GAINESVILLE,
Fla. -- Two straight trips to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament.
Double-digit
leads in the final 10 minutes both times.
No
Final Fours.
“There’s
not a day goes by that I don’t still think about it,” junior center Patric
Young said of the loss last year to Louisville, which came a year after a
similarly scripted loss to Butler. “Back-to-back Elite Eights doesn’t sound
anywhere near as good as back-to-back championships. That’s hanging over my
head.”
Added
senior guard Mike Rosario: “It left a bad taste in our mouths. We all still
think about it and have spent the offseason working to cover all those
weaknesses that stopped us from accomplishing our goals last year.”
It’s
hanging over the Florida Gators’ collective heads. The frustration Young feels
is shared by everyone in the UF basketball program, but those close calls are
also barometers of where the Gators are under Billy Donovan and where his
players expect to be at the end of the season.
Remember,
after UF became only the third team in the last three-plus decades to win
consecutive national championships, the Gators were absent from the NCAA field
in two straight years before the current run of just-miss Final Four
calls.
The
room of programs to go to the Elite Eight each of the last two years includes
Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas and Florida.
That
room is as small as it is prestigious.
So
don’t expect Billy Donovan to take any bows heading into the 2012-13 season,
though.
“Our
guys really need to be careful with the mentality of we got to try and get over
the hump and get to the Final Four,” Donovan said during the team’s media day
session Wednesday. “We can actually end up being a better team than a year ago
and not go as far. With that being said, there’s no guarantee right now that
we’re even an NCAA Tournament team. You have to earn your way into that. You
have to work your way into that. Our guys need to understand -- and I think
that they do -- that there’s a process.”
For
the Gators, who tipoff practice Friday, it’ll start with replacing the No. 3
pick in the NBA draft, Bradley Beal (now with the Washington Wizards), and the
No. 4 scorer in the school history, point guard Erving Walker, who also left UF
as its all-time assists leader.
That’s
a big chunk of productivity.
“They
left some holes, no doubt,” 6-foot-10 forward Erik Murphy said. “The guys
filling those holes aren’t going to be like [Beal and Walker], but they can do
certain things and come together and fill them differently. That’s something
we’ve been working on. Right now, everybody is just chipping in in different
ways, doing a little bit more than they have in the past. Maybe changing their
game a little.”
That
includes senior guard and leading returning scorer and three-pointer bomber
Kenny Boynton, who with 1,589 career points is 502 shy of UF’s all-time record,
held by Ronnie Williams (1980-84) with 2,090.
Boynton
is going to get a shot to play some point guard this season, though that role
-- held the last four years by Walker -- will go to Scottie Wilbekin, who will
have to play increased minutes, score a little more and carry his lock-down
defense far more minutes than in the past.
“We’ve
used the offseason to develop chemistry and kind of learn each other’s new
roles,” Wilbekin said. “There’s a winning recipe, if you will, in that mix. We
just have to keep working on it.”
Murphy,
who provides such difficult matchup issues because of his size and touch from
the arc, will have to go inside more than in the past to help the Gators
rebound.
Young
will have to log more minutes, while increasing both his scoring and
rebounding.
Rosario
will have to score, which he’s more than willing to do, but also fan out his
contributions on defense and with his consistency.
The
postseason version of junior swingman Casey Prather, who struggled so mightily
with his confidence most of the year before breaking out in NCAA play, needs to
step up from Day 1 with scoring, rebounding, defense and athleticism in
transition.
Junior
Will Yeguete, whose broken foot in midseason robbed the Gators of a valuable
and versatile asset, has bulked up by nearly 20 pounds and improved his
ball-handling and post-up skills around the basket.
The
roles of a four-man freshman class, headed by shooting guard Michael Frazier
and point guard Braxton Ogbueze, will evolve throughout preseason.
“The
biggest thing we need to focus on right now is getting better every day, every
practice,” Prather said. “We learned last year that you can’t take anything for
granted.”
So
this year, in turn, you can’t make any assumptions.
It’s
hard to get to the Elite Eight.
Really,
really hard.
“We’ve
got to earn our way into the NCAA Tournament, and we’ve got to really focus on
the things that have got to make our team better and be willing to go through
the process of what that takes,” Donovan said. “I think that they understand
because we do have some guys that realize that there was a two-year period
three or four years ago where we didn’t get into the tournament and the last
few years we have gotten in.”
It’s
about the work they do to get there.
And
it starts for real Friday.
