As expected, it wasn’t easy.

Florida withstood a run by UCLA in the second half with poise and tough defense as they beat the Bruins 79-68 to advance to the Elite Eight for the fourth consecutive year.

“Done it before,” Will Yeguete said in the post-game locker room. “Go back to the hotel, get some treatment, get some rest, look at the scouting and go again. It’s fun.”

Taking a six-point lead to halftime, the Gators came out in the second half and extended that out to 11 as freshman Chris Walker made some unexpected contributions off the bench.

“I just try to be ready when coach calls my name,” Walker said with a big smile sitting in front of his locker. “I go in and play good defense, give some energy to my teammates, block some shots and then see what I can do on offense.”

Walker only played six minutes in the game but his 7 points were a necessary bonus with Patric Young and Casey Prather on the bench with foul trouble.

“We know when we go to the bench that the other five guys on the floor are going to play great defense,” Young explained to a media throng gathered around his locker. “I was a little frustrated so my role was more cheerleader than anything else. I did contribute a little there in the second half but this is really a team win.”

Prather agreed that the team gets the credit, not unexpectedly. “All the guys contribute. It’s been that way all year. Dodo, Kasey, Chris gave us big minutes. We’re just thankful that we get to play again on Saturday.”

UCLA’s early zone defense allowed the perimeter of the Gators offense open shots, and for the first time in this tournament, Michael Frazier II made them pay. Frazier finished with 19 points, hitting 5-three pointers to lead the Gators in scoring. Apparently he didn’t like the rims at the Amway Arena in Florida’s first two games but he found the ones at the FedEx Forum to his liking. When he scores like that, it opens up the floor for a lot of other offensive options for the Gators; and they have plenty.

“He’s (Frazier) been working really hard the last few days, working on his shot. He’s a shooter, so he’s got to get that confidence going,” Yeguette explained. “When he was open, he made it.”

For the fourth consecutive year, Florida is back in the Elite Eight, this time against Dayton (6:09 Saturday TBS from Memphis). The Flyers are in the Regional finals for the first time since 1984. The Gators on the other hand, are familiar with this position. It’s the one they’ve gone home from the last three years.

“It’s crazy that it’s here already, ” Young said about going back all four years of his tenure in Gainesville. “You never want to take it for granted but we’ve been blessed and we’re here again. Hopefully we can go farther this time.”

Against the Bruins the Gators leaned on some of the close victories they grabbed during the regular season. In fact, it felt like a late season conference game in the second half. They didn’t panic; they leaned on their seniors and advanced.

“The seniors really lead by example,” Dorian Finney-Smith said at his locker still sporting a Band-Aid over his right eye. “When they don’t panic, we don’t panic. It got to be a one point lead and we just settled down, played good defense and Scottie hit a couple of shots.

This team is accustomed to the quick turnaround and Donovan can look back over the last 8 years and see what worked and what hasn’t once the team got to this point.

Obviously, motivation won’t be a factor.

“I’ve never been to the Final Four,” Young said earnestly. “We’ve got a chance to be the best team in Florida history. We’ve got an opportunity to win a National Championship. What more motivation do you need to go out and play your best?”

It’s difficult to be such a favorite in college basketball. A team that shoots well, and executes their game plan, no matter what their talent level, size or speed, can make things difficult. Florida found that out in the first half against the Albany Great Danes in their first game in the NCAA tournament in Orlando.

Florida had every advantage you could ask for: size and speed and even depth, but Albany couldn’t miss for a while and kept it close. Maybe it’s the setting or the bigness of being the top seed, but the Gators looked out of sorts and a bit skittish in the first half. It wasn’t until about halfway through that they found their range, finishing the half shooting 56% and taking a 34-28 lead. Statistically, the Gators dominated across the board, but couldn’t shake the Danes. In some cases it was trying to do too much, and in others it was a bit of disbelief I’m sure that Albany was being so efficient. Anytime you’re the top seed, any lower seeded team slows it down, limits the number of possessions and if they hit their shots as the clock winds down, they can keep it close. That was clearly Albany’s strategy, and they kept it close.

In the second half it was more of the same but Florida was just too deep, too talented and in the end too determined.

It wasn’t pretty, but in this tournament it’s about “survive and advance.” Florida used 10 points from Casey Hill and a double-double from Patric Young to beat Albany in the first round 67-55.

“We survived but we won’t advance past Saturday if we play like that again,” Scottie Wilbekin said in the post-game locker room.

