Maryland is the next obstacle in the way of a Florida title run

Todd Golden has carefully constructed a team capable of winning a championship (Photo by Chris Spears)

San Francisco – Don’t call them cocky because they aren’t. Confident, absolutely, but not so confident they think all you have to do is roll the basketball out there and the other team is going to give up out of fear.

There is an air about the Gators, something we haven’t seen from a Florida basketball team in years. They step on the court with a stomp the life out of the other guys mentality and for the most part, they’ve done it all year. The Gators have won 26 games by 10 or more points.

It’s not by accident. They have been groomed to believe that they each game is a seek and destroy mission by Todd Golden. Golden knows what it was like to be a walk-on at nearby Saint Mary’s. He has come up the hard way through the coaching ranks. Nobody has given him anything and he transfers that lingering I’ll just have to show you mentality to the Gators (32-4), the No. 1 seed in the West Regional who take on the Maryland Terrapins today (7:39 p.m.) at the Chase Center.

This is a well-coached team basketball team that has been carefully constructed both in terms of talent and mental toughness. Yes, the Gators are tough. That was the missing ingredient a year ago when the Gators lost first round NCAA Tournament game to Colorado. That is specifically why Alijah Martin was brought in from the transfer portal. He looks like an NFL linebacker and at times, that’s how he plays the game.

Alijah Martin won’t back down from any challenge. His energy and toughness have carried over to this team that is four wins away from Florida’s first national championship in basketball since the back-to-back years of 2006-07.

We saw it last Sunday in those final ten minutes when the Gators dominated the backboards and started coming up with those 50-50 balls that so eluded them for the first 35. The Gators didn’t just grab rebounds. They ripped them down with such force that it sent a loud and clear message to UConn that there would be no more bullying. If any bullying were to be done it would be done by the Florida Gators.

Want proof? UConn had 13 offensive rebounds in the first 30 minutes of the game. They had one in the last ten minutes.

It is that willingness to fight, scratch and claw their way to wins that separates the Gators from every other team that made the Sweet 16. UConn wanted a rock fight and got one. Anyone else who wants one will get it.

Everybody knows the Gators have depth. That’s no secret to anyone who has watched them play, but what makes them different from every other team no matter which region is the way Golden comes up with winning combinations. There is such a thing as too much depth. Once you get to the lose and you’re through portion of the season where a loss means season over, most teams go with a 7-8 man rotation. Golden goes with nine. It would be 10 except Sam Alexis has been slow coming back from a high ankle sprain suffered in Starkville when the Gators took down Mississippi State. Alexis, who was the best big man defender in the Southern Conference at Chattanooga a year ago, might only be available for emergency duty against Maryland, as in if 20 fouls in the paint aren’t quite enough.

There are other teams with as many big guys as the Gators, but nobody has as many talented bigs and certainly there isn’t a coach who can interchange his big guys without much, if any, dropoff in productivity.

“They [Florida big men] come at you in waves,” UConn coach Danny Hurley said. Hurley has a big team that can muscle up with nearly every team in the country. Against Florida, the Huskies went rebound for rebound with Florida until the Gators wore them down. The offensive rebounds all but disappeared down the stretch.

Tonight against Maryland, the Gators will try to wear down the Terps, who play five guys who average more than 35 minutes each of playing time. It’s tough to compete against a team that always has fresh guys coming off the bench.

On paper it would seem Golden has two distinct choices: (1) Pound it inside and force Maryland’s Derik Queen and Julian Reese to defend Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu,Tommy Haugh, Micah Handlogten and possibly Sam Alexis, all of whom are at least 6-9; (2) Turn the game into a track meet where it’s Florida’s 10 guys vs. Maryland’s five.

On both counts, it would seem the Gators have a distinct advantage. But, there is one slight problem. The game won’t be played on paper but rather the Chase Center court.

Florida advantages can be negated by unfriendly rims, an unfriendly zebra crew or a game which more resembles Latka Gravas solving issues with glubniks. You have to have watched Taxi to understand that one. It’s called showing my age here.

I believe the Gators have all the advantages they need, plus the motivation that comes with outstanding leadership starting with the head coach and trickling on down. Can they put it all together? Can they remember this is one game at a time therefore avoiding the tendency to hear Ray Price’s “San Antonio Rose” softly in the distance like the sirens that young sailors swore they heard luring them to jump ship in the day of wooden vessels with three masts?

If the Gators are focused and able to zero in on the task at hand, I believe their talent and depth will provide all the answers necessary to move on to the Elite Eight matchup against the winner of Arkansas and Texas Tech. The southerner in me believes this is an All-SEC game on Saturday with the Gators ending the Cinderella run of John Calipari. Win or lose to Texas Tech and to whoever makes the Saturday game, Cal has essentially given the finger to Kentucky fans who thought his sell-by date had expired.  

Cal can still coach, but so can Todd Golden. Cal is in the Hall of Fame for a reason. Todd Golden is still early in his journey, but there is no question he has figured out how to assemble talent, build a culture and then get the most out of all the pieces, both moving and supportive at his disposal.

This is not to slam former Florida coach Mike White. Mike is a very good basketball coach and a far better human being than he will ever be as a coach. However, he made the mistake of following a legend. Mike wasn’t, isn’t nor ever will be the next Billy Donovan. Since leaving Florida he’s done a remarkable job at Georgia. The Bulldogs no longer chase cars, but instead are figuring out how to deliver painful bites. Mike did well at Florida. He breathed hope in the program in 2017 when the Gators finally were within a bad five minutes at the end of making it to the Final Four. Had John Egbunu not tore an ACL it’s entirely possible the Gators would have won the NCAA title.

We will never know if something like that could have been the catalyst to a long, successful run in which the Gators were everybody’s nightmare opponent. He had some outstanding recruiting classes after that but never was able to rekindle the fire that got the Gators within a whisker of making the Final Four.

That was Mike White’s third year on the job. This is Todd Golden’s third year so it isn’t unfair to compare the two at the same stage of their Florida careers. Golden has the advantage of not having to live down the ghost of Billy Donovan. He also has the advantage of one of the best big man coaches in the country in Carlin Hartman. White never recruited adequate depth in the paint nor were Florida’s bigs particularly well coached. Golden wants a team that is big and fast, one that can overwhelm with waves of big guys with no apparent drop off in productivity.

So the clock counts down until 7:39 Thursday night when the ball goes up and the Gators either take the next step on a run that seems driven by destiny or fall short of the Elite Eight. Florida is favored by 6.5 points and I do believe the Gators are very capable of flipping all the switches for 40 minutes of beast mode basketball. This time of year you expect close calls, but something about this Florida team makes every single game a blowout possibility.

Is this a team of destiny, ready to pillage and plunder anything and anyone that gets in their way? Or are they a team about to run out of gas, one that will be remembered fondly as the team that was the bridge between Mike White’s good but not great years and a future of championships?

The Gator in me says the Gators are the team of destiny, that nothing or nobody can stop them from bringing home the University of Florida’s third national championship and first since the back-to-back years of 2006-07. The practical side of me agrees. I don’t know how many hundred or thousands of games I’ve covered over the years. I do remember the great players and the great coaches who made the championships possible

I think this team has what it takes. I think they are ready to take the next step on their journey to greatness starting tonight.