The Gators is the Best Collegiate Basketball TEAM Two Years in A Row

The game plan of Billy Donovan was brilliant and superbly executed by the Gators on April 2: Put different bodies on Oden but no double team; the result: a tired Oden, and a spent force toward the end. Play zone defense and restrict the Buckeyes to outside shooting; the result: 2 of 23 from long range. And both Donovan and the Gators believe in their perimeter shooting, grudgingly but wisely acknowledging the prowess of territorial Oden, but only in the paint.

As is often said, the lack of raw talent is more than made up by the team chemistry, putting the team before self. Most importantly, the players believe the basketball sense of the coach who sees the whole court and dissects the opponents’ weaknesses while leveraging on the strength of the Gators to exploit these exposed foibles.

Basketball is a team sport. Therefore, it should not surprise anyone that a well-balanced team would always trump one with one or even two star players.

Now both the coach and the “Oh Four” group have a decision to make: the former whether to go for a three-peat, but in all likelihood with a different Gator team makeup or to try to duplicate the same success over at Kentucky while the latter whether to turn pro, having reached the pinnacle, twice, in their collegiate career and having understood the truism that there is no I in TEAM.

We have been riding high on the shoulders of this special unselfish group of Gators for the past two years and I say let’s leave them alone to make their next moves. Whatever it is, their contribution in putting the stamp of the Gator Nation in the American sport scene is the tallest order one can expect and certainly the highest honor, academically or otherwise, that one can garner as well. Thanks Billy and company for the excitement and for the memory.

Even the post-game interview was conducted in a TEAM fashion.

Same (Gators) Team, So Same (Beating the Bruins) Result

We spent our first night at our new home last night. Actually it was already past mid-night when we went to bed after all the setting up of the new home following our moving earlier in the day, with hired help.

And it was an auspicious day for the Gators when its semi-final game against the Bruins was the very first collegiate basketball game that we watched in our new home. This time, though, we have basic cable, which means we got to watch the game in clear picture and vivid color (we had to depend on a TV-top aerial for reception in our previous home). Same Gators team, and what else but the same result.

Jeff Goodman has this to say in his piece entitled Florida better not expect same UCLA team “The Gators could very well still come out with a victory, but this one definitely won't be a double-figure win.”

After the Gators came up top tonight 76-66 and a double-digit lead for most of the second half, one can say Jeff Goodman is only half right, that the Gators was victorious, but with an exactly double-digit margin.

In comparison, my prediction seems to have fared better, that the Gators won with sort of a mini runaway triumph. The Gators team has simply too many weapons for the Bruins to handle despite the latter's reputation for playing stifling defense. And tonight is Corey Brewer's turn to do damage. And the Gators' big men were phenomenal on the offensive board.

As for the final on Monday, the Gators have already handed the Buckeyes two landslide defeats: one on the basketball court in last December despite that the game was played in Gainesville, and the other one on the football field early this year, so it would not surprise me at all if history is repeated come Monday, given the balance, the depth, the chemistry among the players, and the championship game experience, not forgetting the coach.

Next Stop: AtlanGators

I was both right and wrong as regards my prediction of the outcome of the Midwest regional final match between the Gators and the Ducks. First, the Gators prevailed, 85-77. But on the flip side as evident from the scoreline, the Gators did not win big. But a win is a win.

Another conclusion from the game is that size does matter, at least in basketball. And the two blocks by the Gators’ big men in the second half are the definitive statements of that. First, the block by Big Al on a Brooks' layup, and Al got the ball too, while going airborne out of bound, and had the presence of mind to throw it to his team-mate before he landed outside the court.

Then, in the dying seconds, Corey Brewer made another spectacular block that really sealed the fate of the Ducks.

However, the day belongs to Lee Humphrey, my namesake. I had a premonition of that early in the second half when Lee Humphrey, who is known for his 3-pointer prowess, got a steal and scored on a layup. This happened at 6:30 left in the first half.

Then Lee’s ferocious back-spinning 3-pointer attempt, also in the first half, tore through the net, literally. The game was suspended for about 10 minutes for the net to be replaced, putting the technician on national TV, probably his first time.

At the end, Lee got seven 3-pointers, out of 12. And Tajuan Porter, the diminutive guard of the Ducks that practically demolished the Running Rebels two days before, was practically helpless against Taurean Green of the Gators because of the height disparity. Offensively, he only had 2 points in the first half. What a fortune reversal. But I think he would learn his lessons well.

During the half-time commentary, the hosts brought up a term, spurtability, it being, I guess, the ability to score in spurts. But what sustains a team is the ability to play consistently at both ends of the court, and keeping a cool head under pressure. I think several shot selections by the Ducks in the last few minutes of the game bear testimony to the team losing their cool, shooting blank with their two 3-pointer attempts.

