Life is good for Florida Basketball to open the 2024/25 season. The Gators are 12-0, they have only really been challenged once, and there is starting to be a real belief that Florida could be a Final Four squad in 2025.
It wasn't always this way in Gainesville, and this year is a reminder of the standard that has always been possible, even during basketball season.
Florida Basketball: Keep climbing
Florida is ranked 6th in the latest AP Poll. Assuming they don't collapse against Stetson on Sunday, it will be the first time since 2014 that Florida has entered January of a season ranked in the top ten of the AP Poll.
Mike White had the unenviable job of following Billy Donovan, but it is clear at this point that the program got stuck in neutral under White. After making the Elite Eight in his second season in Gainesville, Florida never made it past the second round of the NCAA Tournament in his five subsequent seasons.
Now, Golden has yet to win a tournament game, so he doesn't get to claim the crown just yet, but in just two and a half years, he has Florida looking like a squad that genuinely belongs in the top ten.
Florida is currently winning by an average of 22.6 points. That margin will come down as SEC play begins, but only once in the Mike White Era did he finish a season with a double-digit scoring margin (2016/17).
This current Gator squad came into the year knowing it could score points, but defensive rotations had been a problem in Golden's first two seasons.
That has been cleaned up, too, as Florida has the 10th-best defensive efficiency in the country. Florida has only finished in the top 50 in this metric once since the Elite Eight run of 2017.
There is still an entire SEC gauntlet to get through, and anything is possible in the NCAA Tournament, but for the first time in a long time, Florida not only looks like a team that could make a run in the tournament, it is expected.