That’s not surprising since the Tide are trending toward being a No. 1 NCAA tournament seed, but it also illustrates how lost Florida becomes without Castleton on the floor.

 That’s not surprising since the Tide are trending toward being a No. 1 NCAA tournament seed, but it also illustrates how lost Florida becomes without Castleton on the floor.   

NCAA bubble trouble 

Not since Neal Walk in the 1960s and Ronnie Williams in the 1980s have the Gators been so dependent on one player to carry the scoring/rebounding load.The Gators being too much of a Colin-centric team has been a consistent story all season. He’s accounted for 22.65 percent of the Gators’ points (387 of 1,708) and 22.69 percent of their rebounds (187 of 824) because nobody has been good enough to provide adequate support.At one point in the ‘Bama game, Castleton had 25 of UF’s 50 points on 9-of-15 shooting. The rest of the team had made only 8 of 32 shots for its 25 points.

“Listen, he’s a guy that’s improved drastically really over the course of this year, which is impressive considering he was an all-league player last year,” Golden said of Castleton after the ‘Bama loss. “I think he’s become a much more complete player, he’s becoming a better leader.“Obviously, he’s carrying a big load for us this year, but he has to. I just appreciate the way he’s approached everything and the way he continues to lead in tough circumstances like tonight.”Florida just completed satta king 2023 its toughest four-game stretch of the season and managed to get an important Quad 1 win against Tennessee to spruce up its NCAA resume, but that’s not enough to get into March Madness.

In their remaining seven SEC regular-season games, the Gators are probably going to need a win at Arkansas or home against Kentucky to have a shot of reaching the NCAA tournament. If not, they better not slip up in five other matchups with teams outside the top 100 in the college basketball net rankings, where Florida was No. 42 before the ‘Bama loss.Golden still thinks the Gators are in favorable NCAA position because of their strength of schedule, but the reality is the Tennessee highlight win is offset by two losses to NCAA bubble team Texas A&M and not owning any quality non-conference wins.“We have no bad losses,” said Golden. “I mean, we don’t have anything close to a bad loss. We haven’t lost to a team outside the top 50 all year. I think we’ll get credit for our strength of schedule being as good as it is.