If basketball is a metaphor for life, Billy Donovan delivered one of the most melodramatic lines about love I’ve ever heard.
“You can’t really win, and win big, until your heart really gets broken,” he said last week. “You find out how important winning is to you.”
The Gators should not have won Saturday. Tennessee shot a higher percentage from the field, had seven more steals and outscored Florida 34-24 in the paint.
Donovan even said he was unhappy with his team’s performance.
But the Gators did win, because this group understands heartbreak — as much heartbreak as you can experience playing a sport, at least.
With the exception of the freshmen, this group has seen its share of disappointments, seen too many games it should have won slip away in crunch time.
But when it mattered most on Saturday, the Gators outplayed the Vols and walked off the court with a W.
More than anything else, there is one glaring difference between this year’s team and the three previous squads: These Gators have onions. Big onions.
Since dropping a 72-69 contest to South Carolina on Jan. 15, UF is 5-0 in games that were decided by fewer than six points or went to overtime.
The previous two seasons, the Gators were 9-12 in those games.
More revealing, Florida was 3-7 in tight games after January during that stretch.
When the Gators received a No. 9 preseason ranking in the coaches poll, the consensus was, “Surely this group has finally put it together.”
“We’ve been there, done that. We’ve lost a lot of close games in the past,” senior Alex Tyus said. “Our hunger is a lot stronger now than [it] had been when we were younger.”
In recent years, Donovan tried everything from stripping the team of its practice uniforms to bringing in fire-breathing velociraptor Joakim Noah to motivate them. But no ploy really worked.
Which brings us back to heartbreak.
Since Donovan won back-to-back championships, his teams have always flashed potential before fading down the stretch, leaving a nasty taste in the mouths of the few hardcore basketball fans in this football-centric town.
With the exception of Vernon Macklin, who transferred from Georgetown as a junior, no current Florida player has won an NCAA Tournament game.
Judging by their last five nail-biters, the upperclassmen are tired of wondering what could have been.
Senior Chandler Parsons has been the team’s most effective option as of late. But even when he was hampered with a deep thigh bruise, other veterans stepped up.
In the last 15 minutes of the game, Walker, Tyus and Macklin scored 20 of the team’s 28 points. Walker deservedly received the most credit for hitting the game-winning layup.
But earlier in the second half the momentum was shifted when Macklin and Tyus — Macklin and Tyus, of all people — intercepted Tennessee passes and scored fast-break slams.
Macklin’s jam came with 8:30 left and capped a 10-4 UF run. Tyus’ dunk came with 4:17 left and gave the Gators a two-point lead.
“I love coaching these guys, I really do,” Donovan said. “There is a fighting mentality in them. They have a fighting spirit. Even when things aren’t going well, they never quit on me.
“They never, ever quit on each other. They battle. They fight. They’re resilient. … That, to me, is an incredible quality.”
