AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > April > 03
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Gators took away suspense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It wasn’t a great tournament. It wasn’t a great Final Four. The best that can be said for the Big Dance of 2007 is that it produced a great champion, and there’s merit in that.
Still, Florida was so good these last two years that it seemed to be dancing alone. That’s not a criticism of the Gators — on the contrary, it’s the highest possible compliment — but the best NCAA tournaments are those that have multiple plausible endings. That’s why this Final Four was, in the grand scheme, a massive letdown. All the mystery died when Florida started to play.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageIn winning 12 NCAA games last spring and this, the Gators’ average margin of victory was 15.1 points. They didn’t face a second-half deficit in their four Final Four games. They were good for the sport in the sense that their selflessness and camaraderie could, at least in theory, motivate other gifted teams to stick together, but they were lousy for the concept of drama. Duke needed its climactic Christian Laettner moment to repeat. Florida sailed through on a dozen Lee Humphrey moments.
Ohio State played better in the title game than any runner-up since Duke in 1999. The Buckeyes made six more baskets than Florida and had eight fewer turnovers, and still they never got close enough to make the Gators sweat. The pressure that seemed to be bearing down on the reigning champs in Round 2 against Purdue and Round 3 against Butler didn’t show in the Final Four because Florida wouldn’t allow it to register. And that’s still another hallmark of greatness.
Said Billy Donovan: “The UNLV teams, the UCLA teams, the Kentucky teams, the Duke teams: I’m not saying our team could beat them. I’m just saying that when you look at the word ‘team’ by itself — I’m not talking about competing against other teams but what a team is — I think [his Gators] have to be talked about.”
It was possible to see in Florida what was missing in Kansas and North Carolina, gifted assemblages that didn’t reach the Final Four, and in UCLA and Georgetown, more harmonious aggregations that did. The Gators had the talent to make the requisite plays and an otherworldly mesh that enabled them to maximize their talent. Ohio State came the closest to approximating Florida’s blueprint, and with another year of playing together the Buckeyes might actually achieve Gator-like eminence. But surely there will be no second try for Greg Oden as a collegian, and that’s a shame.
When he doesn’t foul, Oden is as splendid as advertised. He’s a better offensive player than Patrick Ewing was as a freshman and a better defensive player than Shaquille O’Neal has ever been. He’s as fundamentally sound as Tim Duncan and 10 times more forceful. It would be fun to watch Oden rip through March Madness a year from now, but anyone who spent half a season nursing a bad wrist will surely reach the conclusion that returning to school is a bad career choice.
Unless Oden simply wants to come back, which would be a welcome surprise. He did, after all, just get a close-up look at the joys that can come from deferral. “If Greg Oden really in his heart wants to go back to Ohio State, he should do what he wants to do,” Donovan said. “If any one of those guys feels like, ‘Listen, I’ve got the opportunity to leave but I really want to stay’ … look at what happened with [his Gators]. It all worked out for them.”
Reality, alas, is rather colder than that warm and fuzzy notion. Not every player is the son of a famous pro athlete. Not every player can afford to spend another year going to class when he could be banking millions. It would be nice to think these Gators and their willingness to wait will become the new paradigm of college basketball. It would also be hopelessly naïve.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Returning Gators set great example
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Their greatness will be debated. Their consecutive titles will be revered. Their coach will be canonized.
But what happened on this night and in this tournament and during this season should be remembered for something else. The Florida Gators didn’t merely win another championship Monday night. They may have helped fix college basketball.
How many kids watched this tournament? How many high school players or college freshmen watched what Al Horford and Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer accomplished Monday night, and thought: “Maybe school’s not so bad. Maybe the NBA can wait.”
Yes, the Gators won it again. But it was a bigger victory for the NCAA.
It was a bigger victory for those who cling to deteriorating concepts like unselfish athletes and the purity of sport.
Suddenly, there’s the thought: Contracts can wait. Houses, cars and shoe deals will be there in a year.
Which way to the pep rally?
When the final seconds ticked away in Florida’s 84-75 win over Ohio State, Brewer ran in circles, delirious, like a child who had just wandered into Wonkaland.
Horford took the basketball and joyously threw it into the crowd.
Noah ran up steps in the Georgia Dome to find family members to hug.
Could there have been a better advertisement for college athletics?
“This,” Brewer said, “is what we came back to school for.”
Florida coach Billy Donovan said the Gators should be ranked among the greatest teams — emphasis on team — of all time, adding: “For some of them to have a choice [to turn pro], and make the choice to come back, you have to be pretty competitive.”
Noah’s father, Yannick, sat in the stands before the game. He was dressed in Gator blue and orange, with a necklace of orange beads and gator heads around his neck. A year ago at this time, he figured to be wearing normal clothes in another city.
