GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Remember the exhilaration of those back-to-back NCAA championships?
Just
a decade earlier, the University of Florida had a virtual bare plate of
tradition to feast on, yet there the program was in 2006 and 2007
ascending to heights unmatched by even some of the true blue bloods of
the game -- Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana -- during college
basketball's modern era.
Never has there been a greater Gator climb.
Or a more agonizing fall.
"The guys who came after them had no clue," UF coach Billy Donovan has said.
Many times.
For
Donovan, the 2008 and 2009 seasons brought levels of frustration the
likes of which he wasn't prepared for. At the apex of his exasperation,
Donovan kicked his team out of the UF basketball complex -- unworthy of
its walls, he reasoned -- and made the team practice at a high school
across from campus. It wasn't for lack of talent as much as a lack of
winning intangibles.
Part of the blame fell to Joakim Noah, Al
Horford and friends. The standard they set in practice, preparation,
focus and fortitude was unmatched and thus hung an unattainable bar of
expectation for those that followed.
Result: back to back trips to the NIT.
The
road back to relevancy began in the 2009-10 season and continues to
wind through the Southeastern Conference (and beyond) more than three
years later. Kenny Boynton and Erik Murphy were freshmen when the
orange-and-blue reboot began. Mike Rosario arrived a year later, via
transfer from Rutgers, to further the cause.
Florida won the SEC in 2011.
Now look.
Boynton,
Murphy and Rosario -- 99 wins, two SEC championships, four NCAA berths,
a pair of Elite Eights and more than 3,400 points later -- will say
goodbye Wednesday when the trio is honored in a pre-game ceremony before
the 11th-ranked Gators (23-5, 13-3) take on Vanderbilt (13-15, 7-9) in
the team's final home game of the season.
The families of all
three will be on hand for what figures to be as emotional as any moment
they've experienced on the O'Connell Center floor.
"I know my mom is going to cry," Rosario grinned.
Murphy went one better.
"I'm
definitely going to cry," he said.
And Boynton?
"I don't think so," he said.
We'll see about that.
Four
years of memories jammed into a few minutes of recognition --
surrounded by loved ones -- has a way of getting through the thickest of
skins.
Even a Gator's skin.
Here are their stories, thumbnail style.
>>> KENNY BOYNTON: Volume shooter, volume player
A
top-10 national prospect and the most heralded player to come out of
Florida in years, Boynton had his pick of any school and the country.
And most everybody thought he was going to pick Duke.
Boynton,
though, committed to UF and gave Donovan a recruit he had to have at
the time, given how the wheels were spinning with the program.
He arrived in Gainesville with tremendous fanfare and started from Day 1 for a team that went back to the NCAA Tournament.
"I didn't think I'd be here four years," Boynton said.
He
was the No. 2-rated guard in the nation, behind only John Wall. After
scoring 33 points a game at Plantation American Heritage -- with a
career-high of 61 -- Boynton had the look of a rare Gators one-and-done,
but four seasons later he's remained a UF constant and now ranks as the
No. 2 scorer in school history with 1,940 points and
who-knows-how-many-more to go.
"He will go down as one of the best to ever play here," Donovan said.
The
streaky Boynton has had his rough stretches, be them runs of
cold-shooting games or last-second shots that did not fall. But in
addition to being a volume shooter (1,591 field-goal attempts rank No. 1
all-time), Boynton has been a volume competitor, missing just two
practices and starting all but three games his entire career (with a
play UF-record 4,414 minutes).
Boynton may not have thought he'd
be at Florida in 2013, but he'll leave with his name throughout the
record book and as one of the winningest players in program history.
"After the season, I'll look back on my career," he said.
Like all Gators, he hopes the time for that reflection is at least a month away.
>>> ERIK MURPHY: Stretch 4 nightmare
Even
when he was a gangly big man in high school, Murphy picked his moments
to float around the perimeter and shoot the long ball.
Not that
it was in his blood. His father, Boston College star Jay Murphy, was a
big-time scorer and rebounder, but made most of his living around the
paint.
Things started slowly at UF for Erik, who averaged less
than four points a game his first two seasons and contemplated
transferring after his sophomore year.
"It was tough. I had a lot
of people telling me a lot of different things," Murphy recalled. "When
it really came down to it, I talked with Coach and the thing he said
was, 'What do you really want to do? It's your life. You've got to make a
decision for yourself.' For myself, I loved it here and wanted to stay
here. When I really thought about it, it was a pretty easy decision."
And a good one. For both parties.
In
the last two years, not only has Murphy flourished in Donovan's system
to become one of the best 3-point shooters in the country (currently
46.4 percent), he is one of the true match-up dilemmas in all of college
basketball. Not many teams want to commit a post player to running the
3-point line, but that's the beauty (and luxury) of having a "stretch 4"
power forward.
Murphy, at 43.7, is on pace to finish in the top five in school history in career 3-point percentage.
Earlier
this year, the Gators played a game at Yale, about 80 miles from
Murphy's home town of South Kingstown, R.I. Two buses of family and
friends made the trip, only to learn upon arrival a broken rib suffered
during practice had sidelined him for the game.
Murphy won't have two busloads pulling into the O'Dome lot Wednesday, but a handful of family members will be there.
"It snuck up, no question," he said of his swan-song home game. "It's hard to really grasp."
Last
year, Murphy watched from the bench as UF's lone senior, point guard
Erving Walker, took the senior day walk to halfcourt and into his
mother's arms. Walker, an emotional cyborg, had tears in his eyes.
"That
goes to show how much emotion comes with that because of how much
everybody's invested in the team and the program," he said. "When you
finally come to the realization that it's your last game at school here,
it's something special."
>>> MIKE ROSARIO: Rough transition was worth it
A
playground and high school legend from New Jersey, Rosario was the
first McDonald's All-American to play at nearby Rutgers -- and he did
not disappoint.
Try more than 1,000 points his first two seasons in the Big East Conference.
But
Rosario, who played for the prep powerhouse Jersey City St. Anthony's,
had trouble playing for a conference bottom-feeder -- not to mention
trouble with his coach -- and went looking for a chance to play for
championships.
Hello, Florida.
Once a Gator, hello reality check.
"I
knew the transition was going to be tough, especially from the position
that I was in before, playing 36 to 38 minutes and scoring 17 points
every game," Rosario said. "Basically, it was going to be a whole new
chapter."
And storyline.
Rosario sat out the 2010-11
league title season under NCAA transfer rules, then spent much of '11-12
butting heads with Donovan -- or "Coach Billy," as Rosario calls him --
on everything from on-court decisions to practice participation to
off-court responsibilities.
"I still stuck it out," said Rosario,
who averaged just over 14 minutes per game and only 5.6 points against
SEC teams. "You have to be accountable for everything you're doing.
That's something I've learned since I've been here. You have to
understand those things, make the right choices and the right decisions.
I really trust him."
In '12-13, Rosario leads the Gators in
scoring at 12.9 points per game and has been one of the team's most
consistent performers in SEC play. That doesn't mean the road hasn't
been rocky. Rosario, in fact, was benched just last game for his in-game
decisions against Alabama. His replacement, Casey Prather, was
spectacular in relief.
Rosario was equally great on the sidelines in cheering his teammates on for one of the biggest wins of the season.
"He
was absolutely phenomenal on the bench," Donovan said. "I've really got
a lot of respect for Mike in that part of it. Winning is important to
him."
Tonight, Rosario (and his fellow seniors) can win a championship all to themselves in the final time on their homecourt.
Can there be a better way to go out?
"No," Rosario said. "It's perfect."
