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'Thunder Dan' Adds Bite To UF's Front Line

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By JENNA MARINA Tribune correspondent

Published: February 5, 2008

Updated: 02/05/2008 12:12 am

GAINESVILLE - Players have all sorts of pregame idiosyncrasies to get hyped up for the next 40 minutes of play. Gators forward Dan Werner has just one - listen to the same three songs.

"You can just see him getting in the zone," forward Jonathan Mitchell said. "If you ever notice him before the tip-off, if you look at his face, his face is stone."

Werner does not draw inspiration from the typical pump-up songs like Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" or Nelly's "Heart of a Champion." Instead, he reverts to his New Jersey roots, plugging his ears with Bruce Springsteen's "Rosalita," "Thunder Road" and "Badlands."

"If someone else would listen to them, they would be like, 'What is this?'" Werner said. "I don't know what it does. It just gets my mind right."

As the sophomore looks to The Boss to help him prepare for Florida's game at Tennessee tonight at 9, the Gators will be looking to Werner to see the same player they witness every day at practice.

Each day, Florida's assistant coaches keep track of hustle statistics: points given every time a player takes a charge, grabs an offensive board, makes a steal or gets a hand on the ball. Points are also deducted for lack of effort, like not boxing out properly.

Every week one guard and one forward are dubbed the hustle stat champions, and a small, white "F" becomes a permanent part of their blue practice shorts.

Werner has earned six of the seven Fs handed out so far this season. Center Marreese Speights claimed the other, which Werner said he missed out on by about one or two points.

"It doesn't really take into account points or anything. It takes into account all the little things," Werner said. "And that's really what I pride myself in."

But it has taken some time for Werner to become acclimated to his role.

Werner chose to head to Florida after de-committing from N.C. State when Herb Sendek left to coach at Arizona State. Though the sophomore said he has never regretted the decision, he admitted he struggled to grasp his role on a team returning its national championship starting lineup. He averaged 8.9 minutes, 1.8 points and 1.3 rebounds per game during his freshman year.

During the first few weeks of practice this season, Werner said he remained low-key, staying in the background despite bring one of the most experienced players on the young Gators' roster.

"I wasn't really going up and getting after anything. Those first couple weeks I wouldn't have these Fs on my shorts," Werner said. "Something happened. I can't point to what. I talked to Coach Billy Donovan. ... I just realized I had to be the tough guy, the hard-nosed player."

Not everyone was willing to accept his transformation, especially on the road.

"Early on there were some people that were on him. People telling him he can't be here," said Werner's father, Ron. "At Alabama they were getting on him saying, 'Give back your ring. You didn't earn it.'"

Werner responded to the heckling with 12 points, seven rebounds and three steals.

He chips in every game with an average of 8.2 points. He ranks second on the team in rebounding with 147, trailing only Speights, and has drawn a team-high nine charges this season.

His aggressiveness has resonated with the fans, fans who used to groan every time he touched the ball. Now they shout his new nickname, Thunder Dan.

"It's fun to see the way things have changed for him," Werner's father said.

Werner's father is one of six children and his mother is one of seven, with most of the siblings living in New Jersey. But that hasn't kept the family from watching Werner play. Many members have purchased ESPN's FullCourt package so they can catch all the games on television.

"The whole state of New Jersey is keeping ESPN in business," Jen Werner said.

They will tune in tonight to find Werner doing all of the little things, which are not so little to his teammates.

"Every team needs that," Mitchell said. "More of us need to do what he's doing. It's nice watching him, trying to learn from the things he does. Because the little things he does are big things in the game and momentum builders for us. Things like that spark the team."

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