Florida may have righted many of the wrongs it created during a recent two-game losing streak when it upset Texas in Austin on Saturday, but head coach Jon Sumrall is pumping the brakes on any form of hype surrounding his team.
After the Gators experienced a meteoric rise to as high as No. 8 in the AP Poll following an earlier win over Ole Miss, they promptly fell back down to Earth with defeats at the hands of Missouri and South Carolina, something that Sumrall isn’t quick to forget.
So when he was asked about the state of his team following Saturday’s game, Sumrall made sure to keep his guys humble.
“If we’ve learned anything about this game and life, it’s that you don’t get to say ‘Oh, I was good last week, so now I’m just going to be good this week,” Sumrall said postgame. “That’s part of why we got our a** kicked by Missouri and last week at home, because everybody around Gainesville was patting us on our backs.”
Sumrall went on to say that he knew his team wasn’t quite to the level everybody thought they were at the time.
“I was like ‘I’ve watched us practice, we still suck.’ We just sucked less. And so, we have to figure out how to suck less each week,” Sumrall said. “We’re not a complete team yet…you have to fight your tail off every time you play the game. Doesn’t matter who you play, where you play, when you play…There’s nowhere to hide in this league.”
Parker is currently the sports editor for Gulf Coast Media in Foley, Alabama. He's a graduate from Mizzou who has experience covering the Tiger football and basketball beats for SB Nation, and he's worked for a variety of sports news outlets in the past.
