The following excerpt was written by Kevin Brockway, staff writer, Gatorsports.com and ESPN.com

GAINESVILLE, Fla. —

Renowned sports psychologist Spencer Wood isn’t ready to take credit for Florida’s early improvement at the free-throw line.

“It’s a small sample size,” Wood said. “It will be interesting to see if by the middle of the season those percentages can continue to hold.”

Florida basketball coach Mike White turned to Wood during the offseason to help solve the Gators’ glaring weakness at the charity stripe. Last season, Florida shot 64.7 percent from the line, ranking 323rd out of 346 NCAA teams.

So far this season, the Gators are shooting 74.1 percent from the foul line entering Monday’s showdown in Tampa against Belmont.

White said he was willing to reach out to Wood after reading books on sports psychology over the summer. Wood has met with Florida four to five times, in group and individual sessions, leading up to the 2016-17 season.

“The mental side of the game is just being tapped into for the first time in certain programs, on certain staffs, for certain student athletes,” White said. “I never paid a lot of attention to it, as a coach, you are always wanting to continue to grow and educate yourself, self-assess …

“It’s fascinating and we’ve got a ton to learn, of course, but anything that can help your guys, obviously we want to be open to it.”

Wood is no stranger to the UF program. In 2010, former Gator coach Billy Donovan summoned him to help his players deal with the mental aspect of returning to the NCAA Tournament after a two-year absence. That season, UF returned as a 12 seed, starting a string of five straight appearances in the Big Dance.

In his 15 years in sports psychology, Wood said he’s worked with “a couple of hundred” high school, college and pro teams on the mental aspect of going to the foul line. Wood said free-throw shooting is unique, because like a putt in golf or a field-goal attempt in football, there’s a lapse in action before the physical act.

“This downtime allows athletes to think about consequences and outcomes, where he or she wouldn’t have that normal opportunity in the flow of the game when you’ve got these faced-past action/reaction sequences,” Wood said. “But again the free throw is different, you have 10 seconds on the line for an unobstructed shot, and downtime is the enemy.”

The solution, Wood said, is to create a mental routine during the 10 or 15 seconds before the shot centered around positive phrases and positive visualization.

“I call those go-to sentences, that the athlete has that they can pull out of their back pocket in the clutch, and those are the words the athletes have in his head right before execution,” Wood said. “When a player’s mind is occupied, they can think in the present.”

Controlling breathing and heart rate also is important. But Wood said it’s dangerous for an athlete to overthink form at the free-throw line. For basketball players, free throws are an automated skill that goes through the brain’s cerebellum, which regulates movement, posture and balance. Thinking through the form of the shot transfers that information above the cerebellum to the brain’s cerebral cortex.

“That’s just as dangerous as someone trying to talk themselves through walking a flight of steps,” Wood said. “You would end up at the bottom in a crumpled mess.”

Wood says that while certain general techniques work well, he also tailors specific routines to specific players.

“Pressure grows in the gaps between confidence and expectations,” Wood said. “If you help to remove some of the external expectations of the negative, the time spent on Twitter or Facebook or reading press clippings, than without even working on their routine you can reduce pressure in their mind and they can become a much better free-throw shooting team. I call those front-end skills.”

Florida junior center John Egbunu said he’s found Wood’s sessions over the summer to be useful. Egbunu is shooting 70 percent from the line this season, up from 53.2 percent last season.

“It’s just understanding how to kind of like clear your mind going into a game, understanding that you are going to have doubts and you’ve just kind of got to back those doubts up with a positive approach instead of dwelling on them,” Egbunu said. “I feel like that’s been really good.”

Florida Gators guard KeVaughn Allen takes a breath before taking a free throw against the Florida State Seminoles on Dec. 29, 2015. The Gators are working with sports psychologist Spencer Wood this year to help improve their free-throw shooting.

Desperate to improve Florida’s free throw shooting last season, coach Mike White tried a little bit of everything.

He tweaked some of his players’ mechanics. He increased repetitions in practice. He had guys shoot while tired and winded and with some team accountability at stake. He even considered bringing in a sports psychologist.

“I didn’t want it to become more mental than it already was,” White said Tuesday.

So he waited until the offseason.

Over the summer, White brought in renowned sports psychologist Spencer Wood to work with the Gators.

