Florida has its back against the wall.
With six regular-season games remaining and its postseason fate hanging in the balance, UF (17-8, 6-4 Southeastern Conference) will start the most crucial stretch of the season with a matchup against Auburn (12-13, 3-7 SEC) tonight at 7 in the O’Connell Center.
“We all know that this is a key moment, and the season is on the line, basically, with these upcoming games,” sophomore point guard Erving Walker said. “There’s definitely more pressure.”
The Gators will ease into the six-game stretch against the Tigers, one of three teams in the SEC with a sub-.500 overall record. Auburn’s three conference wins have come against teams with a combined 7-25 record in league play — Alabama, Georgia and LSU.
UF will have to move on from tonight’s game quickly to play at Ole Miss at noon on Saturday in Oxford, Miss., then travel back to Gainesville for a crucial Tuesday night showdown with Tennessee.
The jam-packed schedule has put a lot of pressure on UF coach Billy Donovan to prepare his team — a task made all the more difficult by the Gators’ limited rotation.
“Our total focus is on Auburn, but at the same time, as a coaching staff, you’re looking at the physical part down the road — getting prepared for Ole Miss, getting prepared for Tennessee,” Donovan said. “That’s a challenge probably for every coach dealing with depth issues.”
After winning back-to-back national championships, UF has struggled to finish the regular season strong. The Gators are 9-14 in February and March since 2008, including a 2-2 record this month that has skeptics wondering if UF is destined for another late-season collapse.
Junior forward Chandler Parsons doesn’t think so.
“We’ve got some veterans who have been through this before,” Parsons said. “You guys might be thinking, ‘Here we go again. It’s the same thing as the last two years,’ but we’re a much better team. We’re more focused, we’ve been through it and we have goals that we want to reach.”
The obvious goal for the Gators is a return to the NCAA Tournament, but in order to get there, they will have to do something they’ve been unable to do the past few years: beat top-tier SEC teams in the final weeks of the season.
Many of the squads UF fell to in 2008 and 2009 were eventual Tournament teams. But Parsons recognized his team’s need to separate itself from the rest of the bubble teams if UF wants to avoid a third-straight National Invitation Tournament bid.
“The last two years, it’s not like we were playing slouch teams,” Parsons said. “We were playing good teams that went to the NCAA Tournament. The biggest thing for us this year is to find a way to win some of those games so we can be one of those teams.”
While wins against ranked conference opponents like Tennessee (Tuesday), Vanderbilt (March 2) and Kentucky (March 7) will boost their chances of making the Tournament, the Gators can improve their odds by winning the games they need to — starting tonight.
“Everything’s crucial now,” Parsons said. “We’ve got to see what we’re made of.”
