NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It certainly wasn’t the Southeastern Conference
Player of the Year moment Chandler Parsons was hoping for Saturday
in Memorial Gym.
Vanderbilt guard Brad Tinsley, standing all of 6-foot-3, soared
through the lane and threw down a nasty one-handed dunk on Parsons,
sending the sold-out Commodores crowd into a frenzy.
Some will call it a posterization. Parsons called it a great play.
Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings called it two points.
Looking back, Florida can call it a turning point.
The Gators torched the Commodores with 11 unanswered points in less
than a minute and a half, establishing a lead that was threatened
but never lost as UF went on to win its third outright
regular-season SEC Championship, beating VU 86-76.
“I think that’s why they’re the league champion, because they
understand how to deal with that,” Stallings said. “They’re not
fazed by that.
“Some teams would let that affect them. Their team doesn’t. That’s
why they’ve been good on the road. It’s why they’ve won close
games. They’ve got poise under pressure. They deserve to be the
league champion, and they are.”
This group of players has seldom struggled with handling adversity,
as Parsons fittingly displayed by responding to Tinsley’s slam with
two big three-pointers in just more than two minutes.
Handling success, however, has been quite the challenge.
Florida beat Florida State, then lost to Central Florida. Shocked
Kansas State, got embarrassed by Jacksonville at home. Reeled off
five straight wins, then came to a screeching halt against South
Carolina.
UF coach Billy Donovan has said time and time again how these
players came to Gainesville as if championships were in their
birthright. How they were entitled, expecting to win rings and cut
down nets they weren’t prepared to earn.
Florida didn’t cut down the O’Connell Center nets earlier this week
after beating Alabama and clinching at least a shared championship.
There were no championship ceremonies in Memorial Gym — just some
talk of celebrating Saturday night and even more talk of using this
as momentum going forward.
Nylon nets in hand or not, the Gators left Memorial Gym with a
regular-season conference title to call their own, their first
since 2007 and just the third in program history.
And perhaps even more encouraging to Donovan than the title itself
was the scenario. UF could have been satisfied with being
co-champion, the fairytale-ending of Senior Day on Tuesday and a
top-four NCAA Tournament seed all but locked up.
“When you become a really, really good team, winning puts you more
on edge and makes you more uneasy because you understand how hard
you have to work the next time,” Donovan said. “The more you win,
the harder it becomes to win. I’m hopeful that they’re starting to
maybe understand that a little bit.”
For all the talk of his team’s resiliency in defeat, represented by
Parsons shrugging off the Tinsley dunk, Donovan can now take pride
in his players’ hunger following triumph — something clearly
visible in their effort Saturday night.
Despite the obvious similarities — balanced scoring, conference
champions, lofty preseason expectations and so on — this team isn’t
the 2006-07 national championship team. They most likely won’t win
a national title. They definitely don’t have three NBA Draft
lottery picks.
And yet, Donovan said, it has been more rewarding coaching this
team than any other squad before it. Not because of the result, but
because of the process.
The road the Gators took to the SEC Championship doesn’t end in
Memorial Gym. It stretches on to Atlanta and beyond. They
accomplished one goal, junior guard Erving Walker said, but they
aren’t nearly done.
“It feels good to take a deep breath, but only for this moment,”
Walker said.
