Billy's kids pass ultimate test
ESPN.com
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- It came as the ultimate gut check for Billy Donovan's
Florida Gators. Make it, and they'd play on. Miss, and they'd be watching from the sidelines.
It didn't happen in the first round of the NCAA Tournament against pesky
Butler, a team that had two thumbs pressed against the Gators' windpipe
before they advanced in an overtime win.
|  | | Donnell Harvey epitomizes Florida's all-out style. |
It didn't happen in the waning moments against in the Sweet 16 moment against
top-seeded Duke, or in their comfortable 77-65 Elite Eight win against Oklahoma State on
Sunday.
Instead, it came the day before Midnight Madness back in October, when the Gators
had to complete Donovan's vaunted 20-and-20 drills. Run 20 suicide sprints in
20 minutes, and the players could participate in Midnight Madness in the
raucous O'Dome.
After two tries, all the Gators completed the runs, but not after the token
line of grunts, cramps, and nausea that go along with running the equivalent
of 110 full-court sprints in 20 minutes.
"I mean, with the type of work that we put in, we feel that no team works
harder than us," Florida guard Justin Hamilton said. "No team puts in as much
work as we have in."
It's that same attitude that the Gators carry with them to the Final Four
this weekend when they meet up with South Regional upstart North Carolina.
It's the Gators' first Final Four since 1994, when a Lon Kruger-coached team
charged to the Final Four as a No. 3 seed behind the gritty play of Andrew
DeClercq. That was six years and a basketball generation ago for this Florida
program, every aspect of which smacks of the Gators' slick-haired, slicker-talking head coach.
Donovan dented the college basketball scene by outrecruiting the entire
country for two consecutive years, and even managed to make spring football an
afterthought in Gainesville.
But in climbing a stepladder to cut the nets at the Carrier Dome on Sunday, he burst through in his trademark style.
Donovan's schtick is a trickle-down from what Rick Pitino brought to Providence when Donovan led the Friars to an improbable Final Four run in 1987. It's an all-out, in-your-jock style that thrives on a full-court press and line-change substitutions, where it's not surprising to see five guys waiting at the substitution table.
The closest thing that Donovan has to a star is 6-foot-8 forward Mike Miller,
who averages 14.5 points per game. Essentially there are seven guys who average
more than seven points per game, most of them blue-chip studs who checked their high
school plaudits at the table before they ran their first 20-20's
Donovan's a guy whose house has hardwood floors so he can navigate it faster. He used a bolt cutter to break into the gym at St. Agnes High School on Long Island so he could shoot hoops at night during high school.
So it's not a surprise when he gathered his team in a circle before the
Oklahoma State game and got down on his hands and knees. Donovan took a Sharpie marker
and put a dot on all of their Kevin Garnett 3 model Nikes.
Donovan put the dot there to remind his team to focus every second on the
court, not to let an opportunity to pass them by like last season, when a
last-second tip by Gonzaga's Casey Calvary knocked them out in the Sweet 16
"It was just one of those little things," Miller said.
"Last year we got beat by a tip-in. This year we were convinced that we were
going to do a lot of the little things."
The little thing, in the end, turned out to be Florida's depth. Like when
Cowboys point guard Doug Gottlieb looked to the bench eight minutes into the
first half and put up an open fist to indicate he needed a substitute.
"They just run waves at you, and we have six or seven guys, and then we're
playing eight in the NCAA Tournament," Gottlieb said. "It's just different
when they're playing at that type of energy level, and a system that they
believe in, and they preach and they're very successful. They don't mind so
much that you can get an open layup or 3-pointer, because that allows the ball
to go through the basket, and they can get it in and run back and play some
more offense."
It's a style typical of a program that mirrors its head coach, and butts heads with Bill Guthridge's pound-the-paint philosophy that helped the Tar Heels finish second in the nation in field-goal percentage this year.
It's a style clash that will give Donovan and his Gators an advantage, and they have the sweat, cramps and nausea to prove it. |
