Florida's first-round NCAA exit was apropos for a team that couldn't rise to the occasion all season.
By ANTONYA ENGLISH
Published March 20, 2004
RALEIGH, N.C. - When Florida looks back on its season, the hardest thing to accept might be the question of what might have been.
Thirteen weeks after being ranked No. 1, a tumultuous season ended in disappointment with an NCAA Tournament first-round upset to 12th-seeded Manhattan on Thursday.
The 15-point loss was Florida's fourth straight in the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament and left the team trying to figure out what went wrong.
"This season has just been one big roller coaster," forward Adrian Moss said. "We've had ups, downs, loops and turns. Turns for the good, then for the bad. One week we're on the highest of highs, the next week we're on the lowest of lows."
Thursday was an all-time low, the players said. And as they sat stunned in front of their lockers after the game, one theme resonated: This wasn't the way it should have been.
"In my mind we underachieved," sophomore guard Anthony Roberson said. "I'm the type of player that really wants the best, and I'm really not about moral victories. I want it all. A lot of people will make excuses for us because of all the stuff that happened to us this year. You can say all the excuses you want, but I think we really had the team, the character and the players to go much further than we did."
Of the 10 scholarship players, eight were freshmen or sophomores and only three could be considered experienced. There were no freshmen of impact. The inside game and perimeter defense were the Achilles' heel all season. But the players refused to make excuses.
"We started the season with a lot of high expectations, in terms of an SEC championship, an SEC tournament championship, a national championship," sophomore guard Matt Walsh said. "Obviously you can't accomplish all those goals every year, but I don't think our team lived up to the potential that we had, just in terms of the guys we had on our team. I'm really disappointed."
This was a team that struggled when the stakes were high, then flourished when little was expected. After ascending to No. 1 on Dec. 8, the Gators lost two straight and spent the final four weeks of the regular season unranked.
After Denmark native Christian Drejer abruptly quit in midseason to play professionally in Spain, Florida was forgotten. But, it won six of its last eight regular-season games, losing only to Kentucky during that span. Expected to exit early from the SEC tournament, Florida finished runnerup. Considered by some to be upset material for Manhattan, Florida ended the season with one of its worst performances.
Coach Billy Donovan is 9-6 in NCAA Tournament games and has more tournament wins than all other coaches at UF.
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But he knew if things didn't turn out well this week, questions would be raised about his program and his players.
"I don't look at things maybe the same way you guys (media) do, where a team's success is wholly predicated on what happens in the NCAA Tournament," he said before Thursday's game. "In my second year here, we had four consecutive losing seasons. We have now had six consecutive seasons making it to the NCAA Tournament. Lute Olsen has had 29 appearances, but I am sure he has had some times where he has gotten knocked out early.
"Looking at Dean Smith, whom I think may be the greatest coach to ever coach this game, he has had some of the best talent to ever play the game, and he won two or three national championships but over a course of 30 years. It is so hard to get beyond the first and second rounds to get to the Sweet 16. The whole thing is that you try to build consistency where you get to the tournament year in and year out. That is the goal that you want to do."
