It was hard not to be excited Saturday evening after the tenth ranked Florida Gators logged the biggest victory of second year head coach Will Muschamp’s tenure. The Gators controlled the line of scrimmage and again dominated after halftime, riding senior running back Mike Gillislee and his 146 yards and two touchdowns to a 14-6 victory over fourth ranked LSU. With the win, the Gators moved to 5-0 on the season (4-0 SEC) and vaulted up the Associated Press poll to the fourth spot in the country. While the season isn’t won in October and there’s a lot of football left to be played, Muschamp says his team’s victory over LSU gives them a boost moving forward.
The Gators look ahead now to Saturday’s matchup with Vanderbilt. With third ranked South Carolina coming to town in two weeks, the Commodores could potentially loom as a trap game on the schedule, but Muschamp says his team’s only focus right now is on continuing to improve.
And there are areas where Florida can improve; while Gillislee ran the ball well, the Gator passing attack still needs work. And punt returning has proven to be a big area of concern with “Pop” Saunders and Andre Debose getting chances to field punts with little success. Muschamp says “drastic improvement” is needed in this area.
One area Muschamp is very pleased with is in tackling; he says his team has missed just seven tackles in the last three games. And at his Monday press conference he praised the special teams play of cornerback Loucheiz Purifoy who is doing a solid job of covering kickoffs and punts.
Gators-Dores gets started Saturday at 6PM. It marks the last out of state game for Florida this season.