“If you can train your mind, use different methods to understand how to stay in that place — whatever that place is for you or whatever that trigger word is for you — or get you back into that place of calm, or confident, those type things, I think it can help you with the rest of your game as well,” said White, who’s in his second season in Gainesville.

So far, it’s made a noticeable difference for Florida (2-0), which plays St. Bonaventure (1-0) in Lakeland on Thursday night.

After ranking 323rd (out of 346 NCAA teams) from the foul line last season, shooting a meager 64.7 percent, Florida is up to 78.6 percent so far this season. Two games are hardly enough of a sample size to make White a believer, but he wants to think there is improvement.

“You hope that moving forward we can be in the same mindset,” White said. “I’m not sure it’s fixed. I don’t want to sit here and think we’re a great free throw shooting team. But what we’ve seen the first two games is what we’ve been in practice. You want that to continue, of course. Our guys are in a pretty good place.”

White said feedback was positive, especially from center John Egbunu, point guard Kasey Hill and forward Justin Leon. Egbunu (53.2 percent), Hill (53.8) and Leon (46.2) were among Florida’s worst foul shooters last season. All three are above 70 percent through two games.

Leon said Wood worked with players to find their “hype meter” on a scale of 1 to 10, telling them they needed to play defense at a more frantic pace than offense, especially at the line.

“He gave me a lot of different breathing patterns,” Leon added. “So that’s really been working for me. … It’s good to see it impact the game. That means the stuff we’ve been doing is working, and it shows we’ve taken the time to put the effort in the gym.”

Wood’s resume includes a number of college and professional teams. He worked with the Gators previously, getting invited by former Florida coach Billy Donovan before the 2010 season and helping that team deal with the psychological aspects of trying to get back to the NCAA tournament after a two-year absence. The Gators, led by Chandler Parsons, Kenny Boynton and Erving Walker, returned to the tournament.

White blamed free throw shooting for his team missing the NCAA tournament last season. The Gators blew several leads, failing to put teams away late from the line, and had double-digit misses in 10 games.

The Gators look considerably more confident this season. If not for newcomer Canyon Barry missing three of his first four underhanded free throws in the opener because of nerves, the Gators would have shot at least 80 percent from the charity stripe in both games.

“Very nice, very nice,” White said. “Knock on wood we continue shooting it this way. We have in practice. We just hope we continue to see that carry over. You can see it [in] their body languages, a little more confident at the foul line. … It’s a big factor for us. It kept up out of the NCAA tournament last year, single-handedly, and hopefully this year we continue shooting like this.”

 The following excerpt was written by Chris Harry, senior writer with Gatorzone.com

OKLAHOMA CITY — Winning the first national championship a year ago didn’t just prepare Tim Walton and his Florida Gators for the journey and grind of chasing another.

It also was a lesson in how to celebrate one.

When the final out put a 4-1 defeat of Michigan in Game 3 of the Women’s College World Series in the books Wednesday night, the coach was ready for the aftermath and the ensuing hours (and presumably weeks) of good times ahead.

“Last year, I didn’t really soak it all in. I kind of just went right back to the work we had to do with recruits and players and the other really everyday stuff,” Walton said Thursday, as he reclined comfortably and satisfyingly in his seat on the team’s charter flight back to Gainesville. “Last year, we really didn’t know what to do. We were like, ‘OK, now what?’ But this one? This one was different.”

Knowing how tough it is to win one provided crystal-clear perspective of how difficult it is to win two.

Gators coach Tim Walton raises the national championship trophy for the second straight year. This time, he had a better understanding of how to wallow in the moment, starting with a lot of pictures.

That’s why the post-game celebration in the outfield at ASA Hall of Fame Stadium ran a little longer Wednesday night, with more hugs, more high-fives, more pictures and video. More reveling in the moment for everyone.

“Back to back!” junior catcher Aubree Munro said as she bounced from teammate to family to coach and back again after the game. “This solidifies exactly what this program is about.”

Florida was an elite program before it won its first national championship last year, having been to five WCWS the previous six years. But now two straight national crowns, the Gators joined UCLA and Arizona as the only programs in the country ever to go back to back.

That’s not elite. That’s blue blood.

“It’s hard to do,” UF athletic director Jeremy Foley beamed during the post-game raucous. “These girls came here as the No. 1 seed and with a target on their backs. Obviously, Michigan is a great team. I mean, every time I looked up on the scoreboard someone was hitting .400 with like 20 homers and 80 RBI.”

