Florida is 30-2 and ranked No. 1 in the land, so it’s safe to call these Gators a very good team. But they’re not quite a great one, and for that we have two handy points of reference.
The 2006 NCAA champion Florida Gators. Great team.
The 2007 NCAA champion Florida Gators. Among the greatest.
Even as we note that neither of those takers of titles of were ever 30-2 — the mighty 2007 squad lost more games in the span of eight February days than this team has all season — we must acknowledge the obvious: There’s no Al Horford or Joakim Noah on Florida’s roster, no Gator capable of physical domination.
Billy Donovan, then as now Florida’s coach, concedes that his latest team isn’t a “dominant” one — despite becoming the first squad to run through the SEC 18-0. After the Gators dispatched Missouri 72-49 in the SEC tournament quarterfinals Friday, Donovan pointed to the vanquished Tigers and said: “We don’t have a player like (Jabari) Brown or (Earnest) Ross or maybe even (Jordan) Clarkson who can go get theirs. They (meaning all his Gators) need some help. So we’ve tried to sell them on unselfishness and ball movement.”
In June 2007, three Gators — Horford, Noah and Corey Brewer — were among the NBA’s first nine draftees. NBAdraft.net projects that the only Florida player who’ll be chosen this June will be center Patric Young, and he’ll last until the final pick of the final round. Indeed, the Gators’ biggest talent is Chris Walker, a freshman forward who wasn’t cleared by the NCAA until February and who has worked only 61 minutes.
But here we emphasize: Reflecting on what these No. 1 Gators aren’t isn’t the same as suggesting that this isn’t a superb team. It is. In some ways it’s better than the Horford/Noah crew. With four starting seniors, it’s even more seasoned. It’s also quicker, and it’s tougher defensively. (Not that those teams were averse to guarding.) These Gators press to great effect, which the back-to-back champions did not.
Florida took a while to get going Friday — “We looked a little bit pouty and cranky,” Donovan said — and led only 38-36 with 10 minutes remaining. Then backup guard Kasey Hill drove and fed forward Will Yeguete for a layup, and point guard Scottie Wilbekin flashed in front of Brown to steal the inbounds pass. Wilbekin saved the ball to Yeguete, who dutifully returned it to Wilbekin in the corner. His 3-pointer gave the Gators five points in 11 seconds. The pouting was over. The game would be soon.
Remember all those Missouri players who could create and presumably make shots? None of them did it. Florida held the Tigers to two baskets in the first 15 1/2 minutes of the second half. The final act of the Gators’ decisive surge was again authored by Wilbekin, this time defending in the half court, this time deflecting a pass and diving to wrest the loose ball from Brown. After calling timeout to secure possession, Wilbekin bounced up yelling, “That’s my ball!”
And so it was. Twelve seconds later, he made another 3-pointer to make the score 50-36. Florida, which hasn’t lost since Dec. 2, had thrown a hammerlock on its 24th consecutive victory.
“They play in tandem with each other pretty well,” Brown said, speaking of Florida’s D. “They always know where they’re going to be.”
The Gators won by 23 points over a team that entered the game with NCAA tournament aspirations. They managed this despite getting only one basket from Casey Prather, their leading scorer on the season, and three rebounds and one blocked shot from Young, voted the SEC’s best defender. For long parts of the game, Florida didn’t look much better than Missouri, which was swept by Georgia. Then you noted the final score and realized that looks counted for nothing.
Said Donovan: “When a team is ranked high and has the record we have, sometimes — sight unseen — you think, ‘Geez, they must be blowing everybody out.’ But you go through our scores and you see they’re all like this. For all practical purposes, we were dead in the water at Auburn. We were down seven with four minutes to go at Arkansas. … Sometimes when you watch us, you’ll think maybe we don’t look or play as dominant as our record.”
Sometimes, yes. Just not at the end of games. Florida will not enter the NCAA tournament inspiring the awe that attached itself to the Gators of Horford and Noah — heck, more than a few folks think Tennessee will upset No. 1 in Saturday’s SEC semifinal — but this very good team could, in the end, achieve greatness.
