Florida becomes first power conference team this century to pull off impressive feat
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Florida had a lot of things to be proud of after Saturday afternoon’s dominant road performance against a struggling Ole Miss team.
The 12th-ranked Gators ran their winning streak to 7 games with the 94-75 victory, strengthened their grip on the SEC standings with it getting late in the regular season and continued to serve notice that they intend on making a deep NCAA Tournament run in defense of their national title. That’s all great, as are some of the numbers from Saturday’s win in Oxford — Florida shot a ridiculous 57% from the field and 50% from 3-point territory, and besides getting production from the usual suspects the Gators got 15 points in 22 minutes off the bench from Urban Klavzar.
But amid all that Florida accomplished on Saturday as it continues its surge, there was a particular feat that the Gators pulled off that was centered around winning on the road. According to a stat from CBS Sports, Florida is the only power conference team since 1996-97, when the Big 12 was formed, to win 4 consecutive conference road games by 19-plus points each.
Winning in March (and April) is all about winning away from the friendly confines of home. That’s what Florida did last season on the way to a national championship, and that’s what the Gators have been able to do recently, with a heavy dose of domination sprinkled on top.
And it just so happens that Florida will stay on the road in its next SEC battle, heading to Austin to face Texas on Wednesday night. Tipoff is at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2, as the Gators will try to keep their remarkable road dominance going.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