As for my projection of the Gators being due for winning big, today’s result is only delaying the inevitable. That means the Bruins is in for a rude awakening, psyching themselves up for revenge after their lop-sided loss last year to the Gators, despite a convincing win against the Jayhawks.

If only North Carolina defeats Georgetown in the remaining regional final that is ongoing now, then my selection of the Final Four makeup would be complete.

NCAA Basketball Tournament: The Battle of the Extremes, Geographically

Except for the first game when the Gators blew their opponents away (that also in the second half), the last two games have been epic struggles compared to the stroll-in-the-park kind of victories last year. But that shows the mettle of a champion: when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

So by the law of averages, I think the Gators is due for a huge, convincing victory. And in my reckoning, tomorrow is the night when the territorial Gators is up against the (mighty?) Duck of UO. This is a battle of the extremes, of sort, geographically. The southeast against the northwest of the contiguous US, spanning the largest physical distance possible across the US (let's treat both Washington and Oregon as comprising the US northwest region for now). [Both mascots below are taken from the respective university websites with thanks.]

Frankly, the Ducks has never featured in my grand scheme of things, the Bracket, at this late stage. I picked them to lose to the Badgers in the sweet 16 and that the Number 1 will meet the Number 2 in the Midwest Regional as in the other three regionals. However, this remains the only blemish in NCAA Tournament ranking, the Badgers got beat by the Running Rebels who in turn lost to the 3rd ranked Ducks. But the order will be restored in the matchups in the Elite 8, at least for the Midwest Regional as I pick UCLA to emerge from the West Regional. An inconsistency you would say? But I would really like to see the Gators manhandle the Bruins, again.

I’ve never watched the Ducks in action before. The only Pac10 team I pay attention to is the Bears, UCB being my other alma mater. But now I know of this freshman phenom called Tajuan Porter, who was shunned by most colleges because of his stature, or rather lack of one, according to what I read.

Well, Porter is 5 foot 6. That in basketball lingo, is a shortie in the land of giants. But wait a minute, don’t we had a Muggsy Bogues in the NBA not too long ago? Bogues at 5 foot 3 is reputed to be the shortest player in NBA history and yet is a big-time assist leader. I guess being short has its advantages too: able to weave in and out of traffic and swatting the ball away from those big men who dare to put the ball to the ground and dribble. Here Bogues is seen holding his ground agains Latrell Sprewell of the NY Knicks, courtesy of USA Today.

Add to that Porter is a veritable 3-point threat as attested to by yesterday's game against the Running Rebels. But I believe he would be smothered by the Gators relentless defense with the big frontline blocking the daylight out of Porter’s sight.

So the Gators will win big come Sunday, their attack and defense having been tweaked in the last two games to adjust to the tempo of a single knock out format of the NCAA tournament.

Sentiments aside, my D and son-in-law being UO alumni and I love Donald Duck, the Gators will be methodical this time and the Edward Jones Dome of St Louis will be turned into a swamp and all that matter are the CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP.

So Dan and Kitty, care for a little wager by the side?

C U in the Arid Zone, Alligator!

As I said on the day after the crazy night, the Gators did just enough to leapfrog (perhaps scramble is a more apt description) over the Wolverines, the reptilian over the mammalian. And a wolverine refers to “a stocky shaggy-coated North American carnivorous mammal” according to onelook.com.

After a roller coaster SEC Championship game marked by alternating series of dumb fumbles and brilliant punting, the Gators finally prevailed over the Razorbacks, and over the human votes too that make up two-thirds of the basis for the BCS decision (the remaining one third being the computer system).

So in one breath, sort of, the Gators have managed to reclaim the crown of SEC football (see the official stamp of victory to the right courtesy of the official website of the Florida Gators) and the opportunity to be the only team who has beaten the Buckeyes in 2006, hence ascending the pinnacle of collegiate football, again. An even more rare distinction in collegiate sports awaits too, back to back champions, though in two sports, the Gators having captured the NCAA Basketball National Championship in 2005.

So started a mad rush to get bowl tickets to the arid country that is Arizona come January 8. This comes exactly on the 10th anniversary of the first ever National Championship for the Gator Nation, back in 1996. I was not able to savor the maiden win then as I had left for home one year earlier upon graduation. But this time, if the Gators win, I would not miss the chance to celebrate the victory, as an alumnus, for the second time. And that’s a promise.

One night earlier, i.e., the night before the crazy one, my D’s school also won a ticket to the State 4A High School football final to be played in Miami on Dec 9. This is the very first that the Panthers have even gone this far, having been beaten several times in the semi-finals back in the 1970s, and so I was told. The pride written all over my D's face says it all.

