Florida Basketball is the least appreciated team in America

Prior to the season, we here at Hail Florida Hail said there was a real shot for Florida Basketball to start the season 10-0. The Gators were coming into the season with high hopes and the non-conference schedule was challenging but also manageable.

But even we couldn't have anticipated Florida's complete disregard for even pretending to keep games close as the Gators just picked up a Quad 1 victory by 17 points.

Florida Basketball: Marching to March

Coming into their matchup with Arizona State, the Gators were favored by 7.5 points, but the Sun Devils were 8-1 and were considered a Quad 1 opponent.

But as has been the case all season, Vegas couldn't set a spread that Florida couldn't cover.

From the tip, Florida was able to drive to the basket at will in the same manner they have all season. Five minutes in, Florida already had a ten point lead they never gave up.

As a team, Florida continued to struggle from three, shooting just 33%, but a lot of that was from Will Richard, shooting 2-8 from deep. Walter Clayton, on the other hand, was 5-13 as part of his 25 points night to lead all scorers.

But what Richard didn't provide from deep, and frankly from ball security as he had six turnovers, he made up for with a highlight reel dunk in the second half that officially sapped any life out of Arizona State.

Clayton also had three steals on the night, and Alijah Martin led the way with six assists.

Add it all together, and once again, the final ten minutes of a Gator basketball game were nothing more than a formality.

Next up is UNC in Charlotte, a game in which Florida should once again be favored to win. They will have two more tune-up games after that before taking on Kentucky to open SEC play.

Florida has yet to win a game by less than 13 points. In truth the bulk of their games haven't even been that close. They see stuck down in 9th in the AP Poll simply because they were a fringe top 25 team to begin the year.

But with each blowout win, at some point the rest of America is going to catch up with how good this Gator squad really is.