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Sunday, May 05, 2024

Sprinting to the Finish: Gators even closer to Atlanta

This is getting ridiculous.

UF made opposing players look like they had just gotten out of bed and barely combed their hair - again

Percy Harvin made scoring touchdowns look easier than cooking Ramen - again.

The Gators read the opponent's quarterback like a nursery rhyme and added to their interception total - again.

Perhaps what's even more ridiculous than anything is, as South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier put it, the Gators are a four-game winning streak away from their second national championship in three years. Of course, that's assuming the Gators make it past Florida State in two weeks and then a matchup with No. 1 Alabama in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game. If no other major upsets occur, then UF, No. 4 in the BCS, would probably play Texas Tech, Texas or Oklahoma in the championship game.

The run this UF football team is on is one that the 1996 Gators title-winning team would be willing to give a standing ovation. That '96 team scored an absurd 376 points in conference play. This year's team scored 359. And that's with the majority of their second-string offense playing in the second half of many of those games.

In the stadium that Spurrier made famous, the biggest loss he had previously suffered - as a player or coach - was a 12-point defeat when he was manning the sidelines in 1993 against FSU.

That's until he and his now-dirt-covered visors came into Gainesville with an offense with a colorblindness problem that made it unable to distinguish blue jerseys from white ones.

"We got royally beat," Spurrier said.

Beat. Throttled. Embarrassed. Pummeled. However you want to put it, Saturday was a bad day for South Carolina.

For the Gators (9-1, 7-1 SEC), on the other hand, this was just another blowout in what's become a common theme as the road to Atlanta and a matchup with Alabama creeps closer.

While the Crimson Tide remains undefeated at 11-0, they haven't been blowing out opponents the way the Gators have. Mississippi State kept it close with Alabama for most of the game until the Crimson Tide came out with a 32-7 win. The week before, Alabama only took down LSU by 6.

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UF's players sprint out of the tunnel hyped, and they stay hyped. The Gators have outscored their last six opponents - all SEC teams - 101-0 in the first quarter.

"In the locker room before the game, we get so much balled-up energy," sophomore cornerback Joe Haden said. "It doesn't matter who we play. We've got a plan."

Percy Harvin must've been a big part of that plan. The junior do-it-all speedster finished with 173 total yards, 167 of which were rushing, and two touchdowns.

Junior middle linebacker Brandon Spikes said "you can't" cover Harvin, and sophomore strong safety Ahmad Black said it is "impossible" to cover him.

In what was a near video game-like play, Harvin took the ball twice on the same counter run and had two touchdowns of 26 and 80 yards. He touched the ball just nine times.

"If he was a tailback on somebody else's team, he'd be a 200-yards-a-game guy," Spurrier said.

The scary part for opponents is that it's not just Harvin. The Gators finished with 367 yards on the ground and had six different receivers catch passes. The last time they rushed for 300 yards against an SEC Team was Oct. 12, 1996, against LSU.

"Our numbers have been outrageous," Harvin said.

That's true offensively and defensively. The Gators picked off Gamecocks quarterbacks three times and held them to just 173 yards of offense. It was South Carolina's worst loss since it fell to UF 63-7 in 1995 with, you guessed it, Spurrier as the coach.

Since their 31-30 loss against Mississippi on Sept. 27, the Gators haven't won a game by fewer than 28.

"I probably didn't envision winning by this much," said quarterback Tim Tebow, who had three total touchdowns. "But the effort and enthusiasm, absolutely (I expected)."

The Gators are potentially four games away from their second national championship in three years.

"That was the best defense I have ever played against," South Carolina quarterback Chris Smelley said.

That's not something Gators fans have heard in a long time. It's not something Alabama wants to hear, either.

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