“Too often we were playing not to lose,” Michael Frazier II chimed in. “We have to go get it. We have to have that mindset.”

I asked Will Yeguette if Florida was aware that they’re the target as the top seed in the tournament. “We’ll get everybody’s best shot,” the Gators senior said. “But we know that. We just weren’t in sync. Give them credit but generally we were all on the same page. We’ll look at film and figure it out.”

It’ll be Billy Donovan’s job to determine how to get his team back into the mindset they carried through the end of the regular season and through the SEC tournament. He wasn’t happy with the defense in the first half, but felt like it was better in the second. And Albany had a lot to do with that.

“The way they play, you know it’s not going to be a high scoring game,” Donovan explained. “I thought we did a pretty good job of forcing the tempo.”

Once again, Young was the one able to put it in perspective. “Looking at this game, we feel moving forward that this isn’t going to be enough to keep our season going. And we know there’s more inside of us and more we can give. We didn’t have our style of of play for 40 minutes. We didn’t sustain that and we’re going to have to do that if we want to make the Sweet 16 because Pitt played exceptionally well today. Hopefully Saturday we’ll have a better mindset and focus.”

In the locker room, it felt like a loss. Which is probably a good thing. Florida hasn’t been beaten in over three months and their biggest hurdle coming into the tournament was finding new motivation to get back to their best basketball.

Every coach will tell you it’s easier to teach after a win. The Gators have the luxury of putting this in the win column (their 33rd of the year) with the players feeling like they got beat. They’re disappointed, understandably.

No better scenario for Donovan and his staff to hammer the message home again: Play well, or anybody can beat you.

No 16 seed has ever beaten a #1 seed in the history of the NCAA tournament.

I thought I’d get that out there right away so if there is some kind of jinx, it’ll fade by game time on Thursday.

But the Gators won’t need it.

As the top ranked team in the country for the first time at the end of the regular season, Florida will beat Albany in their opener in Orlando of the NCAA tournament.

Unlike with the back-to-back national championship teams, this Gators squad doesn’t engender a lot of confidence when it comes to the fans expectations. Maybe it’s just the Gator fan mentality, maybe because they don’t have a part of their game that looks dominating, or maybe it’s because they’ve been scared to death at the close calls in the last three weeks. But the fact remains that Florida is still unbeaten since December 3rd when UConn threw up a prayer at the buzzer to beat them. Since then there are a half dozen games that this group of players would have let get away coming down the stretch.

“Absolutely,” Patric Young agreed after beating Kentucky in their final regular season game at home. “But this team believes in each other. We pump each other up. When other teams go on a run, we respond.”

And that’s the biggest difference. This team does respond. Instead of running from the ball with the game on the line, Scottie Wilbekin is looking for his shot. Michael Frazier II accepts, as Billy Donovan calls it, the “responsibility” to take that shot. Young is not afraid with the ball in his hands and can make things happen.

The ability to reach what you might think is the highest of highs, regroup and do it again, and regroup and do it a third time is the key to the Gators continued success.

“It’ll be talked about,” Donovan said when asked if it was the coach’s responsibility to manage the emotional ups of his team. “We all have a stake in that, and I like our guys attitude towards that. They’re concentrating on what they can do instead of all of the potential things going on around them.”

That’s what happens when you have a senior laden team. With Young and Wilbekin in the starting lineup with Will Yeguete and Casey Prather, the Gators put four guys on the floor who have been around college basketball for a while. All are stories that have a bit of redemption in them.

Young was so raw as a freshman it was hard to project him as any kind of offensive threat.

Wilbekin has been suspended from the team multiple times for breaking team rules and was told by Donovan after his injury early this year that if he didn’t change his game, he was going to the bench. Of course, he became the SEC Player of the Year.

Yeguete has battled knee problems and Prather was so far in the dog house in his first two years in Gainesville that most of the talk was about where he’d transfer to.

All have played pivotal roles in the Gators success this year.

But the thing I was most impressed with seeing those guys in person before, during and after games is how they actually stick together. When they’re going to do something, be interviewed, kiss the floor, cut the nets, they do it together.

It’s hard not to think of anything less than a National Championship as a failure. But that would be a shame if they don’t win it if that’s all they’re remembered for. This has been a fun team to watch and a fun team to be around. Donovan calls it the most satisfying, fun regular season he’s ever coached.

Let’s hope it continues.