On Feb. 21, 2007, the Gators cut down the nets in the O’Connell Center to celebrate their Southeastern Conference title despite having three more regular season games on the schedule.
They lost their next two games.
“I regret that,” coach Billy Donovan said after being put in a strikingly similar situation nine days ago.
Florida entered its matchup with LSU on March 1 with the SEC’s best record already sewn up, but Donovan wasn’t going to make the same mistake he made seven years earlier by celebrating prematurely.
“To me, when you cut down a net, that’s finality,” Donovan said in the March 1 postgame press conference. “There’s still two games left, so there’s no finality right now.”
But on Saturday, Florida finalized its regular season, finishing 18-0 in league play. And in the words of the four seniors being honored in their final home game, it was perfect.
When Kentucky cut its 21-point halftime deficit to just six with 12:24 in the second half, Scottie Wilbekin sunk a three to extend the Gators’ lead to nine.
Six minutes later, Patric Young broke out of his 16-minute scoreless streak to bring his team’s lead back to double digits.
Casey Prather’s contested layup 30 seconds afterward resulted in a three-point play, padding the advantage.
And then Will Yeguete joined the party with his fourth dunk of the year, sending the bench and the crowd into a frenzy.
The Gators’ four-man senior class finished the contest by recording 31 of the team’s final 35 points.
“This is the way to go out,” Young said. “You cannot script it any better.”
But Florida’s fairytale finale to its most successful regular season in school history almost never came to fruition.
Wilbekin, whose 12.9 points per game and 2.1 assist-to-turnover ratio make him a leading candidate for SEC Player of the Year, was given the opportunity to transfer by Donovan after being suspended twice for violating team rules.
Prather said switching schools crossed his mind after struggling with injuries and limited playing time during his early years at Florida. Young had to battle to find his identity amid the downpour of criticisms and comparisons.
And Donovan said he was concerned Yeguete wouldn’t even have a senior season because of his offseason surgery on his right knee.
“When you invest four years like these guys have invested, it means something to them,” Donovan said. “They’re going to carry it with them for the rest of their lives. They’ve done something that has not happened here before and has not happened in our league before. To me, there were a lot of emotions and I’m proud of the way they handled themselves leading up to this game.”
When Donovan handed Wilbekin a framed jersey during the pre-game festivities, the point guard said if it had gone on for just a few more seconds, he would have shed a tear.
“I thought all of us were going to cry, actually,” Prather said.
“I’m surprised no one [did]. I knew if one of us started crying, then everybody was going to bust out crying.”
Follow Jonathan Czupryn on Twitter @jczupryn
Scottie Wilbekin cuts down the net after Florida’s 84-65 win against Kentucky on Saturday in the O’Connell Center.
