Shane Larkin got carried off the court on the shoulders of his Miami teammates at the end of Sunday night’s 63-59 win over Illinois in the NCAA tournament’s second round.
For the longest time, right up to and including the step-back 3-pointer that Larkin hit with just a hair under 1:00 to play, it was the other way around.
“Incredible,” Miami forward Julian Gamble said of Larkin’s gutty shot, the one that finally put the Hurricanes in front for good. “As soon as the ball left his hand, it was a moment where time seemed to go into slow motion, and then it was just elation when it went through the basket.”
If that sounds like a movie, all sweetness and Disney light, recognize that this nearly was a horror-flick doubleheader for the Hurricanes and the Florida Gators.
Miami, on to meet Marquette in the East Regional semifinals, trailed the unpredictable Illini 55-54 with 1:24 to play and were in real danger of frittering away the best season in Hurricanes history. Yes, it almost came to an end here at the University of Texas’ Erwin Center, the same place where Miami’s only other Sweet 16 team was eliminated from the 2000 NCAA tournament.
The Gators, meanwhile, let a 23-point lead melt down to seven in Sunday’s earlier game, a testy 78-64 win over Minnesota in a South Regional game. Mike Rosario, chewed out by coach Billy Donovan for sloppy play in Florida’s opening win over Northwestern, saved the day this time with 25 points and spectacular 6-for-9 shooting from 3-point range.
All is forgiven and all is forgotten now with both teams moving on to the Sweet 16.
The Hurricanes, champions of the ACC, are off to Washington for a Thursday scrap with Marquette, a team that makes it through the opening weekend of this tournament with some regularity. SEC regular-season champion Florida, in a third-straight Sweet 16 for the first time in program history, draws the latest darling of March Madness, funky Florida Gulf Coast, in the South Regional semifinals Friday at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Whatever happens next, nobody will see it coming, just as it was when the Gators built a 48-27 halftime lead and soon faced the shock of a Minnesota team that still believed it could win.
“This is super exciting,” said Florida guard Scottie Wilbekin, whose steady ballhandling and five free throws down the stretch eventually locked this one down. “We don’t have to go home and go back to some more school, so we’re just keeping the good times rolling.”
Strange to think, but it’s actually better for Florida that this game didn’t turn into a total laugher on the order of their opening 32-point destruction of Northwestern State. By outmuscling Minnesota in the second half, the Gators earned a proper tournament trophy with genuine benefits. A second runaway victory in Austin, on the other hand, might have planted something silly in their minds.
They might have fancied themselves as the hottest team in this hard-to-figure tournament field. Launching 20 3-pointers and hitting half of them can do that. Shooting 65 percent of your shots in the first half can, too.
The real danger, though, is looking ahead to the next round and figuring that Florida Gulf Coast, second-best to Mercer during the lowly Atlantic Sun conference’s regular season, is just another layup for the 28-7 Gators on the way to the Final Four.
That’s not how March Madness works. Like a drill churning all the way to the bottom of your soul, that’s how it works. Sunday gave the first taste of that, with the Golden Gophers digging out of a huge hole and threatening to do to Florida what Ole Miss and Kentucky and others did during the SEC slog with late comebacks.
If the Gators hadn’t steadied themselves, finally solving the Minnesota press and making 26 of 36 free throws overall, this game and this season would have been toast, with all the old questions about Florida’s flimsy mental state presenting themselves as the final word on a very talented team.
“It’s really hard to get out of the first weekend,” said Billy Donovan, who is clicking along with a fat career NCAA tournament winning percentage of .750. “There are so many good teams. I think the parity in college basketball makes it a lot more difficult than it was 25 years ago.”
He’s right, and not just because of Florida Gulf Coast’s mysterious climb to a match with two-time national champion Florida in the regional semifinals. Look at Sunday’s game, with a senior-stocked Gator team needing every bit of its cumulative composure to hold off Minnesota, which was not better than 8-10 in the Big Ten.
Without consecutive 3-pointers by Wilbekin and Rosario to wake up the Florida offense with about 11 minutes to play, it might not have happened. The Gophers had cut the Gator lead all the way down to 53-46, after all, and Erik Murphy was in foul trouble and Tubby Smith, once the king of Kentucky basketball, was starting to coach like he had his old gang together again.
“It was real deflating,” Minnesota star Andre Hollins said of those back-to-back kill shots. “It freezes the momentum.”
Now it’s back to the frozen north for Minnesota, where spring is still months away. Florida marches on, happy that Rosario was able to match Hollins a half dozen 3-pointers apiece and flexing, too, over the fact that the gritty Gophers won the rebound battle by just 29-26.
“It’s big, definitely to do it on this stage,” Rosario said of the way Florida stood its ground against Minnesota’s second-half charge. “That’s not going to be the last time we’re going to be in that situation. I think every game from here on out is going to be close or a team will go on a run. It’s great that our team has that confidence going into the Sweet 16.”
A Florida team much like this one, but with the bonus of NBA first-round draft pick Bradley Beal, made it to the Elite Eight last year. If it happens again, that will make five appearances in the regional finals in the last eight years.
The foundation of it all is defense, which is a point that often slips away when the Florida 3-balls are falling like meteors. Defense, with an insidious full-court press causing turnovers sometimes and ulcers all the time, is the reason everybody hates to play Florida. The Gators, after all, held a dozen teams under 50 points this season. One of those was Northwestern State, the nation’s highest-scoring team.
Florida Gulf Coast, that’s another story. It’s almost another planet.
The Gators, no matter how you slice it, are only getting started, and Miami, a No. 2 seed that needs to start playing like it, has already used up one NCAA get-out-of-jail-free card.
The real drama starts now, and it won’t be in slow-motion any more.