“It’s a beautiful story — this just doesn’t happen anymore,” the former tennis star said. “You don’t see these kids turn down the big money, and some of them very much need the money. It just doesn’t exist.
“I can only speak for Joakim. But he grew up with posters of NBA players on the wall. That was his dream, and then he had a chance to fulfill that dream. But when he decided he could still have his dream and go back to be with his friends, I was, like, amazed. These kids, they did it for the right reason. I truly believe now that other kids — not a lot, but some — will do it.”
This isn’t to paint leaving college early as some evil. Since when does a 19-year-old saying yes to millions of dollars qualify him as stupid?
But what Florida did was expose the positive side of saying, “No, not yet.”
Tito Horford, Al’s father and a former NBA player, said: “Not too many kids were thinking of going back to school. Now they’ll think, ‘Wait, if Joakim and Al and Corey Brewer did it, we can do it, too.’
“Other kids should look at them as great role models. They just came back to school to accomplish a dream and make history. They made a great decision. So I’m pretty sure many kids in America are going to look at them.”
It seems unlikely any of the three juniors will return. But even if all turn pro, the point has been made. It would have been made even if Florida had lost Monday.
“I don’t know how many kids this will impact,” former Georgetown coach John Thompson said. “But I thought it was a hell of a great example for kids. Everybody’s not in their certain situation. You have to judge your own situation individually. But I think it’s about time that somebody acknowledges their decision, obviously — not just taking the money and running.
“I don’t blame the kids who do take the money because there’s a lot of circumstances where they should. But we needed somebody to show the other side of the issue. They’re the example.”
The best example. Follow the leaders.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz
Stand and applaud the mighty Gators
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It’s the best team of the last 31 years, and it’ll be the best of the next 31. Even if some among us cringe at the thought of continuing Florida domination on every front, we all should stand and applaud as these mighty Gators pass into history. We might never see their likes again. It’s a wonder we saw them at all.
“There’s no lying in championships!” Joakim Noah fairly screamed. “You all can say what you want, but these are in the books!”
If these Ohio State Buckeyes stayed together two seasons more, they might become what Florida is. But they won’t because they can’t: The marketplace won’t allow it. What passes for excellence in neo-collegiate basketball is to do it once, Carmelo Anthony-style.
Florida did it twice while having only one real scare — against Georgetown in the regional semis a year ago — in a dozen NCAA tournament games. Think about that.
Think also about this: With 3:41 remaining in Monday’s first half, the exasperated Buckeyes called timeout. They’d played well enough, having made 10 of 22 shots — exactly the same as Florida. They trailed by 11 points.
For these last two years, that’s what the Gators did. They took an opponent’s best and flung it back harder. They were Jimmy Connors hammering Roscoe Tanner’s serve. They were George Brett turning on Goose Gossage’s 100-mph heater and smashing it against the façade of the upper deck.
To the second half: With Ohio State’s resistance stiffening, Al Horford wheeled on Greg Oden and had his shot snuffed. And yet … the Gators tracked down the loose ball and Taurean Green whipped a pass from the left corner to Lee Humphrey at the head of the key, and Lee Humphrey did what he does at this time of the year. A big-time block wound up with the Buckeyes staring at that same 11-point deficit.
It was supposed to be harder the second time around, but it really wasn’t. The Gators’ closest calls, such as they were, came against Purdue in Round 2 and Butler in Round 3, and once they overrode an early nine-point deficit against the Bulldogs the rest was rudimentary. Oregon thought it had the speed. UCLA thought it had the grit. Ohio State thought it had the players. Turned out nobody had a chance.
“We had a big target on our back,” Taurean Green said, “but we handled it.”
“It’s the reason we came back,” said Corey Brewer, the most outstanding player on merit. “To win another national championship.”
A word about the Buckeyes: They were good enough to have taken the title other years, and they acquitted themselves nobly Monday. (Oden was majestic.) They were simply in against the strongest championship assemblage — better than North Carolina of 1982, better than Georgetown of 1984, better than Duke of 1992, better than Kentucky of 1996 — since Indiana finished unbeaten in 1976.
Florida was a team of size and shooting, of offense and defense, of many stars yet no superstar. Noah, MVP of last year’s title run, made one basket in this championship game, and it mattered not one whit. That’s what separated these Gators from those worthies cited above: They were dependent on nobody, but also on everybody. They were what every team aspires to be but, at least over the last three decades, only this one truly was.
Green again: “We’re a team. That’s what it’s all about.”
And when it was all done, the winning and the net-cutting and “One Shining Moment,” the four juniors — Brewer, Green, Horford and Noah — posed for a picture. But someone was missing from the mix, and on cue Humphrey appeared. And there the five were, equals without peer.
Together they’d generated not one shining moment but two. Twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now, their legacy will shimmer still.
Permalink | Comments (106) | Categories: Mark Bradley
