It’s three days before the Southeastern Conference Tournament, and Chris Chiozza has realized something.
All season, Florida has been fighting inconsistency — during practice, during road games, through its conference schedule, against weaker opponents — even though it had seen itself improve incrementally as the season wound down.
But as Florida’s sophomore point guard addressed the media before the team began preparing for its second-round matchup with Arkansas, Chiozza knew there would be an added factor in its next game that was missing from its contests before.
"Sometimes fear is a little bit better motivator than anything else," he said.
The fear of elimination, of disappointment, of the end.
And if fear was in Florida's mind during its two-game stand at the SEC Tournament in Nashville, where it won its first game against Arkansas but was eliminated after a 72-66 loss to eventual tournament runner-up Texas A&M, then it’s absolutely in their minds now, where a loss in the National Invitation Tournament means the end of the season.
Make no mistake.
This is not where Florida wanted to be.
Not in the NIT, the consolation bracket for the worst of the best teams in the country. Not playing against opponents like North Florida and George Washington and a depleted and tired Ohio State team, when it could have been facing the best with a chance at a postseason run that held meaning.
But in some ways, this tournament does hold meaning.
And it does hold fear.
It’s not the fear of losing out on the NIT Championship Trophy in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, although the lure of playing in an NBA arena and in one of America’s premier entertainment venues is fairly enticing.
It isn’t the prestige that comes with winning the NIT that piques coach Mike White’s pride. It’s something much simpler.
"I’m just proud of the fact that we’re still fighting," White said after UF’s 74-66 win over Ohio State on Sunday.
They are, and it’s partly because the alternative is so damn scary. Not fighting, and with no more games left to play, an abrupt ending to an up-and-down season that saw Florida fall short of its outspoken expectations — the NCAA Tournament.
Twenty-four college basketball teams in the country have another game scheduled to play in a meaningful tournament, and the Gators are one of them. And while they aren’t fighting for national glory or to upset a top seed or even with their full starting lineup, they’re displaying how much this team has grown under White in his first year.
This is the Florida team that White has been trying to build all season: maximum effort, pressure defense, stops on one end leading to transition baskets on the other.
In two NIT games, the Gators have shot 48.5 percent from the field, including a 22-of-51 clip from the three-point line. They’ve held both opponents to a combined 41.2 percent shooting.
But most importantly — and most impressively — they’re still playing, even without a sidelined John Egbunu, for an award that they weren’t expecting to play for, against teams that they don’t usually face, at the end of a challenging season with the nation’s 11th-ranked strength of schedule under a first-year head coach.
They’re still playing.
Isn’t that more than enough to expect?
Ian Cohen is the sports editor. You can contact him at icohen@alligator.org and you can follow him on Twitter @icohenb.
UF coach Mike White calls out instructions during Florida's 88-79 loss to Kentucky on March 1, 2016, in the O'Connell Center.
