Florida’s historic Southeastern Conference slate culminated Sunday in a league crown, an undefeated conference record and a confetti bath in the Georgia Dome. After falling in the SEC Tournament championship to Ole Miss in 2013 and Kentucky in 2011, UF’s thrilling 61-60 victory against UK in the tournament final was an emotional game and a triumphant moment for its senior class.
But that’s all history. Now, the Gators are back on the ground floor.
Tonight, No. 1 overall seed Florida will find out its second-round opponent — the winner of the NCAA Tournament’s first play-in game between No. 16 seeds Albany and Mount St. Mary’s. At 4:10 p.m. Thursday in the Amway Center in Orlando, the Gators kick off their quest for their first national championship since 2007.
Neither opponent appears too daunting — a No. 16 seed has never knocked off a No. 1 in tournament history. But this is the first time in Donovan’s coaching career that Florida will learn its first opponent not even two days before the tournament begins.
“This is a situation now where you’re starting off really from scratch where everyone doesn’t know each other and you’re trying obviously to get prepared to play,” Donovan said Monday during his weekly press conference.
“So, there is an excitement for both teams playing somebody new, but when you’re playing against each other in a league over for us, it was 21 games. There’s a lot of familiarity inside of those games that are being played. Personnel familiarity, what they’re running on offense, what they’re going to do on defense, what they’re going to be running inbounds, special situations, there’s a lot of familiarity there.”
In preparation for Thursday’s game, Florida’s assistant coaches began watching tape of both teams Sunday night and will continue doing so on a regular basis until Thursday.
“What we may do on Tuesday in practice is maybe look at maybe some similarities some things we’re going to have to do in both games that will definitely be a carryover and work on those things, instead of getting into, ‘This is what Albany does, this is what Mount St. Mary’s does,’” Donovan said.
“All of a sudden you’re infiltrating your guys with stuff that may or may not happen. And then inevitably you get caught wasting practice time on stuff that clearly is not going to happen. So what we’ll end up doing is looking at some things that we could get better at and then on Tuesday night whenever that game’s done, we’ll basically give them a first look at whatever team it is we’re playing.”
Without a certain opponent, Donovan said his team in practice would focus on cleaning up areas of its game it struggled with in Atlanta — most specifically free-throw shooting.
Missed free throws almost doomed UF on Sunday in its conference championship matchup against UK, and its charity-stripe woes were prevalent all weekend. Against Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky last weekend, Florida shot 27 of 54 from the foul line.
In the second half of their game against the Wildcats, the Gators made only 1 of their 4 free-throw attempts.
“We’ve got to do a better job there,” Donovan said. “We were doing really, really well for a while there. One of the things that happened is we did work on it some, but we’ve got to spend more time on that. That has to be an emphasis and focal point for us.”
Donovan believes his players will handle the short span of preparation well. They’ve done so in the past with Thursday-Saturday turnarounds during SEC play.
“Our guys are accustomed to that,” he said.
“That’s what’s really going to end up happening if you’re fortunate enough to move on and advance — you’re dealing with a one day prep even going into the next game. So right now, we’ve got two days here [Monday] and [today] to try and make some improvements in ourselves.”
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Coach Billy Donovan embraces Scottie Wilbekin after Wilbekin received his Southeastern Conference Tournament MVP award on Sunday in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
