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Get inside March Madness with SI.com's Luke Winn in the Tourney Blog, a daily journal of college basketball commentary, on-site reporting and reader-driven discussions.
4/03/2007 10:04:00 AM

Goodbye to the Gators ... and a Top 10 For 2007-08

Cory Brewer
Rich Clarkson/NCAA Sports

ATLANTA -- The Florida Era was finished no matter what happened Monday night, but the euphoria of the victory party made it easier to let go. As the Gators' Oh-Fours -- juniors Corey Brewer, Taurean Green, Al Horford and Joakim Noah -- were flashing two-finger, two-peat salutes on the stage at the Georgia Dome, only a small pocket of fans piped up with a chant of "One more year!" The plea quickly lost steam and was overwhelmed by the greater celebratory din.

Florida had just made history, beating Ohio State 84-75 to become the first team since Duke in 1991-92 to repeat as national champions, and only the sixth ever back-to-back title-winners. Noah, the indefatigable icon who last year had told reporters that winning the NCAA tournament was "better than sex" (then adding "I should know, because I'm doing it right!") this time made a statement with his actions on the stage. He first removed his mouthpiece and chucked it down onto the court, then took off each of his black Nikes and wildly heaved them into a sea of blue-and-orange fans. The message was clear: I won't be needing these anymore.

None of the Gators were interested in talking three-peat, and really, after two titles, what statements were left to make? Noah hinted that his work was done, saying, "I remember when I was telling people, 'I'm going back to school,' and they were like, 'What? Are you crazy?' But you know what? I feel like now all of a sudden people understand that it's more than money. It's more than that. Now you guys are going to write about history -- one of the best teams ever. That's special. That's something that everybody in this locker room will never forget."

With those memories fresh in the minds, the Oh-Fours are soon expected to make a collective jump to the '07 NBA Draft, where three of them will be Lottery Picks (Horford, Noah and Brewer, in that order) and Green will be fighting his way out of the second round. "If one of us goes," said Brewer, "we all go."

They're going -- and leaving the title race for '07-08 wide open in their wake. Who will cut down the nets next year in San Antonio? Herewith, a first look at the top 10 for 2007-08 (with the assumption Georgetown's Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert, Kansas' Brandon Rush, North Carolina's Brandan Wright, Ohio State's Greg Oden, Texas' Kevin Durant, UCLA's Arron Afflalo and USC's Nick Young also make the early jump to the NBA):

1. NORTH CAROLINA Provided Tyler Hansbrough passes on the draft to work on his offensive repertoire, he'll be back with a vengeance for his junior season. After coming within a Georgetown three-pointer of the Final Four in '07, the Tar Heels' baby backcourt of sophomores Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington has matured enough to help Psycho T take Carolina all the way.

2. UCLA Junior point guard Darren Collison, who was snubbed for All-America honors in '07, will emerge from Afflalo's shadow to become a household name. With five-star freshman power forward Kevin Love -- an old-school post player who's been college-ready since 16 -- adding an offensive dimension inside, a third straight Final Four and coach Ben Howland's first national title are well within reach.

3. KANSAS For the second consecutive season the Jayhawks will be the best team on paper -- but can they get it done in March? Ballhawks Russell Robinson and Mario Chalmers will ensure the D remains fierce, but bullish guard Sherron Collins and elastic forward Julian Wright need to become scoring stars. Collins' painful knee injury -- he was said to be crying in practice the day before facing UCLA in the Elite Eight -- may have been the difference between KU heading home, or packing for Atlanta.

4. MEMPHIS Chicago phenom Derrick Rose, Rivals.com's top-ranked point guard in the Class of 2007, joins one of the nation's deepest, most athletic rosters and should form a devastating duo in the backcourt with slasher Chris Douglas-Roberts. Look for another undefeated Conference USA season, and a serious run toward San Antonio.

