Mike Bianchi: Florida's season comes to an end, but the journey was amazing
· Yahoo Sports
TAMPA, Fla. — It ended Sunday night, not with a net being cut down, but with a locker room that was way too somber, a season that was over way too soon, and a group of Florida Gators who walked off the floor in tears.
The run is over.
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And what a run it was.
The No. 1-seeded Florida Gators won’t repeat as national champions. Iowa made sure of that by never backing down and never being intimidated by Florida’s superior size, stature and fan support in Tampa’s Benchmark International Arena.
When Florida guard Xavien Lee drove the length of the court with 4.5 seconds left, most in the arena just assumed the Gators would somehow, someway find a way to win, just like they did last year when they rallied four times in the tournament during their magical march to the national championship.
But last year they had cold-blooded closer Walter Clayton Jr. hitting big shot after big shot in the most pressure-packed moments. This year, Lee’s ill-fated attempt to pass the ball to Thomas Haugh under the basket was deflected away, and the run was suddenly over.
Iowa 73, Florida 72.
Haugh buried his head in the hardwood and sobbed. Center Alex Condon lifted his jersey up over his face to cover his tears. Coach Todd Golden just stared downward and shook his head.
Sometimes, March Madness turns into March Sadness. Sometimes, March isn’t about playing your best game. Sometimes, it’s about the opponent beating you at your own game. And that’s what happened to Florida on Sunday night, when it was the Hawkeyes who lived up to Tom Petty’s Gator anthem and refused to back down
The ninth-seeded Hawkeyes held the Gators without a bucket for nearly 10 minutes in the first half. They held their own on the boards against the nation’s most dominant rebounding team. They beat Florida’s press and got Alvaro Folgueiras a wide-open 3-pointer with 4.5 seconds left that provided the winning margin.
“I just knew we would be more physical than them,” Iowa center Tavian Banks said.
Golden didn’t disagree.
“This is a tough one for us to swallow,” the UF coach said. “We’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.”
That’s the cruelty of the NCAA Tournament. A season that begins in October, a team that spends months building rhythm, identity and belief, and it all comes down to 40 minutes where the ball doesn’t bounce your way, the shots don’t fall, the other team controls the tempo, and suddenly the magic is gone.
Just like that.
But don’t let the way it ended make you forget what this team did. Don’t let one loss erase what was one of the most dominant stretches of basketball this program has ever seen.
Because this team was special. Two consecutive No. 1 seeds for the first time in school history. A national championship last year and an SEC championship this year. For much of this season, they overwhelmed people. They ran teams off the floor. They rebounded like giants and ran like gazelles. They turned defense into fast breaks and fast breaks into avalanches. For the last half of this season, they didn’t look like just the best team in the SEC.
They looked like the best team in the country.
And for those of us who remember what Florida basketball used to be; this season was another reminder of just how far this program has come.
I grew up in Gainesville going to Gator basketball games as a kid. I went to the University of Florida. I’ve been attending and/or covering Florida basketball games across five different decades. So when I watch a season end like this, I don’t just see the loss.
I see the journey.
I see Alligator Alley — that old, dark, cramped gym that held about 5,000 people with pull-out bleachers and more echoes than energy. I see coach Norm Sloan trying to convince people that Florida could matter in basketball. I see coach Lon Kruger catching lightning in a bottle and taking the Gators to the Final Four in 1994, only to watch the program fall apart again two years later.
I see what this program was before Billy Donovan arrived.
And that’s why seasons like this still mean something different to some of us.
Because Billy Donovan didn’t just win games; he changed expectations. He built a program that expected to go to the NCAA Tournament. That expected to go deep and compete for championships. When he won back-to-back national titles in 2006 and 2007, he didn’t just hang banners; he changed the identity of Florida basketball forever.
But I’ll be honest: When Donovan left, I thought the magic might slowly fade. I thought maybe Florida was a great program because of Billy Donovan, not a great program on its own.
I was wrong about that.
Todd Golden proved that.
Golden won a national championship in his third year. Then he came back this season with a team good enough to be a No. 1 seed and make another run at a title. Do you know how hard that is in modern college basketball?
That’s why this loss hurts. Because this team had a real chance to do something historic. If they had won it all again, Florida would have joined one of the rarest clubs in modern college basketball — back-to-back national champions. And think about this: Florida would have been responsible for two of those back-to-back runs in the modern era.
That’s how far this program has come.
But even though the season ended Sunday, the big picture hasn’t changed. Florida isn’t going anywhere. This isn’t a one-year story. This is a program story. This is what Florida basketball is now.
And that’s the part the younger fans don’t fully understand yet.
They see sold-out arenas and No. 1 seeds and they think this is normal. They think this is just what Florida does.
They didn’t see the empty gyms. They didn’t see the decades when nobody cared.
So when a season ends like this, they see disappointment.
People like me see perspective.
Yes, the Gators were upset on Sunday. Yes, this team was good enough to win another national championship. Yes, this loss will sting for a long time for those players and coaches.
But one day, we’ll look back on this team the way we look back on so many Florida teams now — not just for how it ended, but for how it played, how it competed, and how it carried the program forward.
Because that’s what this team did.
They didn’t hang a banner this year. But they added another chapter to the greatest era of Florida basketball; an era that those of us who sat in Alligator Alley still can’t quite believe is real.
The run is over.
But what a helluva run it was.