Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — And now, a review of the Florida highlights from the team's season opener last year at rival Florida State. 

On the game's first possession, freshman point guard Andrew Nembhard hit a 3-point shot 30 seconds in. 

That was it. 


The beat down the Seminoles laid to the Gators on Nov. 6, 2018, stands as arguably the ugliest and most non-competitive effort put forth during UF coach Mike White's five seasons on the sideline. The Gators trailed by just 11 at halftime, but with five minutes left the FSU lead was a whopping 35 on the way to an eventual 81-60 blowout loss that marked the Seminoles' fifth straight win in the series and their largest margin of victory in 70 meetings in the matchup that dates to 1961. 

"It was embarrassing," Nembhard said. 

An accurate description, to be sure. Florida State, which was returning the bulk of its starters from an Elite Eight team, was better than Florida last year — but probably not that much better. In fact, a case can be made the Seminoles haven't been so across-the-board better than the Gators to own a run of five straight victories, but that'll be the current string No. 6 UF (1-0) tries to end when FSU (0-1) comes Sunday afternoon to Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center for their annual showdown. 

[Read senior writer Chris Harry's "Pregame Stuff" setup here]

For the Gators, this one won't be about seeking revenge. It can't be, nor should be. Yes, there are players from both teams that were on the floor at Tucker Center in Tallahassee for last season's blood-letting, but the Gators need not concern themselves with payback anymore than the Seminoles should emphasize extending their recent mastery in the series. UF-FSU No. 71 is about there here and now, and where these two are headed. 

"If we're thinking about streaks and rivalries and adding noise to the fact that we're already trying to decrease in our locker room than I think we're doing ourselves a disservice," said UF coach Mike White, 0-4 against FSU, for now. "It's about which team plays better Sunday afternoon. That's all it's about. It's about carrying through a game plan, valuing the ball, and getting stops." 

And gaining momentum. 

For the first time since probably the 2013-14 season, Florida appears to have a more talented and deeper roster than Florida State, though neither team is particularly blessed with across-the-board experience. The Gators are playing six newcomers, five of them freshmen, but the sixth a standout graduate-transfer center/forward in Kerry Blackshear, Jr. The Seminoles lost five of their top seven scorers and also have six new guys, including three freshmen and two junior-college transfers. 

Both teams are figuring things out early, with UF coming off a season-opening win against overmatched North Florida; FSU's loss at Pittsburgh in a rare Atlantic Coast Conference matchup to lift the lid of their seasons. 

CHARTING THE GATORS 
Florida State's five-game winning streak its rivalry series with Florida began with an unfathomable finish in 2014. The next two games were close, the two after that were anything but, as the Seminoles built their longest run of consecutive defeats of the Gators since the two started playing in 1951. Here's a review, including video of that infamous game-ending play five years ago. 

Year	Score	Site	Circumstance	Gator Killer
2014	L 65-63	Tallahassee	Walk-on forward Jake Kurtz redirected Devin Bookart's short 3-point attempt into the basket for an "own-goal" with 0.4 seconds to play after UF erased a 5-point deficit over the final 49 seconds.	Guard Montay Brandon, a career 3.2-point scorer, went for 17 points, 5 rebounds.
2015	L 73-71	Gainesville	FSU freshman guard Dwayne Bacon got in the lane and hit a pull-up jumper over defender Kasey Hill with 4 seconds left to stun the Gators and spoil a sensational 32-point night from UF freshman guard KeVaughn Allen.	Bacon went 9-for-17 from the floor, 5-for-8 from the arc, with 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals.
2016	L 83-78	Tallahassee	Seminoles used a 15-4 run early in the second half to take command, and led by as many as 13 before staving off a UF rally that closed within 3 with just over a minute to play.	It was Bacon again, this time with 24 points, but swingman Terance Mann had 16 points, 10 boards.
2017	L 83-66	Gainesville	Coach Mike White called his fifth-ranked team's performance "the epitome of soft" after the Seminoles blitzed the No. 5 Gators early and made mince meat of a UF offense that came in averaging 99.5 points per game.	Mann had 25 points and 8 rebounds, while guard CJ Walker threw in 17 more and forward Phil Cofer had 10 points, 12 rebounds.
2018	L 81-60	Tallahassee	FSU handed UF its worst loss in the rivalry's 67-year history, taking control early and rolling to a lead that swelled to as many as 35.	Guard PJ Savoy scored 20 points, including five 3-pointers, while Mann tallied 9 points, 9 rebounds.

                                                                                                                                      -- CHRIS HARRY

On paper, the game appears weighted in the Gators' favor, but what White will try to get across to his players, particularly the young ones, is the rugged and aggressive nature with which the Seminoles will bring the fight to them. That's the way of FSU coach Leonard Hamilton's teams, with this bunch probably even more ornery coming off a tough 63-61 defeat and now facing a second high-major foe (a top-10 one, at that) on the road to start the season. 

The young UF players might actually benefit more from hearing first-person, on-court accounts from some of their older teammates. 

"It was shocking to see how hard they play defensive-wise," sophomore forward Keyontae Johnson said. 

Blackshear was an All-ACC player on a Sweet 16 team at Virginia Tech last season, and his team lost twice to FSU in the month of March — both in overtime — when the Seminoles defeated the Hokies in the regular-season finale, then in the quarterfinals of the league tournament. 

"They're always very talented, but it's also a group that plays above their talent in a sense that they're going to give effort, they're going to scrap one-through-11 or 12, however many he decides to play," Blackshear said. "They do a good job of instilling their culture early on and bringing in dudes that fit their mold. They're one of the best teams in the country at doing that. But it's their level of intensity, from start to finish, that you have to be ready for. You have to be ready for a dogfight."

Hear that, Scottie Lewis? Tre Mann? Omar Payne?  

"I've been trying to articulate a lot of it to those guys, but there's only so much you can say. Some things you just have to experience for yourself," said Nembhard, who got a heavy dose of FSU point guard Trent Forrest in his face in a difficult indoctrination to college basketball last season. "This will be great for us, especially with such a tough non-conference schedule, to really get us into a game with high intensity and a lot of pressure."

Florida State will use full-court defense the bulk of the game. The Seminoles will be aggressive, with active hands and banging bodies, evidenced by their 27 fouls at Pitt and having three players foul out (one of them in just six minutes). 

This FSU team, though, does not have the size of the monstrous front lines of the last few seasons, but it will have the Hamilton mindset that will look to put UF on its collective heels. That's what happened last year, and the Gators wanted no part of it.   "We were horrendous, they were great. They were a big part of why we were horrendous, so not to take anything away from them," White said. "They were a really good team and had a great season. Both them and us are trying to have a great season this season. It's about their team this season, which is very different than their team last season. And it's the same with us. I'm trying to get freshmen to fly at shooters and make them bounce the ball and close out with their hands up." 

The kinds of things, frankly, their seniors didn't do last year. 

Nembhard invited a few of his teammates to go out to eat Wednesday night and and watch (really watch) FSU play. 

"I'm a freshman, so I don't really know what it was like last year, so I asked them," said Mann, the combo guard who started the opener. "they were like, 'Yeah it's going to be crazy. They're going to be denying, playing physical.' So I'm ready for the challenge."

He better be. 

They all better be. 

"The only thing I can really tell them is to come out and play with confidence," Nembhard said. "If they play confident and do what they know they can do, they'll be fine. if they're hesitant and scared, they'll play bad. It's that simple."