5. OHIO STATE As long as ultrasteady point guard Mike Conley Jr. returns -- and that's no lock -- the Buckeyes will survive without their bearded baron of the paint. Incoming 7-foot freshman Kosta Koufos will try to fill Oden's shoes, while guards Jamar Butler and Daequan Cook, who played auxiliary roles in '07, will shoulder more of the scoring load.

6. LOUISVILLE Rick Pitino's collection of blue-chip youngsters -- particularly breakout NCAA tournament star Edgar Sosa, who dropped 31 on Texas A&M in a near second-round upset -- look ready to out-duel Marquette and Notre Dame for the Big East title.

7. WASHINGTON STATE Tony Bennett-ball was no one-hit wonder. The rookie head coach signed a seven-year extension, and the Cougars only lose forward Ivory Clark from their starting lineup. Led by its Island/Dairyland backcourt blend of Derrick Low (Honolulu) and Kyle Weaver (Beloit, Wis.), Wazzu will be in the thick of a tight Pac-10 race.

8. USC The national spotlight will follow super-recruit O.J. Mayo to Troy, where the Trojans are already loaded. He'll join Daniel Hackett and Gabe Pruitt in a three-headed backcourt, and as long as the chemistry clicks -- and it doesn't become the O.J.-only show -- USC will be a force.

9. TENNESSEE Sweet-shooting Chris Lofton, a likely Wooden Award front-runner, should have a fine swan song in Knoxville after nearly bouncing Ohio State from the bracket in '07. Look for point guard Ramar Smith, one of four freshmen who played major minutes, to have a big sophomore season. He arrived on campus late last fall and missed valuable time to prepare for his rookie campaign.

10. INDIANA Polished scorer Eric Gordon, the Indianapolis recruit who spurned Illinois for the Hoosiers, arrives in Bloomington for what may be his only collegiate season. Paired with forward D.J. White, they'll have Indiana challenging OSU for the Big Ten crown.

ON THE FRINGE: Michigan State, Marquette, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Butler, Texas A&M, Georgetown, Texas, Kansas State, Arizona, Syracuse, LSU, Oregon, West Virginia, Pitt, Duke, NC State, Gonzaga, Stanford, Wisconsin and Mississippi State.

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4/03/2007 10:00:00 AM

Blog Pool Update: This is the End

Joakim Noah
Luke Winn/SI

Joakim Noah
Luke Winn/SI

Hartsfield Airport, ATLANTA -- We've reached the end. Of the tournament, the pool, the Blog, everything. After 26 straight days of basket-blogging from Tampa, to Buffalo, to Chicago, to Jersey, to Atlanta (see the credentials photo above) I'm shutting down, flying back to New York and going to sleep. The second picture, which is the final image stored on my Canon Elph, was shot from the 36th floor of the Marriott Marquis at 6 a.m. after the title game. Yes -- I was still up.

Blog pool winner David Wunderlich, who was playing the tuba in the Florida pep band at the O'Connell Center for the title-game broadcast, will soon be receiving something I'd loosely refer to as a prize package. I saved him some confetti from the Georgia Dome floor, a Final Four program, a Gators media guide and a video game. Our good friends at the Gazelle Group, which runs the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic and the CBE Classic, became the pool's unofficial sponsor last week, and will also be sending Mr. Wunderlich some of their finest promotional clothing from those events. While Wunderlich's "Lee For Three" entry dominated our contest -- he finished eighth overall in the entire Hoops Bracket Challenge -- I'm not sure if I should be proud about my Marathon Oilers finishing 79th out of 642 entries. It was better than last year ... but it's still 79th.

A few Thank-Yous to hand out before I board my flight:

• To all the entrants, especially those who took the time to give their pool picks names like "6'9" With The Afro" or "My Morning Bracket," or check in via e-mail with kind words or photos (such as the shot of Wunderlich + Lee Humphrey). You guys make this thing worth writing about.

