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April 2007
It’s great to be an aw-shucks Gator
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It was interesting to hear the Florida Gators as they addressed the media throng here at the Georgia Dome for the NCAA championship pregame press conferences. The Gators players and coaches spent a lot of time defending their greatness and proclaiming humility.
A lot of people are wanting to go ahead and anoint this Florida team as one of the college basketball’s all-time greatest. To their credit, the Gators aren’t ready to except that distinction.
“I feel like that’s a question that we should talk about after the game if things go our way,” said junior forward Joakim Noah. “I feel like right now we realize that it’s not about history. It’s not about all that. We have to take care of business and do what we do and that’s just play basketball for 40 minutes and focus on the task at hand. Then hopefully we’re back here and can talk about that again.”
A lot of the optimism — Vegas has the Gators a five-point favorite — stems from Florida’s performance in its last meeting with Ohio State. The Gators won 86-60 on Dec. 23 at the O’Connell Center in Gainesville.
Of course, a lot has happened between then and now.
“Well, I don’t personally think December has anything to do with April, right now,” Florida coach Billy Donovan said. “That game was played on our home court. They’re totally different; we’re totally different. I don’t think you can sit there and make comparisons from that game. Certainly for Greg Oden, he was not healthy.”
That’s right. Oden was still mending his broken right hand. So the right-hander played left-handed and finished with 7 points, 6 rebounds and 4 blocks in 28 minutes while encountering some foul trouble as usual. Still, the Gators came away impressed.
Recalled Noah: “I remember him blocking my shot and smacking me right in the face after it. It didn’t feel too good.”
Oden is healthy now and playing with both hands. An added bonus: He’s now very ambidextrous.
But forgotten about that last meeting is this little tidbit. Oden wasn’t the only one playing hurt.
Florida’s Al Horford had missed the previous two games with a sprained ankle and his availability for that game was highly in question. Horford didn’t start — Chris Richards did — but came off the bench to give the Gators 11 points and 11 rebounds.
Therein lies the key question for tomorrow night’s game. Do you give Ohio State the edge on interior play because of Oden? Or does it go to Florida because it has not just one low-post threat but three: Horford, Noah and Richards, the latter of whom is 19-for-21 from the field in the NCAA Tournament.
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No trash talking from OSU
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, the first round of the NCAA Championship pregame press conferences is in. Ohio State was first up on the podium and the Buckeyes offered up almost no trash talk.
Sigh.
We say “almost no” because Ron Lewis came as close as anybody. Clearly, it took a great deal of restraint for the senior guard not to come with more than he did.
Lewis’ trash talk came in the form of calling the Florida team they’ll face in tomorrow night’s championship “good.” This was in contrast to coach Thad Matta and teammates Mike Conley Jr., Ivan Harris and Jamar Butler, who all used some derivation of “great” or “excellent” or “special” or “tremendous.”
And then there was Greg Oden, who said very little about anything.
It was really just a passing reference that likely would have gone unnoticed if not for one alert — or should we say desperate — reporter in the front of the room who noticed Lewis’ disparate response and fixated on it.
Following is an excerpt of the reporter’s exchange with Lewis:
Reporter: “Do you have a different standard of greatness? What do you think makes a team a great team? Is Ohio State a great team?
Lewis: “I think [Ohio State is great] because we got to this point. [Florida is] a good team to me. That’s all I can say about it.”
The press conference drifted a different direction momentarily before the microphone returned to our antagonist.
Reporter: “Ron, why are they only good and do you think they could be great?”
Lewis: “They’re a good team. I go bad team, middle team and then a good team. That’s the top. If you want a great team, look at the Chicago Bulls.”
Hey, it was as close to controversy as you could get here at the Georgia Dome on Sunday. Of course, it’s kind of hard to toss barbs at an opponent that beat you by 26 points three months ago.
That was the prevailing theme for the Buckeyes presser. What makes you think you can beat now a team that beat you 86-60 on Dec. 23 in Gainesville, Florida?
Said Matta: “I think that game taught us a lot about who we are. We were not a very good basketball team on December 23, and quite honestly Florida had a lot to do with that… . I thought it taught us a lot about our strength and weaknesses and gave us a point of reference to what we needed to work on to get better as a team.”
That, and there was that little thing about Oden’s broken right hand. He played left-handed. Now both hands work.
Matta said he is looking forward to seeing how his team does against Florida on a neutral floor with a completely healthy team.
“I don’t want to say that I circled Florida and I said, ‘I want them again.’ You get beat by 26, you really don’t want to see that team for a while. But I DO think I wanted to be in this position and was a realist that there was a really, really good chance that Florida could be the team on the opposite side. So be it.”
So it be. Do the No. 1-ranked Buckeyes, five-point underdogs at last check, have a chance?
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