Good morning!
The winter’s to-do list included a basketball game at the O’Connell Center in Gainesville. I called Crosby Hunt, who lives on Cedar Key, and we circled Florida’s tip-off against Ole Miss on Jan. 30. Upper deck seats on StubHub cost $10, less than the $60 it would cost to see Kentucky a few days later, and we arrived early to get a parking spot close to the arena.
The Stephen O’Connell Center was built in 1981 and is affectionately called the O’Dome, although two decades ago the inflatable roof was replaced by permanent steel. ESPN Magazine called it the “scariest place in the country to play,” although it looked fairly tame when we entered and saw the 10,133 blue seats with orange trim and concrete gray.
Whatever the facility lacked in charm was compensated for by the exuberant 9,380 fans who filed into the arena and cheered the Gators players, the sideshows and live music.
The national anthem was sung by 60 schoolkids at center court. The Gators cheerleaders alternated sets with a dance troupe called the Dazzlers, and a youth game at halftime featured 8-year-old tykes making behind-the-back dribbles and banking jump shots off the glass.
The Gator Basketball Pep Band, “an audition-based and scholarship-earning enssemble” stood across from the team benches and rollicked the crowd with hepped-up versions of Paul Simon’s “If You’ll be my Bodyguard” and Bruce Channel’s 1962 Billboard hit “Hey Baby!”
Behind press row, the student section unfurled a blue-and-orange “Rowdy Reptiles” banner and cheered incessantly. “It’s like they’re all on Red Bull,” said Hunt.
The O’Dome was built in the shadow of massive Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, a constant reminder that basketball and indeed all Gators’ team sports plays second fiddle to football.
That’s not to say Florida’s intercollegiate teams don’t play to high standards. Last year marked the 10th consecutive season that at least one Gators’ team won a national championship.
The basketball team has made the NCAA Tournament all but three times this decade, and won back-to-back national titles in 2006 and 2007 under coach Billy Donovan. In 2010, they went on a four-year run that included a 32-game home win streak, three trips to the Elite 8 and one trip to the Final Four.
Yet the Gators are slumping. Four years ago they finished under .500 and failed to win at least 20 games for the first time in 16 years. Donovan jumped to the NBA, and coach Mike White’s three straight 20-win seasons have all ended with early postseason exits.
The student newspaper, the Alligator, has already suggested that White might be on the firing line.
They went into the Ole Miss game with an 11-8 record (3-3 in the SEC) and 39th in the NCAA rankings; Ole Miss was 14-5 (8-1) and ranked 38th.
The dearth of homegrown talent on this year’s roster is an anamoly for a state that regularly produces the fourth-most D-1 basketball players in the country. Only Kevarrius Hayes of Live Oaks, and Keith Stone of Deerfield Beach, hail from the Sunshine State. The former leads in rebounding and blocked shots, and the latter is second in 3-point shots.
Their best players are 6-foot-2 senior guard KeVaughn Allen of Little Rock, who averages 13 points a game, and 6-foot-3 freshman guard Noah Locke of Randallstowne, Md., the only other Gator to be averaging in double figures (11.4 ppg).
Another oddity is that while the football team has bronzed statues of its three Heisman winners (Tim Tebow, Steve Spurrier and Danny Wuerffel), the basketball program has never had a megastar it can call its own.
“They had Joakim Noah and Al Horford, but they haven’t had a Michael Jordan yet,” said Hunt, who’s a Florida alumnus.
Or a Julius Erving, or Marcus Camby.
It did have Matt McCall, who for the moment coaches the UMass basketball team. McCall grew up down the road in Ocala and was an assistant coach for four years under Donovan.
Hunt said the best player he saw in Gainesville was Dominique Wilkins. A future first-rounder nicknamed “The Human Highlight Film,” Wilkins played three seasons at the University of Georgia. “We were behind the basket and he would take off from the top of the key and we would flinch, ‘Holy s***, now that’s how it’s done.’”
The best player we saw was Ole Miss guard Terence Davis, who played both ends of the court with equal intensity. Davis led both teams with 43 minutes, 26 points and a dozen rebounds.
Ole Miss center Dominik Olejniczak is a 7-foot, 265-pound native of Torun, Poland. He scored six points and grabbed two rebounds, and despite his lumbersome gait will undoubtedly catch a TV producer’s eye if the Rebels reach the NCAA tournament.
The game had eight lead changes and the Gators trailed 76-73 when Allen — who’d missed six consecutive three point tries — threw up a line drive that swished through the netting with 2.7 seconds left. The Gators pulled away to a 90-86 win in overtime, and at the crowded crosswalk elated fans talked about March Madness.
“That’s if they even make the tournament,” Hunt cautioned.
It appears not, because the Gators subsequently lost back-to-back games to Kentucky and Auburn and dropped to 4-5 and tied for ninth in the SEC. Four of their remaining nine games are against ranked teams, including top-ranked Tennessee this afternoon and fifth-ranked Kentucky in the season finale.
Compared with the Gators’ playing venue, the Mullins Center is better constructed and a dozen years younger. The 800-fewer seats make it more intimate, and Mullins’ brick facade makes it visually more attractive than the O’Dome’s bland and generic design.
That said, the O’Dome has four entrances and staffs students to work the metal detectors, not stone-faced security types who eyeball UMass fans at the portals.
The O’Dome is Pepsi palace; the Mullins Center is a Coca-Cola kingdom. The O’Dome bans beer; the Mullins Center sells it.
At the O’Dome, mascots Albert and Alberta Gator wave to the crowd. At the Mullins Center, Sam the Minuteman is constantly smiling. But is he really happy?
After the game in Gainesville, students stood outside and gave away free Klondike Bars. After games in Amherst, students give away nothing and it only feels like the Klondike.
But it’ll be time to come home soon, because UMass has a hockey team and Florida doesn’t.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached by email at sports@recorder.com.