Our young basketball team is now 2-0 against their first two opponents, North Dakota State and Tennessee Tech.

Both teams offered a good but surmountable challenge. Unlike certain other teams who won’t be named, Florida won decisively against North Dakota State — who won 20 games last year — and blew Tennessee Tech out of the arena, 93-65.

Sure, last year’s squad would’ve beaten both of them by a score of something like 120 to 33. So what? They’re all in the NBA now.

There’s not a single senior on this roster. For that matter, there’s only one junior, albeit a good one: 6′ 0″ G Walter Hodge.

The rest of these guys are sophomores and freshmen. At times, they play like the kids they are: they make mistakes. They’re raw.

But they play with heart and energy. Nick Calathes has a beautiful shot and is a great passer. Jai Lucas is quick as a waterbug (boy, is he a small guy, though.) I like Chandler Parsons’ hustle.

Speights has yet to really dominate in the paint but he’s obviously going to be one of the better big men in the SEC this year. Apparently Billy Donovan has been calling out the Big Fella for his performance, complaining primarily about defense and turnovers. Speights turned it up a notch against Tennessee Tech but Donovan was still bothered by his mistakes, saying “Marresse does a lot of things that show up in the stat sheet, but he also did a lot of things that hurt our team.”

Donovan is a master psychologist, and is no doubt working on making Speights a more aggressive — and focused — force down low.

Not sure what’s going with Dan Werner. He was 2-6 in 31 minutes against NDSU and managed only 5 points against Tennessee Tech. He did get seven rebounds, however.

Freshman Alex Tyus put up 8 points in his 21 minutes against Tech, blocked 2 shots, and picked up 4 boards.

6′ 8″ F Adam Allen logged 15.

I look at this team and I’m reminded of Donovan’s prototypical squad: an up and down the court team that presses a lot and takes advantage of strong passing to find the open guy on the perimeter. The kids can run and there are plenty of frosh and sophs to rotate in and out to keep the press going with fresh legs.

Notably lacking is any semblance of size other than Marreese Speights. Big teams will have a decided advantage over Florida this year. Considering the large number of freshmen playing minutes, it’s a pretty underweight team as well. Think Joakim Noah in his first year, except shorter.

The team has a bit of a problem finishing at the basket right now. In the Tennessee Tech game I saw many missed shots under and near the bucket. They’re not bad players, just inexperienced.

And they still blew out their lesser opponent, which suddenly seems to really count for something in the wake of recent events at other D-IA schools.

It will be exciting to see these kids grow and mature into a full-fledged basketball team. They will win games this year and I expect them to make the NCAA tournament without too much of a problem. I also see them contending for, but probably not winning, the SEC East. That’ll probably be Tennessee, as much as it pains me to say so.

I would like to see our guys beat Kentucky at least once. That is clearly doable. (Psst: twice would be better.) I’d also like to see them win a minimum of 20 games.

We have the best coach in college basketball bringing them along, and Donovan hasn’t missed the tournament in over a decade now. All the doomsday claims that Florida basketball is rebuilding and won’t be competitive at the highest level are absurd. The 2007 Florida basketball team might not beat teams like North Carolina, but they will be competitive.

Let’s be patient and cheer these young Gators on as they follow in the footsteps of their championship predecessors. We’re one or two years out from another championship run, but the nucleus for achieving that is there.