agree with the glass-half-empty folk. I'm still not buying this year's team.
With 20 games in the books, I firmly stand by my prediction that come Selection Sunday, the Gators will be under a "last four" heading, whether it be last four in or last four out. And I'm still leaning toward out.
But when it's all settled, it seems a game against Vanderbilt will once again mark the proverbial fork in the road.
Which path will UF take this year?
