All Chris Chiozza could do was watch.
With seven seconds left in the game and the Commodores’ Matthew Fisher-Davis guarding him at the hip, Florida guard KeVaughn Allen launched a three-point shot from the right corner.
The ball clanked off the side of the rim.
With Allen’s last-second miss, the then-struggling Commodores, who had a 9-10 record and just three SEC wins at the time, completed the upset — a 68-66 win over the No. 19 Florida Gators. Chiozza played 14 scoreless minutes, reduced to helplessly watching most of the game from the bench.
UF coach Mike White paused for a moment before he addressed the media following the team’s first home loss of the season.
“I don’t know what to do. We gotta figure it out,” said White, whose team endured a narrow loss at South Carolina three days prior.
“There’s a fork in the road here… . Do we panic? Do we point fingers? Do we blame each other? Or do we simply man up?”
Just a day after arguably the worst loss of the season to that point, Florida’s backup point guard had a private meeting with White.
“I went into his office and apologized,” Chiozza said. “I told him I wasn’t focused as much as I should be on the right stuff and that I was sorry for not playing the way I was capable of.”
In that meeting, White reassured the junior that he was an integral part of the team — someone the Gators couldn’t afford to do without.
“He told me to just go out there and play hard and just do whatever I can to change the game,” Chiozza said. “The next game, I played as hard as I could.”
Three games later, a home contest against the Missouri Tigers, it all came together.
When UF forward Devin Robinson’s high-arching three-pointer ripped through the net with 31 seconds left in the final period, Chiozza forever became a part of Florida basketball history.
In the Gators’ 93-54 route of the Tigers, Chiozza recorded 12 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists. A triple-double. The first of his career and the fourth in program history.
“Ever since then, I just got my confidence back,” Chiozza said. “I feel like I should have been playing this way the whole year and even before this year.”
Since the Missouri game, he’s had eight double-figure scoring games — including a stretch of five straight — and was crucial in Florida’s dominant wins over then-No. 8 Kentucky and South Carolina.
Chiozza credits his second-year head coach, the rest of the coaching staff and his teammates as reasons for his recent success.
“They just boosted me up, letting me know that I can play like that every game,” Chiozza said.
Now, after a first-round win over East Tennessee State and a second-round thrashing of No. 5 seed Virginia, Chiozza is in an unfamiliar position, a place the Gators haven’t been in nearly two years — the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
But he said that won’t stop him.
No obstacle ever has.
“I knew then that he was something special.”
Chiozza bolted toward the basket as fast as his little legs could carry him.
With surprising speed, the 2-year-old toddled across the floor of the house. As he neared the hoop, he let out a mighty roar.
Ball in hand, the toddler charged on, sprang into the air and delivered a thunderous dunk on his Little Tikes basketball goal — a present he received from his parents that Christmas morning.
“I knew then that he was something special,” said LaCresha Crenshaw, Chiozza’s older sister. “I was like, ‘This guy, he’s gonna really be something.’ It was just that special twinkle in him.”
In the Chiozza household, basketball was a family affair. Brother against sister. Husband against wife. Kid against parent.
Whenever they had free time, the Chiozzas were playing basketball together in the driveway of their home in Memphis, Tennessee.
From age 6 to 11, Chiozza was always the smallest person on the court, and his sister, who is nearly 10 years older than he is, used that to her advantage.
“She used to post me up. Every time,” Chiozza said. “She was bigger than me, so I couldn’t do much about it.”
But that never stopped him from trying.
“Even then, you could see the determination in him. He never gave up,” his sister said. “He always was like, ‘I’m gonna get past you.’ Even then, he was little and quick. So, even though he didn’t think he was gonna get past me, he always did. I was never quick enough for him.”
Size has always been an obstacle for Chiozza.
Even now, at 6 feet, Chiozza is almost always the smallest player on the floor. With some players standing up to 6-foot-11, 6-foot-10 and 6-foot-9, Chiozza rarely comes up to his teammates’ shoulders. But he’s never seen his size as an obstacle, and despite his smaller frame, he’s always played tough.
“His dad always made him play with the older kids,” said Curtistine Chiozza, Chris’ mother. “So, with him being little, he has the tendency to get knocked around, and my husband felt like we needed to make him tougher.”
It did make him tougher.
Despite having to battle significantly larger opponents, Chiozza is consistently a force on defense and on the boards.
In the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 64 matchup with ETSU, with the Buccaneers bidding for a comeback in the second half against the Gators, Chiozza fearlessly leapt into a frenzy of players after a missed shot. Amid a sea of massive sweaty bodies, and dangling arms and legs, Chiozza came away with the ball.
“I’m always down there with the big guys fighting them. I’ve always been like that.” Chiozza said. “I try to hit them first before they hit me. And if I do get hit, I’m shaking it off and going right back at them.”
It’s a quality that’s not lost on his coach, who, like Chiozza and much of the team, has never experienced the pressures of March Madness before.
“He’s a starter who’s coming off the bench,” White said of Chiozza. “For him to be rebounding the ball the way he’s rebounding it with his size shows you the toughness that he’s playing with, the tenacity that he’s playing with.”
“He’s a true competitor.”
Chiozza doesn’t complain.
Not when he used to play one-on-one with his sister, where he was almost always on the losing end.
Not when he was in high school, where he was underlooked because of his small frame.
Not when his first college coach, Florida legend Billy Donovan, bolted for an NBA gig.
Not during the low point of Florida’s season, where the coaching staff was struggling to remedy the team’s woes.
And certainly not now.
When the Gators take the court at Madison Square Garden for their Sweet 16 matchup with Wisconsin on Friday night, the past won’t matter.
When that orange leather ball finally slides across his fingertips in the most important game of his life, Chiozza will be ready to battle.
“If he’s pushed to give you more, he’ll give you more. He’ll do whatever he feels like is necessary in order to obtain whatever needs to be done,” his mom said. “He’s a true competitor in the sense that he does not like to give a half-hearted effort. I think he loves to give his whole heart into whatever it is that he does.”
Contact Ray Boone at rboone@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @rboone1994.
Point guard Chris Chiozza shoots a contested layup in Florida's 65-39 win over Virginia in the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament on Saturday in Orlando.
