Today's guest blog is from our friend Malik G. Malik runs and maintains the Gator blog ''Shots From the Dome''. You can follow him on a regular basis at his twitter page here.

You can find Malik's original post here. Enjoy!!!

I don’t think the Gators have anything to be ashamed of. Obviously, Miss. St. was playing as well as anyone in the country during the tournament, but they had a lot of ground to make up.

I think I read that Miss St. had 4 losses to teams outside of the Top 100 rated teams in the country. That’s a nasty blemish to have.

Florida lost to South Carolina and Georgia in the SEC, but those teams beat Kentucky and Vanderbilt respectively. The lone bad loss for UF was South Alabama, while their losses to Xavier and Richmond just got more and more respectable as the season wore on.

They had a tough finish to the season, but they also were playing Ole Miss on the road in addition to Tennessee, at Kentucky and Vanderbilt. Out of those they went 2-2. Respectable.

Florida also blew Mississippi St. out the first time they played them. Also, the Gators were never blown out all year, against some good teams. They’ve shown they can play with anyone in the country.

I would have been disappointed to see a team that showed such fight in each game not make the tournament. Again. This was earned, and I’m looking forward to scouting BYU.