NEW ORLEANS
At the team’s preseason media day, Chandler Parsons said he thought the Gators were ready to win a national title. Reporters around him glanced away to hide their smirks.
“You guys looked at me like I was crazy when I said we were going to win a national championship,” Parsons said Friday.
Nobody took that statement seriously. And, to be fair, why should they have?
This was a team that was handed high preseason expectations, couldn’t handle success and hadn’t found its identity. Florida was still struggling to get on track 11 games into the season after an embarrassing overtime loss to Jacksonville.
But on Saturday, the same team nobody thought had a chance at making a title run found itself one shot away from the Final Four.
UF was good enough to beat Butler and contend for a national title. When a team loses in overtime by such a narrow margin, it isn’t because one team is better than the other.
It was because Butler guard Shelvin Mack banged in a three off the backboard to start the game or a layup by Erving Walker rimmed in-and-out.
In other words, a little bit of luck decides these types of games.
The mistake everybody made leading up to Saturday’s game was believing Florida had gained an ability to win close games. That simply doesn’t exist.
However, UF does possess an unbelievable amount of balance. That’s what got the Gators this far.
Billy Donovan sacrificed the last three years for this one, and it paid off. He spent those seasons building this team.
There is no individual star, and that’s exactly how Donovan likes it. Any player in Florida’s starting five can score or can make a play. That’s the danger the Gators posed to teams this season.
Even with three future first-round picks in his lineup in 2007, Donovan preached an offense that got everybody involved and always kept the ball moving.
Donovan’s coaching style translated into a versatile team that could attack from any angle.
To put all this into perspective, Parsons, who won Southeastern Conference Player of the Year this season, is fourth on the team in scoring with 11.3 points per game.
That is what made the Gators special.
However, Saturday’s loss to Butler overshadowed all of that — at least for a day.
“In time, I’ll look back on it” Parsons said. “We did some special things this year. We had some great moments, and it’s just hard to think about that right now with the feeling that we have.”
One day, Parsons will reflect back, remember the confused faces his preseason prediction caused and realize this season was nothing to sulk over.
The Gators came a lot closer to fulfilling his promise than many expected, and that is something they should be proud of.
