GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- It's the age old story in sports. Win well but then follow it up with a loss to a team that you were expected to beat. It has happened to the best of them, however, Florida is looking to avoid falling into the trap.

"I don't know that trap game comes up as much as guys trying to catch their breath after continually improving," said Gators head coach Dan Mullen during his Monday press conference. "It becomes a mental thing."

Mullen's team has been on quite the ride the last month. After falling to Kentucky in the second week of the season, Florida has won four consecutive games - two against top 25 opponents and two on the road.

"The great challenges of the Southeastern Conference is not the individual game, it’s the game after game after game after game that you play," explained Mullen.

The Gators had three pretty emotional games in succession. Not only did they journey to Tennessee, where there is certainly no love lost between the teams, they journeyed to Starkville one week later to face Mullen's old team and then turned back around a week later to face No. 5 LSU at home.

It's been a busy month.

"I can look at our guys this week and say 'We've played three really tough games in a row and we have a bye week the following week' and the mindset can be 'Coach, I can't wait to catch my breath. I can't wait to just take one play off at practice." said Mullen. "I'll be honest with you, more than the opponent you're facing is it's yourself and your own attitude of the mental toughness, of can we continually improve and get up every day. Right? It's like that early-morning run.

"You sit there and you say 'Boy, I've run four days in a row and I ate a salad yesterday for lunch and I'd love to sleep in this morning.' Right? But it's not good. You've got to get up and improve every single day if you want to be successful."

This is where team leaders like quarterback Feleipe Franks and wide receiver Josh Hammond step up in the locker room.

"We're going to treat Vanderbilt like a big game," said wide receiver Josh Hammond. "We're going to prepare, treat it as a national championship game, and come out today ready to practice and continue to get better. The thing that will be the biggest thing moving forward is to not let our improvement that we keep making going up and let it slip or flats up. We got to continue to get better, get better, get better and let that propel us into the game on Saturday."

"I mean it's another SEC road game," said Franks. "It's not easy, it's not easy to win road games so let alone just a SEC game in general. So can't take 'em lightly. Just gotta keep on preparing, keep on having really good practices. We gotta have a great practice today and just keep on going and going. And like Coach Mullen said, you got to, you got to prepare for every team and if you don't prepare you have the potential of losing a game. And you know you just gotta prepare week in and week out for whatever you're playing."

"It’s going to be a different atmosphere than what we’ve seen," said Mullen about the trip to Nashville. "It doesn’t have to affect our performance on the field and how we play and how we execute and how we practice all week. It’s not going to affect that."

MEDICAL REPORT

No new injuries to report after Florida's game against LSU.

Gators offensive lineman, Brett Heggie, wore a case on his left arm in the game against the Tigers, however, heavily contributed in the game. He graded out as a champion for his part in the win.

DEPTH CHART

GATOR CHOMPS

**other tidbits from Mullen's presser**

On his demeanor on Saturday.

“What I want to do is make sure everybody understands in the crowd, all the students, to the Gator Nation, and maybe it’s been big for them. First time in a couple of years you had a sold-out stadium. I wanted to make sure they remembered how critical they are. I think our student body and the Gator Nation, the people that were in the stadium had as much to do with us winning the game as the guys on the field. They certainly had as much to do with that. As I was pumping up the guys on the field, I was trying to make sure they understood it was going to be a critical moment in the game. We’re in a critical time in the game and there’s not time for them to get tired. Every single person in that stadium needed to be on their feet, in a frenzy, creating that home-field advantage for us that we need. They were a little further away from me than the players, so it was just may way to communicate to them it was time to make sure they were on their feet, standing up and down going crazy. They were critical. The end, as the saw, as a result they were. In the end, the stadium was deafening. Certainly, it was intimidating. Our student body, the band. The band kind of leads the student body and they crowd and they did a great job of needed all of those people to help get us a victory.”

Team vs the program. Where’s the program development now?

“I don’t know. We’re a ways. The program’s a multi-year thing, you know what I mean? We’re doing solid. The guys are buying in. Our recruiting staff’s working their tail off to get better players here. There’s plans in place about facilities upgrades and improvements for us to get new facilities. Those are all program deals. That’s a longer-term issue. Those are – I don’t know that we’re much ahead of where we were in the program in July. Maybe if any, we’re a little – I think it’s a positive buy-in from the guys that are on the team. They’re starting, like I said. The offseason, I think they got to see their physical gains in strength, and that builds confidence. Then they're buying into our offense, defense, special teams. Our plan to win football-wise, and they are starting to success with that as well. So that always helps and makes the buy-in a little easier. So for the program, I think that's a big plus moving forward. I know everybody within the program, whether it's the recruiting department, the administration, on the academic side of things, starting to see more buy-in from our players of getting everything done the right way and have the program running the way we want it run."

On the SEC East becoming stronger

"Well, I do think this is funny. The last game I coached at Florida, before I became head coach at Mississippi State was 2008 SEC Championship, won by Florida. The East did not win another SEC championship game until this past year. When I was hired at Florida again and left the West, four days prior to that game. So it must all be me (laughs). For the championship game, at least, I seem to be on the winning side. Whatever team has won the championship, I've been on that side now -- 07 was LSU -- so once since '06, I have not been on the side that ended up winning the championship. But yeah, listen, I think the league is so deep. What, is it 8 teams ranked in the top 25 right now? Which is double any other league. I think that just shows the absolute depth the league has top to bottom. I don;t know if the East is stronger than the West or the West is stronger than the East -- I just think the league as a whole has a tremendous amount of depth to it with a lot of good football teams."