Billy Donovan often stresses to his players the importance of focusing on the things they can control. This week, that could include their own destiny.
Florida will play Vanderbilt and Kentucky, teams that the Gators went 0-4 against last year. Both will be televised on ESPN at 9 p.m., today and Saturday. GameDay will even be in town Saturday, as all eyes in the college basketball world turn toward Gainesville.
The stakes are fairly obvious: Win, and Florida will have the upper hand in its division the rest of the year. Lose, and this season starts to bear an even more uncomfortable resemblance to 2009-10.
“I think these games are huge,” senior center Vernon Macklin said. “We’ve got two games at home against two great teams, so I think we need to go out there and play well and try to get these wins.”
Since the ‘04s romped all over the O’Connell Center floor, the Gators have yet to put together a 10-win Southeastern Conference season. Florida finished the last two years 9-7 in SEC play and went just 8-8 in 2007-08.
Florida currently sits at 5-2 with plenty of winnable games left to play. If the Gators manage to win those and once again get swept by Vanderbilt and Kentucky, they would still finish 10-6 — a record that somehow might be good enough to win the muddled SEC East and will definitely put them back in the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year.
Don’t get me wrong. This team is flawed — maybe even fatally flawed come NCAA Tournament time. But Florida has won eight of its last 10 and boasts the No. 19 RPI in the country, according to RealTimeRPI.com.
Judging by those numbers, the Gators appear to be on their way to another appearance in the Big Dance. But their schedule is about to take a difficult turn. In addition to playing Vanderbilt and Kentucky twice, UF will face Georgia, Tennessee and SEC West-leading Alabama before the season’s end.
“Coming to the halfway point here, it’s certainly a grind not only for us, but for everybody,” Donovan said.
Whether UF can withstand its grueling late-season schedule remains to be seen. It’s hard to predict which Florida team will show up on a nightly basis — even for the Gators. Donovan agreed earlier this season that his team was “mystifying” at times, and freshman center Patric Young echoed that sentiment Monday.
“We’re not always really focused,” Young said. “Coach doesn’t know what he’s going to get out of us sometimes because sometimes it seems like we’re not ready to play.”
UF might suffer another late-season collapse like it did last year by losing its final three regular-season SEC contests. It could even finish 0-4 against Vanderbilt and Kentucky again, or drop more winnable games like it did against South Carolina and Mississippi State.
The Gators could just as easily win 11 or 12 conference games. They could surprise everyone by outplaying the ever-consistent Commodores and the talented young Wildcats or tearing through the rest of the SEC East.
By the week’s end, after UF has played high-profile games against top-level conference competition on the national stage of ESPN, Florida will have either taken control of its season or put its fate in someone else’s hands.
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