• To Gazelle for offering to beef up the prize package

• To El Myr for serving a quality green burrito in Little Five Points

• To the Trackside Lounge in Decatur, for staying open 'til 3:30 a.m. on title-game eve, when all the bars in Atlanta closed up shop at midnight due to what one local informed us was the "Ray Lewis Law."

• To the Georgia Tech coaching staff for allowing their practice gym to host a brutal game of hoops-writer basketball on Monday. The run left one Gators beat writer and one SI editor limping around the press room with busted ankles on Monday. Although I was not among the injured, I am still in a world of hurt this afternoon.

• To SI photogs John W. McDonough and Bob Rosato, for being nice enough to immortalize myself and Grant Wahl -- who wrote a killer Florida story in this week's mag -- by getting us into the background of a few beautiful game shots. In the first, you'll need to locate me Where's Waldo-style; in the second, the backs our heads (as well as the side of Andy Katz's) are rather easy to spot. The Gators made history, and we managed to step into the frame.

Joakim Noah
John W. McDonough/SI

Joakim Noah
Bob Rosato/SI

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4/03/2007 02:35:00 AM

Florida's Place in History

Crunk Dance
After the Big Dance was over, the Gators got down one final time in Atlanta.
John W. McDonough/SI

ATLANTA -- It was Sunday, nearly 34 hours before Florida's players would make history of their own against Ohio State on the Georgia Dome floor, when they sat at a press-conference dais and were quizzed by a reporter about what they thought was the greatest college basketball team of all-time.

Always-giddy forward Corey Brewer, who would go on to be named the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player on Monday after scoring 13 points and grabbing eight rebounds, giggled and said 1996 Kentucky, partly to appease his coach, who was sitting to his right, and partly because Ron Mercer was his Tennessee homeboy. The rest of the Gators starters completed the assembly-line history quiz: Taurean Green said '93 Carolina. Al Horford said '98 Kentucky. Lee Humphrey said '72-73 UCLA. Jo Noah said he lived in France for so long as a kid that he was unqualified to reply, but added he had been a fan of '00 Florida. Donovan then chimed in with '96 Kentucky, as well as '90-91 UNLV and '70s UCLA. Strangely enough, no one said Duke's '91-92 juggernaut, the team whose feat of back-to-back national championships had stood unmatched for 15 years, until the Gators equaled it the next day with an 84-75 win over Ohio State. On the eve of immortality, perhaps they wanted to avoid the obvious comparisons.

By Monday night, though, once Florida had departed from yet another confetti-strewn court, after dominating their second straight Final Four, there was little doubt that they had placed themselves at least on par with the Blue Devils, and possibly the Bruins, whose dynasty reigned in the days of a five-round Dance rather than the 65-team NCAA tournament. So it begged re-asking the question: Gators, now who do you think is the greatest?

Donovan needed no prompting for his answer, putting the historians on notice in the opening remarks of his press conference: "I sit up here very, very humbled because I think I was fortunate enough over the last two years to coach a group of guys that has to go down in history as one of the greatest teams of all time. I'm not saying they were the most talented. I'm not saying they were flawless. But when you talk about the word 'team,' what that encompasses in terms of unselfishness, sacrifice, playing together, they have got to go down and be considered, in my opinion, one of the best teams to ever play."

Their coach wasn't the only one making best-ever references. Green, sitting in the locker room with clipped strands of the net tied to his championship hat, said, "We've gotta be up there. Two national championships in a row -- and what's made us so great is that we all love playing with each other. I don't think there's been a team with our chemistry and our camaraderie that played so well together."

To really appreciate this Florida team -- and realize why they're better than the double-Dukies -- you have to buy into those tired old notions of love and chemistry no matter how sappy they seem at face value. Because the Gators made it look so easy over the past two Final Fours -- destroying George Mason and UCLA in '06, then UCLA again and Ohio State in '07 -- they never gave us a Laettner moment, a single shot or image that's perfectly packaged for decades of Jumbotron montages. What they did was more big-picture. Their band of juniors gave up more than $6 million in NBA cash (that would have been the combined total of Noah, Horford and Brewer's first-year contracts in '06-07), and returned on a mission to continue playing the most stunning brand of team-ball the sport has ever seen. That will be their legacy, even if unselfishness is harder to archive in a highlight reel.

