Mark Maloney: SEC Day 3 Notebook
Monday, February 28, 2011 | Track and Field
By: Mark Maloney
For GatorZone.com
Appropriately enough, the Florida Gators arrived Sunday at the Randal Tyson Track Center wearing T-shirts emblazoned with a big smiley face.
The Gators would have plenty of reasons to smile by the time the Southeastern Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships ended.
UF's top-ranked men edged defending champion and fifth-ranked Arkansas on the Hogs' own track, 148-136 ?. No. 2 LSU was third with 98, followed by No. 17 Alabama (65 ?) and No. 24 Georgia (55 1/3).
Florida won its sixth SEC Indoor title, its first since 2004.
“This building has so much history, so much tradition,” Coach Mike Holloway said. “We'd come in here so many times and come up short. I challenged these guys to stay focused, to trust and believe in their talent and their training, and they did. I'm so proud of this whole group of guys.”
The Gators proved their all-around talent, winning sprints, distances and hurdles. In the field, how about a 1-2-3 sweep in the triple jump?
And, of course, Kemal Mesic already had won the shot put Saturday, when Gray Horn closed out his heptathlon domination.
Florida had five of the top six individual scorers in the meet.
Dumisane Hlaselo won the Cliff Harper Trophy as the high point scorer with 21 ?, trailed by teammate Tony McQuay with 20. Auburn's Ben Cheruiyot was third with 18, followed by Arkansas' Tarik Batchelor with 15. UF's Will Claye scored 14, while Gray Horn and Christian Taylor tied for sixth with 13 points.
Taylor led the 1-2-3 triple jump, popping a 56-11 ? on his final attempt to edge fellow junior Claye by 7 ? inches. Omar Craddock, a sophomore, was third at 54-4 ?.
“It means the world,” Taylor said of his title. “This is my passion. I live for this and I had this in mind. I wrote on my shoe last week '17.35,' so I had a goal out there.”
The metric measurement of his winning jump: 17.36.
Sunday's UF winners on the track, starting from the shortest distance …
Eddie Lovett, a freshman, led a 1-3-6 finish in the 60-meter hurdles. Lovett crossed the finish line in 7.73 seconds, followed by Kentucky's Keith Hayes in 7.78. UF's Jarius Cooper took third in 7.93, while Horn was sixth in 8.16.
Jeff Demps, the NCAA champion, blazed an NCAA automatic qualifier of 6.55 in the 60-meter dash. Teammate Terrell Wilks added two points by placing seventh. Said Demps: “I felt good. Me and my teammate, we got a great warmup this morning. We wanted to come out and compete well, not only for us but for our team.”
McQuay, a sophomore, also beat the NCAA automatic standard, ripping off one lap of the 200-meter oval in 20.61. Running in the first heat of the 400 meters, who also put down a world-leading 45.21. He had to settle for second place, though, as second-heat winner Kirani James of Alabama went one better in 44.80. That beat the SEC meet record of 45.10, set by Georgia's Torrin Lawrence last year. Lawrence took third this time in 45.82. The track record remained in tact, though, as the 44.57 turned in by UF's Kerron Clement in 2005 remains the world record.
Hlaselo, who on Saturday won the 3,000, Hlaselo, once again came from behind in the last half-lap. This time the junior from South Africa clocked 4:04.21 in the mile, edging home-track favorite Duncan Phillips of Arkansas by eight hundredths of a second.
Holloway dismissed the thought of a No. 1 team being under pressure.
“Those rankings don't really mean anything to me,” he said. “Because the only ranking that counts is the one that comes in once the final scores are in at the NCAA meet.”
Other UF scorers Sunday included the 1,600-meter relay of Blake Heriot, McQuay, Jovon Toppin and Taylor, second in 3:05.51; the distance medley relay of John Mitchell, Derek Wehunt, Hlaselo and Daniel Wehunt, fourth in 9:52.53; and Mitchell, fifth in the 800 in 1:50.50. Sophomores David Triassi and Jeremy Postin went 5-6 in the 35-pound weight throw. Triasi's best effort, 64-9 ?, came in the second round. Postin reached 64-1 ? in the third round.
The Gators were unable to defend their women's team title.
Second-ranked LSU piled up 135 points, followed by No. 4 Arkansas with 118. Then came No. 6 Tennessee with 78, No. 24 Auburn with 57 and the No. 21 Gators with 55.
Fidela James, who won Saturday's 20-pound weight throw, added a second-place finish in the shot put (52-5 ?). That gave her 18 points in the meet, sharing the Cliff Harper Trophy with Tennessee distance runner Liz Costello.
UF's best individual results came in the mile, where Cory McGee led a 1-7-8 finish.
McGee, a freshman from Pass Christian, Miss., pulled away to win by more than five seconds in 4:41.10. Arkansas junior Kristen Gillespie was runner-up in 4:46.14.
UF picked up three points from 7-8 finishers Mandy Perkins (4:52.49) and Stephanie Strasser (4:53.15).
McGee stepped on the track moments after watching Hlaselo's winning kick in the men's mile.
“Watching Dumi, I really didn't know what he was going to do. But when he made his move, I could tell that he was going to catch (Arkansas' Phillips),” McGee said.
“Watching that definitely got me fired up.”
The Gators took fourth in the distance medley relay, timed in 3:35.79 with a team of Ebony Eutsey, Lanie Whittaker, Danielle Williams and Ugonna Ndu. Eutsey, a freshman, also netted eighth in the 400 (54.44).
UF's Genevieve LaCaze (16:51.60) and Callie Cooper (16:57.85) added a 4-6 finish in the 5,000 meters.
* Most noteworthy mark of the day came from Arkansas junior Tina Sutej. She won the pole vault, clearing an NCAA-record 14-10 ?.
