Florida avoiding SEC talk, focusing on stretch run

• By MARK LONG
• AP sportswriter
• Published: Nov 7, 2009

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Several days after top-ranked Florida secured a spot in the Southeastern Conference Championship game, receiver David Nelson insisted some of his teammates didn’t even know they had clinched the Eastern Division.

Yeah, right.

The Gators (8-0, 6-0 SEC) spent the entire season talking about getting back to Atlanta, realizing it was the first step toward repeating as national champs. They celebrated last week’s 41-17 win over rival Georgia in frenzied fashion, then wrapped up the East a few hours later when Tennessee beat South Carolina.

Atlanta never came up? Not in the locker room? Not over dinner? Not around campus?

“I don’t even know if half our team even knows that yet,” Nelson said. “We haven’t talked about it. It hasn’t been a subject of conversation between us.”

Coach Urban Meyer would prefer that his players don’t even think about it, especially with four games remaining before the SEC title game. Florida’s challenge the rest of the month, beginning tonight against struggling Vanderbilt (2-7, 0-5), is to stay motivated and avoid a letdown.

“Our team is focused,” quarterback Tim Tebow said. “We know that every week we’re going to get teams’ best and we’re going to have to play well, we’re going to have to compete, we’re going to have to fight to win, pretty much like we’ve had to every game this year and we’re ready for that.

“We’re not going to be complacent. ... It’s college football. Anything can happen any Saturday, and we know that and we’re going to be prepared for it.”

The Gators have the nation’s longest winning streak at 18 games and have won 18 consecutive against the Commodores. Florida won the last two by a combined score of 91-36, and this one could be another lopsided affair.

Tebow & Co. seemingly got the offense back on track against the Bulldogs, scoring early on long passing plays and working the clock late with a ball-control running game.

The Gators also scored on two of three trips inside the red zone, improving on an area that had plagued them in several games.

The Gators turned the game into a rout with four interceptions in the second half, big plays the defense has been looking for all season. It was the kind of complete performance Florida has been missing in league play, the kind everyone expected from the consensus pick to win it all for the third time in four years.

“With every victory and every win, you start to think, what is it 18 in a row now? It’s amazing. It really is,” defensive line coach Dan McCarney said. “So why stop now? There are some things we’ve got to do to try to get 19 this week, stay on course with all the goals we have this year.”