The essence of Florida's camaraderie was displayed on the celebration stage just seconds after Brewer had been announced as MOP. The Gators barely acknowledged the individual honor and instead formed a ring around the NCAA championship trophy, looking inward at each other while tens of thousands of roaring, blue-and-orange clad fans were looking down at them.

Green moved to the center and began dancing, with the others swaying around him and yelling "Aha! Aha!" in gruff voices. He said the Aha Dance was a ritual that began at the start of this year's SEC tournament as a way for the players to "get crunk" before and after games, and Green, whose nickname is "Crunk Juice," acts as the ringleader. Whereas Ohio State jogged (and Oden walked) out of its locker room and directly onto the court just minutes before the game, Florida stopped on its way to the floor to perform the dance in a back hallway of the Georgia Dome, culminating in a group yell of "Kick ass!" It was only natural, then, that they repeated it afterward -- or at least until the stage began wobbling dangerously from the gyrations of a dozen rowdy champs. "We had to do [the dance], because that's what got us here," said Green. "We stopped because we felt the stage shaking, and we thought it was going to break."

Soon after, the Gators sat in a row on the edge of that same stage, soaking in every second of One Shining Moment on the Jumbotrons. Noah had his right arm around Brewer and his left around reserve Jack Berry, and the Noble One would recline, eyes wide in an expression of pure joy, every time he or a teammate appeared in the montage. Noah mouthed most of the words, while Brewer alternated between looking teary-eyed and ecstatic. "It's unreal, One Shining Moment, it almost makes you want to cry," he said. "That's why you love college basketball, all the guys diving on the floor, everybody playing as hard as they can play just to be in this moment where we are right now."

A moment, mid-game, that exemplified Florida's balance came with 9:39 left and the Gators up 58-47. A glance at the scoreboard revealed that four of the players they had on the floor -- Brewer, Green, Humphrey and Horford -- all had 11 points each, while Noah, last year's Final Four MOP, had four. Ohio State did not enjoy the same equilibrium: At that point, Mike Conley Jr. had scored nine and Greg Oden had 17, but Jamar Butler and Othello Hunter had zero, and David Lighty had two. The final box from the title game shows six Gators with at least eight points, while just three Buckeyes surpassed that mark. Noah's constant refrain of "When we win, we all eat," had never been more evident. What other team could watch its previous year's tourney star, Noah, deliver a sub-par, eight-point and three-rebound effort on the biggest stage of the season -- and have it not be the least bit of an issue?

And what other team, for that matter, would have been able to weather such phenomenal performances from the likely No. 1 pick in the '07 NBA Draft, 7-footer Oden (25 points, 12 rebounds, four blocks) and a likely lottery-pick in '08, speedy point guard Conley (20 points, six assists, two turnovers)? It was almost as if the defending champs consciously decided to take turns snuffing out every Ohio State run. When the Buckeyes cut Florida's lead to two in the first half, at 24-22, the Gators' gunners answered with three straight treys -- one each by Humphrey, Brewer and Green -- to take an 11-point advantage. And when OSU sliced the UF lead to six in the first two minutes of the second half, it was the fearsome frontcourt that responded, with Chris Richard throwing down a follow dunk and Horford hitting a jumper from the right elbow to make the score 46-36. From then on, the game's end result was never in doubt.