For the event, the school, HB Plant High, has chartered several buses to ferry students to Miami to support their team, for a fee of course, on the day of the game. It’s a long journey no doubt, close to 300 miles one way, but my D is seriously considering making the trip, provided it’s in the company of her coterie of friends.

Still on sports, but half way around the world from here, the 15th Asian Games opened with fanfare at Doha, Qatar on Dec 1. But my wife told me that the gala opening ceremony was a near washout as rain, to the tune of the average annual total, poured down on that fateful day.

I just checked the official game website, and note that in the medal tally, Malaysian is currently at the joint 11th position (with Indonesia), having garnered a gold, a silver and a bronze. China is a distant first with 69, more than half are in gold.

While Malaysia has never been a sports powerhouse in the context of Asia, she has won her fair share of medals. I would be checking the website periodically for the next ten days or so (the game closes on Dec 15) to see how my country athletes are doing, thanks to the Internet. Surpassing past achievements? Reliving past glory? Further sliding into oblivion? I shall see.

One Crazy Night: Gators' Dream and Office Party

Last night was kind of a crazy one for me. It started with two collegiate football (the American kind, but is self-explanatory in US as the other kind is called soccer) games that had BCS (Bowl Championship Series) implications (a bowl is just like a tournament of champions pitting two invited teams selected based on their respective performance in their own conferences as well as a national ranking system played in December/January after the so-called regular season).

One game was between the Gators of University of Florida, my alma mater, and the Razorbacks of University of Arkansas in the South-east Conference championship game. If the Gators (ranked 4th) win and win strongly (as part of the ranking is decided on voting by a smorgasbord of sportswriter, coaches, and college administrators that necessarily involve an element of subjectivity dictated by their own views of the style of win), then they can vault over both the Wolverines of University of Michigan (ranked 3rd) and the Trojans of University of South California (ranked 2nd), who played the Bruins of UCLA about two hours earlier. All three teams have a one-loss record, and one of the three would meet the number 1 ranked team, the Buckeyes of Ohio State University. come January 8 next year in Arizona for the bragging rights of being the National Champion.

With such high stakes involved, I think you would understand if I rooted for the Bruins. So the crazy mood actually started earlier in the evening when the Bruins and Trojans squared off at 4.00 pm. Then promptly at 6.00pm, I was switching between two channels, Gators vs Razorbacks on Channel 10 (CBS) and Bruins vs Trojans on Channel 28 (ABC).

Then it was time to leave the comfort of home and solitary viewing (my wife and daughter were much less enthused in the game nor in the outcome, sigh) at 7.30 pm to our annual office party at a nice restaurant, the Side-Berns, not too far from our home.

After our car was valet-parked, we found that we were the first to arrive at the venue, a separate room meant for wine storage (you would soon see the stacks of wine bottles on rollers) the center of which has been cleared for the buffet and gift tables and chairs.

The first thing I asked was whether there was a TV somewhere, not realizing that there was a plasma TV hung just behind the counter (must be the football-induced headiness as usually I was level-headed enough to first do an environment scanning and notice things).

While my colleagues trickled in slowly, my eyes were kind of glued to the TV (which was muted so it was all action only), save for the occasional nod of acknowledgment and casual conversation. My wife, on the other hand, was busy criss-crossing from one end of the room to another to strike up conversation with everybody and anybody who was not engaged in any form of group discourse, Well, it’s understandable as she only gets to meet them on average once a year during the office party while I see them during work day-in and day-out, except for their spouses/partners of course.

The first good news came during the half-time break of the Gators vs Razorbacks game. The Trojans were upended by the Bruins, who have been the punching bags for the Trojans in the past eight years. YES, I let go of a somewhat muffled cry of exhilaration.

When the second half resumed, the room was now full of people (the total tally was 37, plus 3 waiters mingling with palm-supported trays of entrees for us to savor). So I had to constantly change my position to secure an obstructed view of the TV. At one point, the Gators fumbled twice, and were down by 3.

During the commercials in between the game stoppages (time-outs), I lined up at the buffet table to partake of the offering of the evening: sautéed shrimps, sushi served with white rice complemented by ginger slices and wasabi sauce, pasta with meatballs, and roasted beef. I drank Diet Coke while my wife sipped the Cabernet.

To cut a long story short amidst the enshrouding din and the constant shuffling of people moving about, the Gators eventually emerged the Champion, thereby staking a legitimate claim on the National Championship game.

At the heel of the perhaps my imagined furor in the room (despite the presence of several other Gator fans in the room as they remained seemingly nonchalant) over the win, the highlight of the party ensued. What a perfect timing!

