Thursday, February 27, 2014
Florida Men's Basketball Team Playing Down to Competition
The nationally top-ranked University of Florida men's basketball team is on a roll, having won twenty straight games with an unblemished record in the Southeastern Conference. They are in the driver's seat for the upcoming NCAA championship tournament, for if they continue like this and garner a number one regional seeding, they should be good for at least a couple of games before they encounter substantial competition. That having been said, the Gators have a problem with putting away opponents, be they weak or strong. In the past three games, Florida played markedly weaker teams in Auburn, Mississippi, and Vanderbilt...but only managed to pull away from them in the closing seconds of their games, winning them by scores of 71-66, 75-71, and 57-54 respectively. This seems to indicate that this Florida squad tends to play down to the level of their opposition...reminding me a little of how the NBA's two-year reigning champion Miami Heat have played during their own title runs. I hope this analogy carries further, into the NCAA tournament and onward to championship glory. On the other hand, I've followed this single elimination tournament since 1970 and have seen too many examples of prohibitively favored teams bowing out early to inferior opponents. I think it's about time for this already successful Gator group to step it up one level higher...