Florida's roster is as eclectic as it is talented, and Donovan's biggest feat with this team was finding a way to fuse wildly different personalities into a well-oiled unit. Many previous title teams seemed a lot more alike; of the old Dukies, Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley were cut from a similar brat-boy mold, and there was a general attitude of cockiness that pervaded the Blue Devils' ranks. Michigan State in '00 was loaded with Flintstones who grew up in the same rough-and-tumble automotive town. Even the Buckeyes, whom the Gators beat Monday, had an inside-outside duo in Conley and Oden who had played together since the seventh grade. While Florida's Fab Five includes two small-town Tennesseans, they couldn't be more opposite, as Humphrey is the innocent rube and Brewer is the goofy kid with a wild streak. Put them together with the son of a French pop star/tennis hero (Noah), the son of a Dominican-born NBA player (Horford), and the son of another NBA player and college coach (Green), and how, exactly, was it supposed to work? How did they manage to go 33-6 and 35-5 over the past two years?

Donovan understands just how improbable this seemed three years ago. "I could sit there, recruiting a guy like Jo, and say, 'There's no way that he and Al Horford are getting along,'" he said Sunday. "You know what I mean? Just their personalities being a room together [would clash]. I think the reason it's all meshed and jelled is because of what's most important for them. The most important thing for them is competing, being part of team, and they enjoy winning."

While hordes of reporters were around Noah, Green, Horford and Brewer after the game, Richard, the team's elder statesman, stood on one side of the locker room absorbing the scene, wearing a title T-shirt thoroughly stained with soft-drink spray. When asked to explain the Gators' harmony, he said: "We all mesh. All of us are completely different, but when we get together, we put aside all of our differences for the betterment of the team. Lee is just a quiet choirboy. Taurean is a hyper water-beetle. Jo is the rebel. Al is the mentor, the most mature one. Corey's just a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. And I'm just enjoying the ride."

The ride took the Gators from being an unranked team at the start of '05-06, to a 3-seed heading into that Dance, to a national-title run where they had one close game -- beating Georgetown by four in the Sweet 16 -- but won their others by margins of 26, 22, 13, 15 and 16. The ride continued back to Gainesville for '06-07, where Noah, Horford and Brewer were lauded as heroes for bucking the trend of early departures to the NBA. It put them under a media microscope that magnified their every move and misstep in their encore run. Noah had spent much of the lead-up to the game talking about how debilitating the attention was, especially when it turned negative during their late-February swoon. "People were scrutinizing your every move," he said. "Do you know how much that weighs on you?"

On Monday, Noah was running around the court in his socks -- having already thrown his shoes into the crowd -- and singing a different tune. "People can say whatever they want, but there's no lying in championships," he said. "At the end of the day you have to say [we're] back-to-back national champions. That's serious in my book."

It's serious in any book, and in an era where most elite prospects are either one- or two-and-done, a veteran, NBA-talent-laden powerhouse like '07 Florida may never reign again. While it will be years before we know for sure how these Gators will be remembered, Noah was asked how he'd like them to be. As the de-facto mouthpiece of the team -- from his "better than sex" proclamation after the '06 title, to his "keep hatin'" rants during this Dance -- he deserved the right to weigh in.

"I want people to remember this team as one that made sacrifices," Noah said. "I want people to remember this team as one that went through so much adversity. I want people to remember this as a team that could have taken the easy way out and got paid. Instead we decided to come back, because our love for one another, and our love for winning, was more important than dollars."

The memories mattered more than the money. And with that wisdom, the Gators achieved greatness.

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4/02/2007 07:16:00 PM

The Night Is Young

ATLANTA -- The facade of the Georgia Dome, three hours before game time:

Georgia Dome
Luke Winn/SI

An empty arena, waiting to be filled with belligerent fans ...

Empty Arena
Luke Winn/SI

.. like these guys.

Georgia Dome
Luke Winn/SI

Talk amongst yourselves, and the blog will be back after the game. Prediction: Florida 73, Ohio State 67. Final Four Most Outstanding Player: Al Horford. Coach still refusing to say he won't leave for Kentucky: Billy Donovan.

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4/02/2007 09:54:00 AM

Blog Pool Update: The Final Two

Wunderlich
Pool leader David Wunderlich, left, with Florida's Lee Humphrey last week.

