ORLANDO, Fla. - Bill Belichick sat in the stands Saturday at the sold-out Amway Center wearing a Gator visor and cheering on his good friend - University of Florida basketball Coach Billy Donovan.
But from the stifling, suffocating way the No. 1-ranked Gators played during their 61-45 demolition of Pitt, you’d have thought The Hoodie was on the bench serving as Donovan’s defensive coordinator on Saturday.
“Well, he [Belichick] did put in the scouting report today,” Donovan cracked after he watched point guard Scottie Wilbekin (21 points) carry the Gators offensively while his dogged, defensive-minded team held Pitt to 26 points below their 72.6 scoring average this season.
“Florida is the most physical team we’ve played all year,” Pitt Coach Jamie Dixon said. “They just banged us around all game long.”
So much for the Florida Gators being vulnerable.
So much for the pundits who theorized the Gators might have been exposed during their lethargic 12-point victory over 16-seed Albany on Thursday.
So much for the plethora of network talking heads who picked No. 4 seed Michigan State to win the national title and play fellow No. 4 seed Louisville in the championship game.
Can you imagine if Duke, Kentucky or Kansas had rolled through their conferences with an unbeaten record and were riding a 26-game winning streak coming into the tournament like the Gators did? Digger and Dickie V. would have called those more traditional teams invincible, but the Gators are somehow considered flawed.
“I think a lot of people try to find something wrong with their team,” Dixon said. “Well, there’s just not a lot wrong with them.”
Pitt is the program that is traditionally known as the big, bruising, grind ’em out team of defensive stoppers, but it’s the Gators who played that style to perfection on Saturday. Fans from Pittsburgh grew up watching the Steel Curtain defense of the legendary Steelers, but on Saturday they witnessed Florida’s Steal Curtain. The Gators hounding, harassing defenders recorded 10 steals and allowed Pitt to shoot just 37 percent from the floor.
“We tried to cut, we tried to curl, we tried to go the basket, and we just bounced off of them,” Dixon said of Florida’s bruising, beastly style of play.
And this is yet another reason Donovan has evolved into one of the top two or three coaches in college basketball. He used to be known almost solely for his eye-popping, hair-raising style of offense known as “Billy Ball.” This year’s team has become a pounding, pulverizing defensive version of “Billy Brawl.”
Who would have ever thought that Billy D would stand for “Defense”?
This, more than anything, is the reason the Gators have won 28 consecutive games and haven’t lost since Dec. 2. Sometimes, they shoot well; sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they rebound well; sometimes they don’t. But they always - always - play good defense. And we’ve seen it all year long that when the Gators bare their teeth and chomp down defensively, they are a devastating, destructive basketball force.
Earlier this season, they held Texas A&M to 36 points - the lowest offensive output the Aggies have had in 47 years. They became the first SEC team in 30 years to hold opponents below 50 points in back to-back games. After allowing 22 points to Ole Miss gunner Marshall Henderson in the first half of a game in February, they flipped the switch and shut out Henderson in the second half.
Florida’s roster isn’t loaded with McDonald’s All-Americans, but the Gators are like another hamburger chain. They are the “Five Guys” who play as one on the defensive end of the floor. Quite simply, they have a bunch of players who aren’t afraid to get dirty. Guys like Will Yeguete, who averages only five points per game but during one key stretch Saturday recorded a blocked shot, a deflection and a hustle play where he retrieved the ball before it went out of bounds and threw it behind his back to a streaking teammate for an easy bucket.
“We’ve bought into playing good team defense and helping each other,” Wilbekin said. “We value and take great pride in playing defense.”
It’s no wonder The Hoodie has become Florida’s No. 1 basketball fan.
Sports, Pages 24 on 03/23/2014