Florida is a team that hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game in three years, but you wouldn’t know it based on their preseason expectations.
The Gators, who are No. 11 in the ESPN/USA Today Preseason Coaches’ Poll, have already been tabbed as the favorite to win the Southeastern Conference despite finishing in the bottom half of their division a season ago.
With five starters returning to a team that added one of the nation’s top recruiting classes, many are predicting a deep run by Florida in this year’s tournament.
But coach Billy Donovan is quick to point out that perception does not always equal reality.
“We’re kinda a feel good team right now with five starters returning from the NCAA Tournament,” Donovan said Thursday at the SEC media day in Hoover, Ala. “But the reality is we got knocked out in the first round and we finished fourth in the (SEC) East last year.”
Donovan notes that even with buzzer-beating wins against South Carolina and North Carolina State, Florida was still “on pins and needles” during Selection Sunday in March.
Had senior Chandler Parsons missed either of those now-famous last-second shots, Donovan contends that the Gators would not have made the tournament, and that this season’s expectations would be entirely different.
“If we were a team that didn’t get in to the tournament, the questions today would be, ‘Coach, three straight years without a tournament, are you guys feeling the pressure?’” Donovan said.
“Now since we got into the NCAA Tournament, it’s, ‘Coach, five starters back, you’re picked to win the East.’ So what is the truth?”
Perhaps the truth is that the Gators are better off without the lofty expectations.
Last season Florida started the year unranked, climbed all the way up to No. 11 after an 8-0 start, and then proceeded to lose three straight to Syracuse, Richmond and South Alabama.
“I don’t think a lot of the times we’ve handled the expectations well, of when we’ve been ranked at different times during the course of our careers,” Donovan said.
In Donovan’s eyes, the team that “clearly may be better than everyone else” in the SEC is Georgia, who split its two meetings with Florida last season.
The Bulldogs return a pair of preseason All-SEC First-Team selections in juniors Trey Thompkins and Travis Leslie, who each ranked in the top 15 in conference scoring and rebounding last season.
“Georgia was a team last year that was on the cusp of really having an unbelievable season,” Donovan said. “If you look at the amount of games they had that came down to the wire and they were right there and could’ve won, it’s really really remarkable.”
Although the Bulldogs finished last season 14-17 and were picked to finish third in the SEC East this year, Donovan noted that seven of their losses were by four points or fewer.
Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl, on the other hand, is buying in to the Florida hype.
Pearl claims that there is a “gap” between Florida and every other team in the SEC East.
Regardless, the Florida players have realized that no matter what the coaches and the media predict, only they control whose perception becomes reality.
“We’re going to continue working hard regardless of how high we’re ranked,” Parsons said. “I think all of the expectations are based on what we did last year and who we have returning. We still have a lot to improve on and a lot of things to get better at.”