The UF men's basketball team's recent loss to Tennessee got me thinking of an old saying:
"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
I'd edit the second half to say "fool me many times, shame on me."
Because that's exactly what keeps happening with people (including myself) who try to explain this men's basketball team here in Gainesville.
It's safe to say many people - writers and fans alike - approach the team as a guessing game.
It seems the Gators have the pieces to be a decent team, but no one knows what will be the catalyst for them to put it together.
Some thought a heart-breaking road loss to South Carolina would do it. I'll stop shy of pounding my chest too much, but as I predicted, comparisons to the football team's loss to Mississippi were misguided.
I took a shot at guessing the X-factor in my column on Kenny Kadji on Jan. 20. I swung and missed there as the freshman big man scored 18 points combined in the following four games.
My fellow columnist Brian Steele pegged Alex Tyus as the key to unlocking UF's potential. He might be right, but the sophomore had 7 points against Tennessee after going for 18 versus Georgia.
Others have mentioned Erving Walker as the key. Or Chandler Parsons. Or Walter Hodge.
All of this has led me to only one line of thinking since the team's embarrassing loss in Knoxville.
Maybe this team doesn't have a tipping point.
The Gators don't seem one "moment" away from being a great team.
Maybe the pieces just can't mix for some reason. There seems to be a good amount of talent, but it's just not working.
There are many times when it seems there is only one thing keeping UF together - Nick Calathes.
The sophomore guard continues to show why he is one of the premier players in the nation, despite the fact that he plays on a not-so-great team right now. After last week, he holds two of the three triple-doubles in school history, and we all saw how out-of-sync the Gators were when Calathes went down with foul trouble early in the Tennessee game.
He still managed to be the game's leading scorer.
Calathes alone might be the difference between this 18-4 team being 14-8. The junior ranks eighth in the nation in assists (6.5 per game) and comes in at 71st in scoring (18 ppg). While that ranking seems low, consider that of the top 15 scorers, only three reside on teams ranked in this week's AP poll (Blake Griffin, No. 2 Oklahoma; Tyler Hansbrough, No. 3 North Carolina; James Harden, No. 24 Arizona St.).
But to really give you a good crystal-ball prediction for the UF men's hoops team, I turn to another, more-famous Phil, who just so happened to come out of his hill on Monday.
I'm talking about good ol' Punxsutawney Phil, of course.
And locals say Phil is never wrong (cough, cough … just like this Phil, right?).
In his 124th year of forecasting the weather, the groundhog saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter.
I guess the Gators won't be getting that spring awakening any time soon.
