Florida Flashback: Harry's 10 Memorable Moments of the 2011-12 Athletic Year
Monday, July 9, 2012 | Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Not all memorable moments are out there for all to see.
Take one of mine.
I'll never forget walking into the Florida basketball complex for the first time last November and being escorted into the gym in the middle of a Gators practice. I'd just been hired as a writer for GatorZone, which meant I was coming back to Gainesville after more than 10 years covering the NFL in Tampa.
Oh yeah ... and after eight months of being out of work.
I covered the Gators from 1990-2000, which means I was there for Billy Donovan's early years. We always got along well -- who doesn't get along with Billy D? -- but when he saw me that day, he stopped practice and came over to shake my hand.
“Welcome back, Christopher,” he said.
We chatted for a moment and then he said something that really struck me, stuck with me.
“I just want to say, I'm glad you're the guy coming in to do this, and that I know you and your family have been going through some difficulties, but that I'm looking forward to working with you again. I mean that,” he said. “It'll be like old times -- and those were good times.”
Talk about putting me at ease after all these years.
Now that, for me, was a memorable moment.
Here are 10 that Gator fans can relate to:
1. Roland has a dynasty
The percentage of UF fans who have watched a women's tennis match, no doubt, is small relative to football, basketball and baseball, but guess which program is the most dominant?
And, folks, it's not even close.
In May, Roland Thornqvist took his No. 2-ranked Gators to the NCAA Championships in Athens, Ga., and won three of four matches with shutouts, including a 4-0 defeat of top-ranked UCLA in the finals. It was the second straight national title for Thornqvist and his third in 10 seasons at UF.
The Gators will return all but one player -- a core that includes No. 1 Allie Will and No. 2 Lauren Embree, one of the most ferocious competitors on campus -- from a squad that finished 27-1 and became just the third program (joining women's golf in 1985-86 and men's basketball in 2006-07) to claim consecutive NCAA crowns.
Women's tennis now has six national championships. For those keeping score at home, that's more than any Florida sport.
2. “Mouse” traps his elusive first NCAA title
Everybody knows UF track coach Mike Holloway as “Mouse,” but there was another nickname, usually whispered around NCAA Championship season, that pretty much stayed in the collegiate track fraternity.
“Coach Silver Trophy.”
Three second-place finishes over the previous eight years finishes at the big meet will do that.
But after Tony McQuay sprinted to a blistering anchor leg time of 44.01 seconds in the 4x400 relay at the NCAA Championships in Des Moines, Iowa, Holloway's second moniker was erased forever. The relay win gave the Gators a 50-48 win over Louisiana State in the total points standing and Florida its first national crown in men's outdoor track and field.
The Gators did it without sprint star Jeff Demps, who withdrew from regionals with a hamstring injury, and three-time SEC champion decathlete Gray Horn, who was suspended for the postseason.
3. Four days in Phoenix
As sky-high as the Gators were after upsetting third-seeded Marquette in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Tournament at USAirways Arena, they were that dejected after blowing an 11-point lead with just over eight minutes to play and losing a 68-64 heartbreaker to Louisville with a Final Four berth on the line.
UF had played magnificently in taking it to Marquette, a very good defensive and rebounding team, and picked up where they left off against its second straight big-time Big East foe. But when the Cardinals made a strategic switch from zone to man-to-man -- a defense Coach Rick Pitino rarely used during the season -- the Gators got both cold and a little careless, and the Cardinals made them pay.
Making the ending all the more cruel was the hauntingly similar circumstances to a year prior when Florida led Butler by nine points in the closing minutes of a regional final, only to collapse late and lose in overtime -- again one game shy of the Final Four.
Not all moments are memorable because they're good.
Which brings us to our next one ...
4. Fourth and inches
Florida trailed rival Florida State by two touchdowns and had the ball on its own 1 when the Gators took off on a 15-play drive (including a successful fake field goal) only to face a 4th-and-inches at the Seminoles' 15-yard line. Of course, you go for it.
Enter Trey Burton, the designated running quarterback. What happened next was something probably no one at Florida Field that night had ever seen.
A 14-yard loss on a quarterback sneak.
And it wasn't even close.
That instance crystalized for me (and many others, probably) a lot of things about the UF football team. Mainly, the chasm of talent new Coach Will Muschamp inherited, but also how befuddled offensive coordinator Charlie Weis must have been with no go-to back.
The Gators held the Seminoles to just 95 yards of total offense that night ... and were never really in the game.
No wonder Will Muschamp got that look so often on the sidelines last season.
