With a little less than a minute and a half remaining against Georgia, everything seemed right in the world. As Florida senior guard Walter Clayton Jr. scrambled down the court with sophomore forward Thomas Haugh to his right, the pair exchanged the ball as Haugh solidified UF’s first lead of Tuesday night, 79-78.
It had taken a long two hours to get to that point. The Gators trailed by 26 points in the first half, stumbling out of the gate in what was, in all honesty, a due inefficient night. However, as the game went on, Florida dragged itself back into the contest behind a season-high 30 points from senior guard Will Richard.
And so, with just a minute left, the Gators had withstood a late-season scare — something many top 5 teams had done in the past. That was until a Knoxville, Tennessee, native, loosely bearing the appearance of Eight Mile-era Eminem, swung around a Georgia screen and nailed a three. Fifty seconds later, a flood of Bulldog students sprinted onto the court without a thought of their Wednesday classes as Georgia bested No. 3 Florida 88-83. Approximately 330 miles south, a hint of concern floated around the air of Gainesville.
This concept came to my mind Wednesday morning when I eavesdropped on a conversation in the newsroom about whether the loss from the previous night “derailed” Florida’s 24-4 season.
The short answer is “no”. A single unranked loss does not abruptly put a damper on a top 3 team’s regular season campaign. More importantly, it doesn’t have any quantifiable value on whether it performs well in the postseason. Many staunch fans are uninterested in their teams losing with less than three weeks remaining until Selection Sunday. However, there is a skewed view of the effect of late-season losses.
Since 2011, every national champion but one has lost a game after Valentine’s Day. While the last three or four weeks before the tournament probably aren’t a perfect time for one to hurt its resume, these losses have frequently proven beneficial.
Last season, UConn notched its third loss in surprising upset fashion to a Creighton team it had leveled earlier in the season. That loss came on the road in a raucous midweek environment in late February. Does that sound vaguely familiar? The Huskies won every game after that by at least seven points.
While UConn’s recent dominance may be a bit of an outlier, the pattern of improvement following an unexpected loss is consistent year over year. In 2018, Villanova lost four games, with its final collapse coming against unranked Creighton (becoming a theme) on Feb. 24. The Wildcats then rattled off one of the most dominant offensive runs in recent college basketball history, winning all but one of their final 11 games by fewer than 11 points. At the time, All-American guard Jalen Brunson credited the improved offensive efficiency as being inspired by the Creighton defeat.
The one outlier is Louisville in 2013, which technically doesn’t count since the NCAA doesn’t recognize that championship (sex scandal). The Cardinals lost on Feb. 9, barely missing the late-season game range, but went 3-4 in their last seven games before the Feb. 14 cut-off date.
The point of this argument becomes more noticeable when one looks at past top overall seeds that didn’t go on to win the NCAA Tournament.
In 2018, Virginia earned the top overall seed, losing only one of its final 24 games before the tournament. Almost everyone knows what happened next in the first round — the Cavaliers became the first team to lose to a 16 seed — and former Virginia head coach Tony Bennett admitted a loss before the tournament may have helped his group’s mindset.
The following season, the Cavaliers won the championship, but it wasn’t without difficulties. Virginia lost unexpectedly to Florida State in the ACC Tournament semifinals before rattling off seven consecutive wins to end its redemption tour.
All that’s to say, facing adversity late in the season but not in the NCAA Tournament, puts high-level teams in a position to respond. And there’s no reason Florida can’t do exactly that.
Before the Georgia game, the Gators had rattled off a run during which they shot 37.5% or better from three in five of six contests. That number was bound to come down to earth at some point, and it did just that against the Bulldogs.
However, the Gators are one of three teams that are top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency (Duke and Houston are the others), according to KenPom. Three of the past five national champions have fit those numbers, and UF has a chance to defend those rates up now, possibly with a different mindset.
While a loss is never ideal, Florida basketball’s current situation might be one of the few where it's not entirely detrimental.
Contact Noah White at nwhite@alligator.org. Follow him on X @noahwhite1782.
Noah is a Spring 2025 Assistant Sports Editor and Copy Desk Chief. He's a second-year journalism major who enjoys reading and shamefully rooting for Tennessee sports teams. He is also a Liberty League Women's Soccer expert.