I was referring to the gift exchange portion of the night. The rules of the engagement are simple:

a) Each participant brings along a gift, properly wrapped to conceal its content and emplaced in a hopefully nondescript gift bag so that the giver may not be identified without more thorough sleuthing.
b) Each participant than draws a number to decide the order of choosing gifts. Once chosen, the gift is unwrapped there and then so that everybody keeps a mental list of the opened gifts for later swaps.
c) A participant may choose an unopened gift, or an opened one from another participant. One opened gift can be claimed thus at most three times. In turn, the participant whose gift has been “taken”, may choose an unopened gift, or another opened one, but may not reclaim the one that has been taken.
d) The first participant then reserves the right to have the last say, being able to swap his/hers with any of the gifts.

That said, let the game begin. Of course there is also a ritual to be followed for each gift selection as you shall see next, which I will use myself as the perfect example.

After my number was called (I think mine was the 5th), I proceeded to the gift table, oblivious to the gifts that were already opened as I prefer selecting from the unknowns, the mystery mounting. Oh, yes, the ritual. I had to first put on a furry hat as shown to the right, firmly planted on my head with the hanging white knob on the side, much like the tassel on a mortarboard during a graduation ceremony. But the Bugs Bunny-like hand posture was entirely optional. The lady and the man next to me on both sides were put in charge to ensure that the ritual was followed to the letter, and the gift selected fair and square (no feeling, no peeking into the bag, and no testing the weight, just your pair of keen eyes and your power of association between the hidden content and the packaging (size, type of wrapping paper, size/type of gift bag) regime and their relative position on the table (inner corner, etc.). After a perfunctory survey, I think I trusted my gut feeling better and just reached for the first gift that my mind registered.

With the gift firmly within my grasp, I settled on the chair and commenced with the next ritual: opening the gift. Here you can witness the battle of wits between the giver and the recipient (though not by choice of the giver): the giver’s displayed through the layers of layers of seemingly endless wrapping, much like the arrangement of Russian nested dolls except here that only the last innermost item is of interest; on the other hand, the recipient tries to get to the prize in the most efficient manner through wide-arc or multi-layer tearing of the wrapping papers. Here I was doing my bit, but taking my own sweet time as it was not as if the prize was going to disappear into thin air any time soon.

Just look at my male colleague literally laughing his head off and the other watching with muted amusement. Because somebody has thought that a pair of love cuffs, the furry kind at that, would make a meaningful gift in this festive season of merriment. Such is the level of creativity displayed by my colleagues, defying most expectations and surely fitting Edward de Bono's paradigm of thinking out of the box.

But my “euphoria” was short-lived, as a colleague after my turn decided to claim mine, thereby sending me on another trip to the gift table. This time the prize turned out to be less dramatic (so no pictures): a DVD movie entitled The Superman Returns, which we have seen in the IMAX theatre (read about the revisit in an earlier blog here) with full 3D projection (not continuous though and seen through a special set of goggles) at first release. Fortunately, we have not bought the DVD yet, and no colleague of mine has deemed it worthy of swapping for the remaining of the night.

As for our gift for the evening, we bought a … Sorry, I just realized that I could not divulge the nature of the gift lest one of my colleagues somehow heard wind about my blogging habit. Let’s just say that it went to a deserving parent with beautiful kids and was appropriate for the occasion in this wonderful month of Christmas.

The climax of the gift exchange was our gift to our boss as our token of thanks for his encouragement, his understanding, his keeping us professionally challenged, and providing a congenial and convivial work environment where each of us contributed synergistically to the well-being of the firm and the satisfaction of our clients. Here, seated, beaming, and encircled by us, is our boss, after a round of heart-felt applause. And he participated in the gift exchange as well, but instead of opening a new gift, he claimed one from among the rank of opened gifts, the one aptly entitled the Bossman. And thereafter that gift stayed with him, each of us perhaps knowing where our place is in the grand scheme of things.

We left after 11 pm. By then the feeling of fatigue in our feet, which had supported us and which tiredness had stayed suppressed during the gift-exchanging excitement, had started to register. But it was a well-deserved end, a symbolic one no doubt, to a good year of comradeship, of mutual support, and gainful employment; and to cap it all, we all had a jolly good time!

Now I await the BCS announcement tonight that will signify the fate of the Gators football team whether they will get a shot at winning the national title a second time, the first time being in 1996, with one loss, and also having beaten the Razaorbacks in the SEC championship game.

So I would say history is on our side. Don’t you think so?

Update @ 8.13pm: It's official. Gators vs Buckeyes in the BCS Championship game.

Go Gators!