Gators return to action after week off

Florida's week-long bye ends tonight at Georgia, in a game the Gators desperately need to win.

Florida hasn't played since last Wednesday, and coach Billy Donovan said he's unsure just how much the team accomplished with the break. Donovan said taking a week-long break in February presents different challenges than one in November or December after a team has been working with an established routine for four nearly four months.

"We pretty much get into a set routine where we play Wednesday-Saturday or Tuesday-Saturday and you’re going to have two games during the course of the week,'' Donovan said. "So in reality, you look at this week off and say "gee they had a lot of time', when we really didn’t have a lot of time.''

Following last Wednesday's win over South Carolina, Florida took an NCAA-mandatory day off Thursday because they had practiced on Sunday of last week following the Vanderbilt loss. They practiced on Friday and Saturday, then took this past Sunday off to get back on their regular practice rotation.

"So in reality, we had two days and one day was really spent dealing with some mental things and the second was spent playing and practicing,'' Donovan said. "But the combination and balance between keeping them mentally fresh and excited and enjoying coming into the gym, that was important to us. I think sometimes I’ve seen teams that don’t really enjoy this time of year. So I don’t know what we got accomplished. I felt like we did do some things, but how much improved or helped our team was with the week off, I don’t know.''

The Gator players know they are in a precarious situation, with games against league-leading Mississippi State and Tennessee on the horizon.

"We feel like we’re in a must-win situation,'' freshman forward Alex Tyus said. "This is a game we feel like we definitely need to win. All the games (remaining) we feel like we need to win. But we’re mostly concentrating on the game ahead of us.''

Comments

[Robert]

77-64, very nice win by the "Baby" Gators.

With the win this Saturday and hopefully one more soon after, and we will be playing in our tenth straight NCAA tourney. All the support! GO GATORS!

[Go Gators]

Great win last night. Boy those UGA fans sure were quiet. Great to see the Atlanta Gator Club out in full force and making a lot of noise to supoort our guys. How about an update on the baseball team? After all, they are undefeated and have a big series with Miami this weekend.