The Wolverines boasted a team average of .340 (compared to .304 for UF). They had five players with double-digit home runs (UF had three) and five with at least 50 RBI (UF had two).

What they didn’t have, of course, was Lauren Haeger.

The 2015 NCAA Player of the Year went 4-1 with a 1.18 ERA in the WCWS. Haeger’s final NCAA Tournament tournament numbers showed an 8-1 record and an unworldly 0.65 ERA.

“Every team that wins a national championship has someone like that,” Foley said. “Everything just kept falling on her shoulders and she just accepted the responsibility. Lauren Haeger has the heart of a champion.”

How’s this for context: Hannah Rogers, who steamrolled through NCAA play with a 7-0 record last year on her way to taking OKC by storm, posted an ERA of 0.64 in her run. For her dominance, Rogers was named 2014 Southeastern Conference Athlete of the Year.

But Rogers, spectacular as she was, didn’t bat.

Haeger hit .433 in the tournament (.571 at OKC) with three homers, five runs scored and seven RBI. For the season, she hit .347 with 19 homers and 71 RBI.

How hard is it be great at both?

“It’s impossible,” Walton said.

Sort of like how hard it will be to replace her. Or so it would seem.

The loss of Haeger (aka “Babe Ruth”) and senior classmate/shortstop extraordinaire Kathlyn Medina would appear to be chasm-like voids Walton will need to fill in 2016. Then again, the same was said about the exits of Rogers and sweet-swinging third baseman Stephanie Tofft a year ago.

In this orange and blue blood program, young players will develop and take another step next year as Walton looks for more — as he did with Haeger this year — from stalwarts like first-team All-America second baseman Kelsey Stewart, center fielder Kirsti Merritt, left fielder Nicole DeWitt and Munro.

____________________________________________________

“I was smiling from ear-to-ear for about 3 days” commented Icebox Athlete Spencer Wood. “I have had the privilege of working with Tim Walton’s University of Florida Gators multiple times in each season for the past 5 years now, and Tim, his staff, and his players work as hard as any team in America; they are so deserving of the success they are now enjoying. They have been to the College World Series 5 of the past 6 years, but last year was their first ever National Championship for softball at the University of Florida, and now they have repeated as back-to-back national champions. Only two programs in the entire history of the sport at the Division 1 level have ever repeated as national champions. What is perhaps just as impressive about Tim’s program is how he has built an incredible culture of toughness and talent, while also remaining remarkably humble. It is tough enough to build a program that can generate such consistent success, but tougher still to sustain that kind of success with the type of humility that his staff and players consistently carry themselves with. The program is a class act, and I could not be happier for Tim, his staff and his players!”

The entire team at Icebox Athlete join our founder Spencer Wood in congratulating the University of Florida Athletic Department and the entire Florida Gator’s Softball Program in winning their second national championship!

 Icebox is proud to announce that the University of Florida, one of the nation’s most successful athletic programs, has engaged Dr. Spencer Wood, President of Icebox Athlete and one of the country’s foremost experts on mental toughness, performance consistency and clutch performance, to travel to the University of Florida for a number of days each month to work with teams from a variety of sports.

To date, Spencer has already worked with over 10 men’s and women’s teams at Florida, including Men’s and Women’s basketball, defending national champions swimming and diving, the nationally ranked Golf team, the nationally ranked softball team, and the nation’s #1 ranked volleyball team, among a variety of other sports.

Billy Donovan, Head Men’s Basketball Coach and two time national champion, is one of many coaches who has commented on the impact that the Icebox Mental Skills and Toughness Training System has had on his team and program.

“Mental toughness, poise, focus, and confidence is critical for the success of my team at the University of Florida and Spencer Wood is somebody I use to help create that mental edge for my team. Spencer has worked with my team on multiple occasions both in the pre-season and to prepare for big games and he has done an outstanding job. His Icebox mental skills teaching methods have unlocked the secret on how you can effectively be at your best when it counts the most.”

Spring sports that Icebox will be working with include the national powerhouse University of Florida Baseball team. Commented Spencer Wood, “We are delighted to partner with the University of Florida Athletic Department and contribute to their on-going success. Their athletic department, athletic programs, and their outstanding facilities are among the nation’s best, as evidenced by their prominence in the SEC and consistent national rankings across all sports.”Add an answer to this item.