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As the regular season began to wind down and it became apparent that the Gator basketball team was destined for the NIT, many people called our "Sportscene" sports talk show on WRUF and expressed the opinion that they weren't surprised at where Florida ended up because of its youth and inexperience and that the season went about as they expected.

With all due respect to all of you that may feel that way, it is not the case at all.

Ok, I'll concede this point; the END RESULT of the season may have been as many envisioned it to be when all was said and done. But you can't tell me that you were not surprised at how well the team started the season, at how it lost as many games as it did down the stretch, or that you believed the team would have been called out for its lack of readiness to play in the SEC Tournament.

All that folks is called the journey; it is what makes sports so great, because the journey is often filled with twists and turns that teams often cannot see coming during the course of a season. I think we can all agree this young Gator team had a lot of twists and turns in the journey this year. As the dust settles on a 24-12 season for the Gators, there are some things about this year that have come into clearer focus.

The first is that, as a group and for some individuals, the freshmen class seemed to take an awful lot for granted. Coming in on the heels of winning back to back national championships, this group perhaps thought that just because they were wearing FLORIDA on their jerseys that they were entitled to something.

Truth is, they were entitled to nothing. Instead of believing they had to work hard to establish their own identity, the freshmen sort of relied on the reputations built by the '04 class to carry over and it didn't happen. This is not to say they didn't try, or that they didn't work hard, but it seemed like this group didn't put in the consistent sweat and work to become better.

Maybe the 18-3 start to the season made things too easy; maybe it lulled this young team into believing they were better than they really were. But as the season wore on, and the promising start turned into a 3-7 record to end the year, reality set in.

The deficiencies we all thought this team had at the start of the year; very little depth, a lack of inside presence, a lack of athleticism, bulk and length and the small forward and forward spots, inexperience...all of these things came up and bit this Gator team hard at the end of the year. Next year, with at least more bodies coming into those weak areas, the hope is the Gators will get stronger and deeper at those spots.

The most controversial thing head coach Billy Donovan did all year was to call his team out after its lackluster performance in losing in the first round of the SEC Tournament. While Donovan was criticized in some corners for his action, I believed then and I believe now that what he did was the right thing to do.

Normally, Donovan does not criticize players publicly, but I think his players needed to see those criticisms in print and hear them on radio and television to truly sink in. Locking the players out of their plush practice facility, not allowing them to wear Gator gear, and making them practice in places like the Florida Gym was a needed dose of reality to a team that had done little to earn those perks.

The message seemed to resonate with the team as it seemed to play more passionately during its nice NIT run. The hope certainly is that this group will take the hard lessons it learned on their sometimes humbling journey that was their freshman year and realize that only hard work and improvement, not reputation, will make them a better basketball team. I truly believe that will happen.

This team must forge its own identity and now with some separation from the two national championships, it might be easier to do. I can't wait for next year, can you?