5. Gymnastics and lacrosse were that close
Coach Ronda Faehn and her UF gymnastics team, led by dynamic freshman All-American Kytra Hunter, finished second at the NCAA Gymnastics Championships to SEC rival Alabama by 0.075th of a point.
Are you kidding?
In a sport where scoring is so subjective, that could be a slightly bent knee or a toe curling over the balance beam.
Then came the lacrosse team, in just its third year of existence, winning the American Lacrosse Conference regular-season and tournament titles, defeating perennial power and reigning NCAA champ Northwestern twice along the way.
Coach Amanda O'Leary got the Gators to Final Four and had a seven-goal lead against Syracuse with 10 minutes to go, but lost in overtime after what would have been game-winning goal in the final seconds of regulation was a wiped out by a controversial stick violation.
[Note: Northwestern beat Syracuse for the title]
Those are tough ways to lose championships, but expect both Faehn and O'Leary to use those close-calls as teaching moments and draw on them for resolve next season.
6. Another CWS
When UF athletic director Jeremy Foley hired Kevin O'Sullivan he did so with one simple request: Make Florida baseball relevant annually.
Three straight College World Series berths would qualify for relevancy, even though the postseason buzz of UF's latest trip to Omaha focused more around going two-and-out as the top seed, with an elimination game loss to big underdog Kent State. The 2012 Florida baseball had nine players drafted in the first eight rounds, so more was expected of this group.
O'Sullivan, though, has accomplished what he was ordered to do. For many seasons, UF fans lamented the program's shortcomings during the SEC season and against FSU and Miami.
Now they complain about getting to the CWS and not winning it.
The boss will live with that.
7. Feel-good New Years in Jacksonville
The Gators never want to end a season in the Gator Bowl, but knowing the frustration Muschamp dealt with trying to win in the SEC with a roster lacking so much in size, depth and offensive explosion, beating Ohio State 24-17 at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium was exactly the season-ending stepping stone his program needed.
Had the Gators lost, it would have been a seventh defeat in nine games and marked the team's first losing season since 1979.
Instead, a 99-yard kickoff return by Andre DeBose and Chris Rainey blocked punt returned for a touchdown fueled a 7-6 finish and sent Mushchamp into the offseason -- and onto the recruiting trail -- on a highly positive note.
8. Success, class and loyalty all in one
Mere hours after Ohio State's news conference introducing Urban Meyer as its head football coach, Billy Donovan won the 400th game of his career, beating Stetson 96-70 in Orlando.
The two events had nothing to do with one another, but illustrated the level of sincerity of a pair of highly successful coaches each with two national championships at Florida.
Donovan, who at 46 became the nation's youngest coach to reach the 400 milestone, had chances to leave for Kentucky and actually did bolt for the NBA, only to change his mind and return to continue the something-from-nothing program he created.
Meyer many times proclaimed his love for the Gators, but after his well-documented health issues were followed by the worst record of his coaching tenure, he bailed. Meyer needed to reconnect with his family, he said.
In a matter of weeks, he was working at ESPN (traveling weekly) and was rumored all season to be the guy to replace Jim Tressel in Columbus.
And did.
The paradox of loyalty could not have been more pronounced that day.
9. Women's hoops back to NCAAs
Ohio State (yeah, that team again) should have known better. The Buckeyes reached the NCAA women's basketball tournament for the 10th straight year, but didn't like drawing a No. 8 seed and were not shy about voicing their displeasure with it. A lot.
UF, in the NCAAs for the first time since 2009 and the second time under Coach Amanda Butler, scored the game's first seven points, led wire to wire and won 70-65.
Maybe the Buckeyes should have worried less about their seed and more about their opponent.
The Gators were eliminated in Round 2 by eventual NCAA champion Baylor and Player of the Year Brittney Griner, but UF's finish in the SEC and first NCAA Tournament win in three years sent a message about the direction of the program.
10. Makings of a home run hire
I could write what I know about men's college tennis on a sticky note (probably with space to spare), but after spending an hour with the ultra-impressive Bryan Shelton I have a feeling a sleeping giant is about to wake.
The UF men's program has been spinning its wheels for a decade, annually reaching the Round of 16 (once the Final Four) while the women hoist SEC and NCAA trophies.
Enter Shelton, the women's coach at Georgia Tech. Shelton won an ACC singles title as a player with the Yellow Jackets, played professionally for seven years, coached professionally for a couple more, then eventually returned to his alma mater and took over an abysmal program at a very tough place to recruit women.
He won a national championship there.
During a conversation of probably less than an hour, Shelton spoke of being an African-American tennis player raised in Alabama, about his time playing and teaching the game, and how only an opportunity and challenge like Florida could have taken him away from Tech.
He sold me.
Our short time together was, well, memorable.