ATLANTA -- Florida and Ohio State emerged from a field of 65 to reach tonight's title game, but their accomplishments pale in comparison to that of Blog Pool finalists David Wunderlich and Kai Sung, who out-picked a 642-reader field to be on the verge of online glory.

If, as expected, Florida cuts down the nets at the Georgia Dome, Wunderlich -- a tubist in the Gators pep band -- takes home the big prize. That's Dave above on the left with Final Four shooting star Lee Humphrey, after whom the prophetic bracket-entry "Lee For Three" was named. Wunderlich and Humpty posed for the photo after returning home from the Midwest Region in St. Louis, but our tubist didn't get to make the trip to the ATL. He'll be at the O'Connell Center tonight in Gainesville, playing his heart out while the game is broadcast on the arena's video boards.

Kai Sung
Kai Sung (right) takes home the pool crown if Ohio State pulls off the upset tonight.
If Jo Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer somehow catch mono and can't play, and Ohio State manages to win, our champ will be Sung, a 23-year-old PhD student in the biology department of Johns Hopkins University. Sung's bracket is named Golden Olden, presumably after Greg Oden, but he didn't get to pose with his pool-entry's inspiration. Instead, that's Kai on the right, in a Hawaiian vacation photo with his girlfriend. While he resides in Baltimore -- and has offered to serve as a bar taxi there should we visit -- he grew up in the Columbus 'burb of Worthington and took classes at OSU in high school before going on to Cal Tech. Which means he's slightly smarter than your average Buckeye fan.

Finally, we're happy to inform our poolsters that the Tourney Blog has acquired a last-minute, semi-official prize-package sponsor. I had initially planned on sending the winner a box of random SI junk, a commemorative tourney issue and perhaps a used PlayStation2 game. But the kind folks at the Gazelle Group, who run the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic (otherwise known as Coaches vs. Cancer) and the CBE Classic -- and who also have been gallivanting around Atlanta all week --- have offered to outfit the pool champ in some fine hoops-themed threads. Dave and Kai, get excited: There's nothing more fashionable these days than a 2005 Guardians Classic t-shirt.

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4/01/2007 03:38:00 PM

Quality Meats at the Final Four

Tyler Hansbrough
Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

ATLANTA -- I'm sitting in the press room at the Georgia Dome, where reporters are at a sea of tables the width of a football field, writing their preview stories for Monday night's title game. Soon I'll get started on mine -- I've drawn the task of playing Captain Obvious and providing you with an airtight argument of why Florida will win -- but at present I'm on the Web site of online grocer FreshDirect, looking up prices of meat. USDA Prime filet mignon is $24.99 per pound (pricey, but the description reads, "one bite and you will understand why it's such a popular cut"). Their good Genoa Salami is only $6.49 per pound, and comes with no description. Filet's superiority to salami is rather obvious, but this provided solid supporting evidence.

Why does any of this matter? Because of Joakim Noah. Not because the Florida star requested that I shop for him, but because I keep laughing over one of his stock title-defense quotes, the general version of which goes like this:

"Last year our motto was P.H.D.: poor, hungry and driven. This year, it's harder because you've got to keep that P.H.D., but there's filet mignon everywhere around you and salami and all these great foods. It's hard, but at the end of the day, it's just extra focus and extra sacrifice."

In Noah's personal food-rating system, salami is as much of a delicacy as filet, $18.50 price difference be damned. This could (as some readers pointed out) be a French-gourmet thing, seeing that Noah grew up around Paris charcuteries, but I still have trouble putting them on the same pedestal. And if I'm a grocer in Gainesville, I'm changing the salami labels right now. The smart ones will at least double it to $13 per pound; one of Noah's other stock lines is "When we win, we all eat," which means that there's likely to be a run on steak and cold cuts when they return to campus with their second straight national title.
Greg Oden and Joakim Noah are enthralled by the media's questions.
AP (2)

For those of you upset that prime Sunday blogging space is being wasted on meat products, all I can say is, when you're at the Final Four, it's essential to keep an eye on Jo Noah at all times. He's the circus, whether you like it or not. He's the best quote, whether you're sick of listening to him or not. And he's by far the most intriguing star. Sit in on an Ohio State press conference -- like today's, for example -- and listen to Greg Oden follow up a Mike Conley Jr. quote with "what Mike said" for the second time, and you'll get my drift.

