When the best team in the country is in your own conference, it is not easy to live with the consequences. Years ago I wanted to believe Florida could be the UCLA of the South and be every bit as prominent in basketball as the Kentucky Wildcats.
Florida is a great university with incredible resources and if – just if, I would surmise – the Gators could string some winning seasons together, perhaps they could begin to capture the support and passion of Gator fans for the sport of basketball like the people in Kentucky.
After all, Florida is a transient state. There are a lot more people living here than were born here. It seemed logical to assume that the football mindset of the Deep South could become be translated to a sport as fast-paced and personally engaging as hoops. Especially when so many people with basketball roots in the midwest and northeastern parts of America got some sand in their shoes and had decided to make Florida their home.
The trip to the Final Four in 1994 definitely made this seem like a possibility. After winning two National Championships and seeing the Gators win at least 20 games for the past 14 seasons, a lot has changed in the landscape of basketball in the Sunshine State.
The fan base of the University of Florida loves it when the Gators win, but to be blunt, there doesn’t seem to be the passionate dedication to hoops that could put the program in a position to compete year after year with the Wildcats.
Kentucky is the winningest program in the history of college basketball. They have won seven national titles, been to 14 Final Fours and been the champions of the Southeastern Conference 44 times.
It took Florida 56 years to win its first SEC crown, and the Gators have won the rest of their five total championships in the past 11 years.
For the Florida basketball players, the games that always matter the most are against the Wildcats. Kentucky has the most rings. They have the best facilities. They have the most knowledgeable and passionate fan base. Beating Kentucky in basketball means you have beaten the best.
Kentucky rarely loses many games in a row to the same team. Through the years, Indiana had a couple of streaks where they beat their southern neighbors five straight and once six straight times. Their light-blue nemisis on tobacco road once had a string of six straight, and Notre Dame from 1936 to 1942 actually beat Kentucky seven straight times.
Since then only one other program has beaten the Wildcats seven straight. That would be the Gators. Florida won their seventh straight in overtime Jan. 19, 2007.
Since then Kentucky has won seven of the past nine, including a 20-point win in Lexington a little more than three weeks ago.
The real Big Blue is on the verge of its 12th undefeated SEC season. They are ranked No. 1 in the country. They are the odds on favorite to win their eighth national championship. On Sunday, they will have more than 1,500 fans in the O’Connell Center who somehow found a way to buy tickets to the game. They face a Florida team that is undermanned and seemingly running out of gas coming down the stretch for the fourth time in the past five years.
The Gators, however, have won six of the past seven at home against Kentucky and, on national TV Sunday at high noon, they have a chance to put a mini dagger in the Wildcats’ side. Perhaps for the first time this season, Florida realizes its pride is on the line. With four McDonald’s All-Americans, the Gators came into this season with high expectations. Losses to Rutgers, Tennessee and lately Georgia on the road, have clearly exposed Florida’s ability to play to their potential.
If the Gators could spring a monumental upset on Sunday, it would be the crowning achievement for a season that has not delivered a signature win.
For the Florida players, it is senior day, and only one player will stand at center court. Erving Walker reflects the ideals of a young man who gave Florida everything his 5-foot-8 frame could muster.
Most of all he will leave Gainesville with a diploma and as much respect as any player who has worn a Gators jersey. No. 11 has been worn by some of the all-time great competitors in Florida’s history. All-time leading scorer Vernon Maxwell. All-time single-game scoring leader Tony Miller. Players with unprecedented toughness and resolve like Don Bostic, Scotty Stewart and Taurean Green.
Walker has become the program’s fifth-leading scorer of all time. He is the Gators’ all-time assists leader and needs just 13 more 3-pointers to surpass Lee Humphrey as the reigning “King of Threes.” It would be one more special incentive for his teammates to find the magic to deliver a senior day present to a guy who has given everyone else the best he had.
Perhaps the Gators need a March leprechaun or a four-leaf clover to help them pull this one out, so here is a little something for those of you who might find superstition helpful.
The Gators have played Kentucky at home on March 4 three times in the program’s history. Since 1932, the March 4 game in Gainesville was played in 1992, 2001 and 2007. Florida has won all three.
Can they do it again? It would be one of the great regular season wins of all time for the reptiles and one of those moments that would painfully ache in the belly of Kentucky fans forever.
