Hoops Heaven

Shortly before 8pm on Monday night, as "Sports Talk Live" was winding to a close, I picked the Gators to beat UCLA in the national championship game.

I did so cautiously, offering a weak caveat - "not that I want to sound like a homer." My fellow panelists, Charles Davis and Todd Wright, good friends and broadcasting professionals that they are, lept at the chance to back me up. Charles and Todd claimed that I had been backing the Gators on the show for a couple of weeks now, and told me I shouldn't be afraid to stick with them, despite the fact that they both liked UCLA in that game.

Did I? Really? Because if we're being honest, I really didn't think they would actually win the damn thing.

Not that I considered Florida a fluke, or UCLA to be a better team. Ever since the SEC Tournament, when the Gators rolled through Arkansas, LSU, and South Carolina to claim their second straight SEC Tournament title, I thought the Gators had that "Team of Destiny" whiff about them.

Entering the NCAA Tournament, the 2006 Gators reminded me quite a bit of the 2000 Michigan State team, the unit that dispatched the Gators in the NCAA championship game. The '00 Spartans were a team in every sense - sure, they had players that you recognized, your Mateen Cleaves, your Morris Peterson, your Charlie Bell, your A.J. Granger - but they were, at their core, a fun group. The "Flintstones" and all that. Only Peterson would go on to any level of professional success, an impressive feat for a guy who couldn't crack MSU's starting lineup until his final season (he was First-Team All-Big Ten as a junior, believed to be the first player ever to achieve that honor while coming off the bench). The '00 Spartans were a group of personalities, great stories all. Much like the '06 Gators.

But even while I mentally drew that comparison, I couldn't help but think - this is Florida. We play football here. An NCAA basketball championship? Get serious.

It's no knock on the Gators. It's just a lesson from history.

Since the inception of the "Final Four" in 1939, there have been a grand total of three teams from the great Sunshine State to reach the national semifinals: Jacksonville in 1970, Florida State in 1972, and Florida in 1994, 2000, and 2006. Those '70 Dolphins were led by Artis Gilmore, who would go on to shine as an 11-time All-Star in the ABA and NBA, and Rex Morgan, who just coached Jacksonville Arlington Country Day to a Class 2A state championship (as seen on Sun Sports). The '72 Seminoles, coached by future JU legend Hugh Durham, were led on the floor by Reggie Royals and Ron King. Neither team won a title.

Florida, coached by Lon Kruger, got dropped by Duke in the '94 Final Four, then lost to Michigan State in the 2000 title game in Billy Donovan's fourth season in Gainesville. None of these results can be considered shocking. This is the state of Florida, after all. We play football here. By and large, with a few exceptions in smaller classifications (shout out to Rollins College, Florida Gulf Coast, Florida Southern, and all your kin), the state of Florida has long been viewed as a basketball wasteland when held against California, Indiana, North Carolina, and any state with a Big East member.

Yet, here we are. The University of Florida has exactly as many NCAA basketball championship banners as it does football titles. Chomp on that, Gator fans.

My man Mike Bianchi likes to call Billy Donovan "the most important college coach in the history of Florida," or something to that effect. Bobby Bowden might chuckle at the mere suggestion. The Orlando Sentinel ran a clever "he said-she said" column on Tuesday debating whether or not UF is now a "basketball school." The fact that we're even asking that question speaks volumes as to the dominance of football around these parts.

Does Syracuse wonder if it's a basketball school? Does Arizona wonder? Does Arkansas? They all possess exactly one NCAA basketball banner, and they all play Division I football fairly competitively, in big conferences. Why does anyone doubt Florida?

Because it's Florida, that's why. We play football here. Sun Sports ain't doing one-hour live postgame shows after Seminole and Gator basketball games - that attention is reserved for football, because the market demands it. We play football here. And yet, here we are.

That's why I couldn't believe I was picking the Gators to win on Monday. That's why I stifled myself from saying what my gut was screaming, which was something along the lines of "Florida's gonna cream those guys." Forget it. We're a basketball wasteland, after all.

Aren't we?

A baby-faced coach from Rockville Centre, New York may have changed our minds. An eclectic group of "guyyyys" - stealing Bianchi's line - from far-flung locales like Houston and Fort Lauderdale and Deerfield Beach and Lakeland and Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and Portland, Tennessee may have rendered all of this ancient history. 12,000 orange-and-blue maniacs calling themselves "Rowdy Reptiles" might just reverse decades of perception as a football factory that happens to play basketball for the hell of it. Maybe this is it.

On Friday, I'll be traveling to Gainesville to host Sun Sports' live broadcast of the Gators' championship celebration at the O'Connell Center, where the University of Florida will raise an NCAA basketball banner into the rafters. The show starts at 7pm.

Florida: a basketball school, and a basketball state. Honestly, I still can't believe it.