I get the feeling that Noah, despite his high entertainment value, is a hyperactive character who's not best-suited to sitting still for the media for extended periods of time. Colleague Stew Mandel said he watched Noah, in the locker room on Friday, pause between answering questions to get in a few seconds of playing Sonic the Hedgehog on his Sidekick 3. And although I have no confirmation on this, my instincts tell me Noah was texting jokes back-and-forth with Taurean Green while they were on the dais on Sunday, hiding their Sidekicks under the table. And still, when the Gators were egged on with a question about how Ohio State's Ron Lewis called the Buckeyes "great" and the Gators "good," it was Noah who immediately piped up to mock the reporter for trying to make it into a story.

In fake horror, Noah replied, "Oh my God! He said that!"

He then continued with a big grin, "No! What a bad person. I don't even know what else to say. I really don't know."

There have been more than a few times, over the past three weeks, where Noah has crossed the line from provocative to mildly nauseating, with all of his exaggerated talk about the "haters" wanting to see Florida fail. The Gators have been criticized, but not to that degree -- they were, after all, the overwhelming favorite to win it all entering this tournament. And yet I'm always happy that he's around, because the hyperbole is usually secondary to the quality lines he drops, such as saying on Sunday that "he grew up rock-and-roll," and telling a story of recently staying up until 6 a.m. with football player Tony Joiner, reminiscing about their careers at Florida.

Late Saturday night, in the locker room after beating UCLA for the second straight year, Noah had a small group of reporters around him, and launched into a great rant on the old, Bill Walton-era Bruins, who won back-to-back titles in 1972-73:

"Today I was just flipping through the channels, and HBO had a special on UCLA in the 1970s with Bill Walton. [It's called The UCLA Dynasty.] That really inspired me, that whole story. I didn't know about that team. I knew that John Wooden won a lot of championships. Coach Wooden -- is that his name? John Wooden? [Reporters say yes, many of them trying to suppress laughter.] John Wooden won a lot of championships, and he was an unbelievable coach. But I didn't know too much about the team itself, and it was really interesting to see Bill Walton and his stance on the war in Vietnam -- just his protesting. [Noah had initially protested going to the White House after Florida's national title, because he's against the Iraq War.] He was an All-American, he was such a big popular figure out there, and he didn't care, because it was all about his heart and what he believed in. He and coach Wooden had their differences, but coach Wooden would let him be himself, because that's just who Bill Walton was, and that was really interesting. If anything, I felt like that got me excited to play today. Got me hyped. So thanks, UCLA!"

I interviewed Walton as a part of our Kevin Durant package in February (the SI cover story, and a long feature on the Web site), and my favorite quote was about the contrast of his on- and off-court relationships with Wooden. Speaking about his freshman season in Westwood, Walton said, "In the controlled environment of a John Wooden practice, I was able to learn and develop and mature. And off the court, coach kept shaking his head and saying, 'What are you doing?'"

I suspect Gators coach Billy Donovan could sympathize with Wooden's situation. Iconic players like Noah and Walton come along about as often as repeat national champs, though, and the mild headaches they cause are well worth the entertainment -- and the rewards.

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• Pool Update No. 3
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Recent Posts
• Goodbye to the Gators ... and a Top 10 For 2007-08...
• Blog Pool Update: This is the End
• Florida's Place in History
• The Night Is Young
• Blog Pool Update: The Final Two
• Quality Meats at the Final Four
• For Ohio State, This Is No Surprise Party
• The Scalper Walk, and the Pregame Scene
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