Florida Gators

SUNRISE, Fla. – Kevin Hovde was in a cast and sitting at the end of the bench, out for the season with a broken ankle, but he was smack in the middle of the celebration with his Richmond teammates. The date was Dec. 19, 2009 and the Spiders knocked off 13^th-ranked Florida 56-53 in the Orange Bowl Classic. The post-game locker room was a party.
 
"It was a big deal," Hovde recalled. "I mean, Florida was really, really good – one of the best programs in the country, obviously, with Coach [Billy] Donovan – and for us to get that win was just huge." 
 
Which was why the Richmond players whooped up it like they'd just won a championship. The moment carried over, as the Spiders used that victory as a springboard to the program's first NCAA berth in six years; the first of two straight, in fact. 
 
When Hovde, a 6-foot-6 forward from Kennett Square, Pa., went to Richmond the program was in the second season of a total rebuild under a new coach. The Spiders won eight games that year. In his red-shirt fifth season, the Spiders lost eight games, going 29-8 and reaching the Sweet 16 for only the second time in school history. Hovde, now an assistant coach at Florida, smiled as he reminisced about his Richmond days, what with the Gators (5-3) set to face the Spiders (5-4) Saturday at Amerant Bank in the OBC some 13 years later, with Hovde wanting nothing more than to get a win over his alma mater and the coach, Chris Mooney, who recruited him nearly two decades ago. It was what Hovde experienced as a player at Richmond – the rewards of the highs and the challenges of the lows – that drove him into coaching. Now he wants a similar experience with his current team. For his current team. 
 
[Read senior writer Chris Harry's "Pregame Stuff" setup here]
 
"Really good teams enjoy the process of getting good every single day, whether there's some monotony in some of the things we do," Hovde said. "There are guys who just attack that stuff and have a high level of effort and concentration, no matter what. We're working on that. We're not there, yet. That's a reality." 
 
And that's normal. Donovan, one of the greatest coaches in college basketball history, used to say he enjoyed "the process" more than the games. For context: That '09-10 Florida team that was beaten by Richmond three days later was shocked at home by Jacksonville for a third straight loss, yet bounced back to win 21 games and reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the second of UF's famed back-to-back national championships. That started a run of five straight NCAA trips for the Gators, including a Final Four. 
 
The process. 
 
Every team goes through it, but it's how the process is embraced – every day, especially at practice – that determines where a season's journey ends. 

A bus ride down the Florida Turnpike – with a stop for lunch in West Palm Beach and (hopefully) a spirited practice at Florida Atlantic University – will provide bonding potential and time for the team to close ranks. It actually comes at a pretty good point in the season, what with three consecutive neutral-site games – against East Carolina in Lakeland, Fla., next week, followed a date against Michigan in the Jumpman Classic at Charlotte, N.C., the week after – on the immediate horizon.  Remember, Florida is a team of nine new players that has only played one game with its full roster available. That was the night the Gators roared out of the locker room to a 30-point halftime lead and blew out Florida State. It shouldn't take a rivalry game to induce the kind of energy of the Gators unleashed ont he Seminoles that night. Yes, human nature is a thing, but so is combating human nature and UF, to a man, needs to do that better. 
 
"This team has a lot of really good players and a lot of expectations, both individually and as a team," UF coach Todd Golden said. "You're playing a lot of tough games and you lose that edge a lot of times when you allow fatigue to take over and disrupt your focus from the simplicity of just winning. If you don't allow that to happen, everything else will take care of itself."
 
Last week, Florida was beating Wake Forest on the road by nine in the second half, but collapsed down the stretch, especially on the defensive end, and allowed the Demon Deacons to roar back and hand the Gators a deflating 82-71 defeat. That outcome seemed to carry over to the next game, with UF basically going through the motions for than a half Tuesday night against Merrimack – the Gators trailed by three early in the second period – before waking up and rolling to a 77-57 win.
 
It was as if the loss at Wake begat something of a wake in the program, with Golden recognizing as much. He talked in his Merrimack post-game news conference about trying to find "more joy" in the day-to-day routine. In other words (here comes that word again), in the process. 

The connectivity the Gators displayed during a deadly efficient 26-2 run Tuesday needs to be more consistent. In a perfect world, it needs to be constant. 
 
"I feel like I've dealt with this kind of thing before, maybe as you start to get close to the Christmas break and you start to feel like things are winding down, even though the season is really just ramping up. There's a tendency, I think, to relax," said forward Tyrese Samuel, the fifth-year veteran and grad-transfer who played at Seton Hall the last four years. "Our team knows we're good and can do great things, but the challenge now is to stay motivated and stick with our intentions. Teams are not going to just roll over for us. We have to go and take it." 
 
Added junior wing Will Richard: "It starts in the gym. We have to attack practice harder and I think that will show up on the court [in games]. Our energy has been off, especially after losing a couple games. Nobody wants that, but we can flip it around."
 
That was the goal of both players and coaches when they took the floor for practice Thursday, What unfolded over the next 90 minutes was something to behold; unlike anything that's gone on in the building in close to a decade. The Gators didn't respond and were held to account by their coaches in a most exhausting fashion.   If that's what it takes to spark "joy," so be it. This 2023-24 Florida team is the most talented group in recent years. The coaches want the players to treat each day, each practice, each game will the respect it deserves and will push whatever buttons are deemed necessary to get the Gators where they need to be.

The message was sent. But was it received?

"It's a long season. We've been on the road a lot. A lot of ups and downs, but I'm really bullish on this team becoming really good over the course of the rest of the year and I thought the way we played in the second half was a good start that way," Golden said. "We have to get back on track and hopefully [this week] acts as a little bit of a reset for us. Let's back to who we are."

A happy Hovde come Saturday night is the next step.

"As you start to play games, there are different things that are going to arise with different guys, especially when you're dealing with so many new players, like we are," Hovde said. "Certain guys are fine and can maintain a high level of concentration in practice, where others can't. So you're kind of figuring that out on the fly."

The season is just one quarter underway, with the first Southeastern Conference game still almost a month away. There's a lot of learning of fly to be done.

A lot of processing.