ORLANDO, Fla. — Maybe it’s easy to understand why no team captures the imagination anymore, why no single player in college basketball prevents you from turning the channel. All it’s taken is a glimpse at the first three days of the NCAA Tournament to reinforce the game’s problems.
Thrilling? Of course there are plenty of thrilling games. That’s always going to happen when you stack 63 one-and-done elimination games on top of one another across 17 days and nights. That’s never an issue in March, where Cinderellas dance and favorites wince and everyone has a grand old time watching buzzer beaters.
The final minutes of a lot of these games are hard to top.
But that doesn’t speak to the basketball, much of which has been sloppy, more of which has been ragged, still more of which has been downright unwatchable. (I dare you to sit through a replay of the Louisville-Saint Louis game, even if you have a tattoo of Rick Pitino’s tattoo. Go on. I double-dare you).
It is a grinder’s game now, and that’s why whoever doubts the Florida Gators can keep plowing their way through one opponent after another, right on through the final Monday in Texas, simply hasn’t been paying attention. Other teams can look prettier getting beat than the Gators ever will winning. That’s who they are. That’s how they roll.
“What they know,” Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon said, “is how to win.”
Twenty-eight in a row now after this workmanlike 61-45 dismantling of Pitt, a winning streak that seems to have caught the world by surprise because, well, the Gators don’t take your breath away, and they don’t make commentators scream themselves hoarse, and it wasn’t all that surprising, frankly, they struggled more with Albany out of the America East the other day than they did with Pitt of the ACC on Saturday.
Style points don’t matter. Degree of difficulty doesn’t matter. Grinding matters. Nobody does that better than the Grinding Gators.
“Play as hard as we can,” Scottie Wilbekin said, identifying what is as close to a team credo as the Gators inspire. “Play together.”
It is Wilbekin who best represents who the Gators are and what they can be, who has fueled this ascent to No. 1 in the nation and the overall No. 1 seed in this tournament, even as people keep waiting for someone to step up and send them in their way. As undervalued and under appreciated as undefeated Wichita State has been, it is Florida that seems to have to defend its position more often than a Ph.D. candidate.
“He makes things happen for this team,” Donovan said. “And there are a lot of players on this team who look up to him. I think that tells you a lot.”
What says more is the journey he has made this year. In June, Wilbekin was suspended for the second time in as many years for violating team rules. The five-game ban not only wiped away a good chunk of his senior year but almost all the trust he had tried to accrue in three years playing for his hometown team.
Donovan forbade any contact with teammates or staff. If Wilbekin wanted to come back, the process would start with daily 7 a.m. sessions with the training staff. And Donovan went so far as to hint that maybe Wilbekin should find somewhere else to finish out his eligibility.
“I think he realized I was serious when I told him he needed to transfer and just move on and start fresh somewhere else,” Donovan said. “And I think once he made the commitment that he wanted to work his way back, he’s a guy that loves challenges. It was hard for him.”
But when he returned, he played so well he became the SEC Player of the Year. The Gators have won 28 straight, didn’t lose an SEC game, move to Memphis now and a fresh crew of skeptics. Memo to Memphians: These guys aren’t going to wow you. But bring an extra set of nets. Odds are, they’ll be taking the ones on the baskets home with them.