Things weren’t looking good for Dan Mullen’s first year at Florida when, in Week 2, Kentucky came into The Swamp and beat the Gators for the first time in 31 years.

However, since then, the Gators haven’t lost. They currently have a 5-1 record and are ranked No. 14 in the AP Poll heading into this weekend’s game at Vanderbilt.

This week, Mullen joined the “Herbstreit and Fitzsimmons” podcast and explained how that loss helped the Gators turn things around:

“We come out and we have a tough loss to Kentucky early. I don’t know if they knew how to react to that or they thought, ‘OK, we lost to Kentucky. What’s going on?’ As everybody sees now and I knew going in to play them, that’s an excellent Kentucky football team for this year. When you go turn on the practice film, you say ‘here’s us not executing in practice, not living up to the standard, here’s us not playing at the highest level at practice. Then here’s the same play in the game. You guys tell me how it looks different.’

“It didn’t. All of a sudden, then they start realizing, ‘I understand now why you’re on us about every day, every detail of practice and the strain and the effort in which we have to play with.’ All of a sudden, they start practicing better, harder, the effort increases. And our performance increases. These guys, when you can show them the gains they’re making, the improvements they’re making, it helps them buy into what we’re doing in the future.”

So far, that’s worked out for the Gators, who now have wins over Mississippi State and LSU on their strong resume.

After a game at Vanderbilt this week and a bye next weekend, the Gators face their toughest test of the season against Georgia — potentially with an SEC East title on the line.