The football school just won another basketball championship.
See, it can happen. It didn’t take a campus-wide brainwashing. It didn’t require the school president to issue a declaration, “Spring football, we spit in your general direction.” Passion and success with the oblong ball doesn’t preclude having passion and success with the round one.
Florida had just won another SEC championship with a win over Kentucky Sunday, and is positioned to win another NCAA championship. Athletic director Jeremy Foley smiled, brushed confetti out of his hair — Confetti? What’s that like? — as he stood adjacent to the Georgia Dome stands. Asked what the key was to establishing a winning basketball program at a football school, Foley didn’t hesitate.
“The key? The key was hiring that guy,” he said, as he turned and pointed to coach Billy Donovan on the court. “When we had an opening, we made a conscious decision to try to do something different. Hire a young up-and-comer. I’d like to tell you I looked into a crystal ball and could say what he was going to produce. I couldn’t. But at the end of the day the common denominator for 18 years now has been him. We hired the right guy. We were blessed.”
Another NCAA tournament begins this week. The state of Georgia remains cursed.
Mercer, of Macon, made it in as a 14th seed. The Bears' welcome gift: Duke. In the word of Groucho, "Hello, I must be going."
Mercer was expected to be joined by Georgia State. But the Panthers fumbled a 10-point lead with four minutes remaining in the Sun Belt championship and lost in overtime to Louisiana-Lafayette. So, they will be going to the NIT.
Georgia: also to the NIT, and there’s a perception that’s as high as the Bulldogs’ ceiling generally goes.
Why is that?
Florida is no different than Georgia. They’re both in the SEC, where football rules. They’re both blessed with enormous resources, financially and otherwise. They both want to win.
The only difference between Florida and Georgia is that Florida is doing it and Georgia isn’t.
The Gators are the overall No. 1 seed going into the NCAA tournament. Having already won the SEC regular season title with an 18-0 record, they won the conference tournament championship Sunday at the Dome, holding on to beat Kentucky 61-60.
Donovan is in his 18th season in Gainesville. He has posted 16 straight 20-plus win seasons, averaging 26 in that span. Under him, Florida has won two national titles, reached three Final Fours, played in 14 of the last 16 NCAA tournaments, won six SEC regular season titles and four conference tournaments.
If Florida wins its third national title, Donovan would enter elite company. Only five men’s Division I coaches have won three championships: John Wooden (10), Mike Krzyzewski (four), Adolph Rupp (four), Jim Calhoun (three) and Bob Knight (three).
What do Wooden (UCLA), Krzyzewski (Duke), Rupp (Kentucky), Calhoun (Connecticut) and Knight (Indiana) have in common? They all coached (or coach) at traditional basketball schools. So in a sense, Donovan would be breaking the mold.
See. It can be done.
But Donovan conceded after the win that changing a culture is not easy.
His words: “It’s hard. In our league, the passion by the fans is towards football. That’s just the way it is. I’ve never tried to battle that or fight that. Southeastern passion is football. So it is difficult sometimes when you’re recruiting to explain to kids, ‘There is a commitment at Florida. They do want to win. This is important.’ When you come to our environment, it’s special. But it is challenging to change the mentality sometimes that you can have both.”
Florida is not like Kentucky. It’s not a basketball program with a revolving door for one-and-dones. This Gators team, for example, starts four seniors. The Wildcats start four, sometimes five, freshmen.
So should end perceptions that a college basketball program can’t win without the five-star player who already has NBA stamped on his forehead.
Foley hired Donovan in 1996. He lucked out. Donovan was an up-and-comer but nobody could have expected this. He was an assistant under Rick Pitino at Kentucky before getting his first head coaching job with Marshall, where he spent two years. That was it.
Foley doesn’t see why Georgia can’t have similar success in basketball. He also knows the mindset of Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity, who was his assistant at Florida.
“They’ll get it right,” Foley said. “Mark (Fox) had a good year. And the guy in the chair there knows what he’s doing. I know what makes Greg tick. Trust me, he’ll make it work.”
Georgia doesn’t have to look far for proof that it can happen.
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