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Monday
Evening QB
FLORIDA had just destroyed Florida A&M, 96-44. And Gators' coach Billy Donovan looked like he was going to have a heart attack at the postgame media conference. Get used to Gators
in Final Four"We just want to win some NCAA tournament games," forward Brent Wright was saying.
The date: Dec. 3. You're not supposed to think about March Madness while you write Christmas cards.
"Hey wait a minute, Brent," Donovan said, after picking his jaw off the table. "We've got some more work to do before that happens."
Now the work is almost done. Win or lose tonight against Michigan State, Florida will have completed its greatest season ever in basketball.
Like they always do with great teams, people will look back on the season and try to find that one thing that brought it all together, that one game, or that one incident, seemingly meaningless at the time, that turned a collection of players into a team.
Most will point to Mike Miller's upset-saver at the buzzer to beat Butler in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
OTHERS will say it was Brett Nelson -- who from different angles looks like fellow West Virginians Jason Williams and Jerry West, and often plays like them -- living up to his potential in the tournament.
Perhaps it was battling through the rugged SEC, which is undoubtedly better than the ACC in football and basketball.
Speaking of that other sport, maybe the crystallizing moment for the Florida basketball team was when it lost a pickup game last summer to a group of Gator football players. Really.
And the answer is ... none of the above. This is not the type of team that needed validation, to learn how good it was.
These are blue-chips everyone wanted. Mike Miller and Matt Bonner are probably the best high school basketball players to ever come out of their respective home states.
These guys all knew how good they were a long time ago, even before Donovan sat in their families' living rooms, asking if they'd be willing to sacrifice points and minutes to get to the Final Four.
You can almost hear him:
"You won't average 20 points. But you will bust your butt playing pressure defense -- and learning the right way to do it in practice. But you also might win a national championship or two."
WHEN they stumbled in Maui, when they took their lumps in the SEC, when they came into the NCAA tournament an eighth seed, this team never doubted its ability.
Just as their style of play allows for the opponents getting a run of their own now and then, the Gators, despite their youth, were mature enough to understand that a loss here and there wasn't cause for disaster.
As a program, Florida now has much more in common with Duke and North Carolina than it does with Wisconsin and Gonzaga.
Tonight's appearance in the national championship game is not a culmination as much as it is a beginning, for as long as Donovan is its coach, Florida figures to make many more trips to the Final Four.
Even if Miller goes to the NBA, this is a team that will be very good for a very long time. There's every reason to believe Donovan's recruiting success will continue.
And all that stuff about Gainesville being only a football town?
Well, the Gators couldn't beat the Spartans in the Citrus Bowl. If Donovan can do it, maybe Steve Spurrier should turn in his visor for starched shirts and ties in the fall.
Dave Reardon, who covered sports in Hawaii from 1977 to 1998,
moved to the the Gainesville Sun, then returned to
the Star-Bulletin in Jan. 2000.
E-mail dreardon@starbulletin.com