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UF Bubble Hasn't Burst, Yet

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 8, 2009

GAINESVILLE - The bubble boys met here Saturday afternoon and produced one big blister. Ice cold Florida against absolute zero Kentucky - NCAA Tournament desperation, perspiration and exasperation at its worst.

Florida won.

If I'd been the SEC watching this game, I'd ditch the idea of a conference basketball tournament in Tampa or anywhere. Could they just get Tim Tebow to throw some footballs around the Forum? That would be a sellout at least.

Kentucky should be on the NIT bubble. If Adolph Rupp was alive, Wildcats fans would put second-year coach Billy Gillespie in the coffin and bury it dark and deep.

Florida won.

The Gators outlasted the Wildcats 60-53. The officials didn't bother using their whistles in the first half, calling only four fouls. Go ahead, beat your brains in, fellas. They should have moved this sausage grinder over to the football stadium. "It was certainly not a thing of beauty on the offensive end," Gators coach Billy Donovan said.

Did we mention Florida won?

That it did, cutting down one tree in the forest that still blocks it from the NCAA Tournament. The Gators, with 22 wins playing out of a weak-sister SEC, probably need at least two wins in the conference tournament, beginning with one Thursday against Arkansas. Tip-off is 9:45 p.m., but it could be later. Could we get that lucky? Do we really need to be awake for this?

Florida won.

This was one of those games where one team wasn't good enough to catch up to the other team and the other team really wasn't good enough to pull away. Florida was coming off three consecutive losses and Kentucky was coming off a mind-numbing loss at Rupp Arena to plain-awful Georgia, not to be confused with its mind-numbing Rupp loss to VMI. We hear it's all Tubby's fault.

And now back to Donovan's program, in the second year of a rebuilding project that began after a second national title.

Out with the Oh-Fours.

In with the Oh-Nos.

But give these Gators credit. They won a game both teams needed to win, though sometimes it seemed Kentucky had not been informed of that fact.

"There was a level of toughness," Donovan said.

There was a level of defense, something that had been missing. The Gators held Jodie Meeks, the SEC's leading scorer, to 15 points. And there was a level of someone other than sophomore guard Nick Calathes, who scored a season-low five points, but still walked off a winner.

Other Gators picked it up, including senior Walter Hodge, who was presented with a framed jersey and then scored 18 points in what he hoped was his last home game at Florida. If it isn't, well, it's an NIT first-round game.

"We don't want that," Hodge said. "We're ready for Tampa."

Deep down, Donovan doesn't know just how ready.

"They have worked harder, but they need to address what goes into winning and they need to commit to what goes into winning," he said. "One of our major problems ... is we have wandering minds."

Think he misses the Oh-Fours?

"I love it," he said. "I had a chance to be part of a team dynamic that was one of the great examples. And now I can always try to pass that down."

Key word: try.

Last year, Donovan was so down on this group that after Florida missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1998, Donovan shut them out of their practice facility and stripped them of their Gators gear, telling them to earn it back. They responded with a run to the NIT semifinals. We'd call it a magical run, but when we do, even the NIT selection committee starts cracking up.

Donovan senses this team is better, that it knows how to work. Now it's a question of how to make the work, well, work. Two wins in Tampa, over Arkansas and Auburn, is doable. What's interesting, wandering mind-wise, is the Gators also needed at least a couple of conference tourney wins last season to make the NCAA Tournament.

"We're walking into the same exact situation in the SEC Tournament. We beat Alabama early in the SEC and then we go to Atlanta and we're down 28 points to Alabama in the first half," Donovan said. Now comes Arkansas, which Florida beat handily in January. "How do we go in and handle, maturity-wise, what happened a year ago?"

Well, they handled Kentucky, whatever that means.

Yeah, that's what we thought, too.

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