NEW YORK — In the past 35 years, only two reigning national champions started a season losing four of their first nine games.
This year’s Florida Gators are one of the two.
The other was 2014-15 UConn, which finished 20-15 and missed the NCAA Tournament under then-coach Kevin Ollie.
That won’t be the fate for No. 18 Florida, though. A team that began the season ranked No. 3, including eight first-place ballots from AP voters, is disappointing in record but still promising in predictive metrics. At this point, the Gators are still searching for themselves and hunting for answers, knowing good results are well within reach. For a spurt on Tuesday night, it looked like Todd Golden’s team might have finally earned some clarity, only to see its latest high-profile game close in thrilling but disappointing style at the Jimmy V Classic, a 77-73 loss vs. No. 5 UConn.
Florida may well have gotten the game to overtime if Boogie Fland had been able to inbound the ball with 9.3 seconds to go, Florida down three. Instead, Fland turned the ball over on a five-second call — a quick whistle, too. Golden said as much at his postgame presser.
“I thought they called it early, man, to be honest,” he said. “I challenge everybody to time it and see what they come up with. We timed it in the locker room, and we got 4.6 and 4.7. In a moment like that — I’ve been around the game for a long time, to get a call like that where it doesn’t even get to five seconds — usually they give you an extra second, to be honest. Just a really, really tough pill to swallow.”
Golden wasn’t using the call as an excuse for the loss, though. In fact, Golden told CBS Sports that the sequence highlights the biggest difference between this season’s team and the one that took the NCAA championship in April.
“It’s very simple: our margin for error isn’t what it was last year,” Golden said.
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A season ago, Florida went 12-2 against ranked competition. This season it’s 0-3, albeit with losses to Arizona (in Las Vegas to start the season), Duke (on the road) and UConn (at MSG/Storrs South). That’s three of the six best teams in the sport. Those losses have come by a combined 11 points with every game coming down to the final two possessions.
That’s why every mainstream predictive metric has UF ranked 16th or better as of Wednesday morning. You can lose games and still be projected as a pretty good team, provided the teams you’re losing to are really good. And that’s where Golden’s team finds itself one-quarter of the way through the season.
The biggest problem Golden is dealing with is one any coach would accept: win a national championship thanks to having the best three-guard starting lineup in school history, only to struggle to replace that group mere months later.
Walter Clayton Jr., Will Richard and Alijah Martin are forever legends in Gainesville. In their stead, Arkansas transfer Boogie Fland and former Princeton point guard Xaivian Lee are undeniably feeling the strain of living up to lofty standard.
“I think we’re all feeling a little bit of the pressure of playing this really difficult schedule, coming in with some real expectations, whereas last year, I don’t think anybody really believed in our team until after the New Year,” Golden told me. “We lost a very good backcourt. It’s going to take a little time for this team to continue to get comfortable. Unlike last year, we didn’t have a schedule that allowed us to beat up on teams and gain confidence that way. So we have to kind of build that up a little differently.”
Florida’s non-con schedule ranks No. 3 in the country, by the way. The fourth loss was against TCU in San Diego, a blown lead that ended 84-80. That’s the only one that bothers Golden.
“It’s all about being mentally tough man and being able to be mature and professional in terms of the way we’re evaluating ourselves,” Golden said. “It’s pretty clear that we have not played our best yet. We haven’t had a night where everybody was really rolling. And with that being said, we’re right in every single one of these games.”
At 9-1, UConn might prove to be as great as any team in the country this season. The Huskies have yet to play a game where everyone on the roster was truly at full strength. On Tuesday night, Florida was down 10 in the second half and pushed back to take the lead. At one point it peeled off a 17-7 run. The two most recent national champions gave us a game worthy of the hype.
“This isn’t a lack of a talent issue or something that leaves me hopeless,” Golden said. “A big part of it is taking advantage of the second chance opportunities. We can’t have 16 offensive rebounds and only turn that into six or seven points.”
Lee (and Fland, to a lesser extent) have been the primary targets for criticism over the past five weeks, but if not for Lee on Tuesday night, Florida loses by double digits. He had a team-best 19 points in addition to six rebounds, five assists and two steals. The problematic pattern didn’t cease, though: Lee’s 3-point shooting was a problem here as it’s been in every game. He’s just 20.3% from deep this season and was 1-of-7 beyond the arc against UConn. Had Lee hit one or two more treys, maybe the game turns for Florida.
Golden told me the lack of reliable perimeter shooting is limiting Florida’s ability to jump into that top tier of teams this season. That’s backed up by the fact that Thomas Haugh (18 points) was terrific again. Fellow forward Alex Condon (14 points) had a good night, as did Rueben Chinyelu, who snagged 11 boards. The bigs are jelling and building up into one of the best frontcourts the sport has to offer.
“We’re close, but we’re not there yet against the top four or five teams in America,” Golden said. “It’s not like we’re getting run out of the gym in these games. We’re right there.”
An interesting game is up next in Sunrise, Florida, this Saturday against 8-2 George Washington, but Florida should see an influx of wins coming over the next three weeks. With the SEC markedly down from last season’s record-setting campaign, the toughest portion of this team’s schedule looks to be over. The Gators were overrated in October, but this should still be one of the SEC’s best teams by the end of January.
