Takes a guy like Jake (and, yes, his moment) to draw out a columnist in football season
Monday, January 5, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Football, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Back in the late-1980s, then Florida-basketball coach Norm Sloan was at Southeastern Conference Media Days and going on about the lack of exposure for basketball in the football-dominated league.
Asked what it might take for the game he loved to start making some headway with reporters in the region, Sloan famously scanned a group grizzled, gridiron-crazed columnists and said this.
“A few timely funerals would be a good start.”
Yikes. While I won't go to that extreme, there's no question basketball gets buried in the state of Florida by both the NFL and college football. Seeing a newspaper columnist at a Florida basketball game that either isn't against Kentucky or not being played in March is akin to seeing Bigfoot.
That said, David Whitley (left) of The Orlando Sentinel stepped out of the box over the weekend, actually reaching out to the UF Communications Department the day after the Gators' crushing, bad-bounce loss at Florida State last week with a request to speak with walk-on forward and hometown boy Jake Kurtz.
[Normally, I'd provide a link-out to the item, but The Sentinel's pay wall might swat the reader away.]
Kurtz, of course, was on the wrong end of some of the worst luck in UF basketball history, when he jumped to rebound FSU's desperation shot at the horn, only to have the ball tip off his hands and roll into the basket. Whitley watched and like everybody else who knows anything about the Gators wanted to hear from the guy known to his teammates as “Snake.” Kurtz agreed, but on one condition.
No pity party.
Below is the column, which Whitley wrote after Saturday's loss -- another back-breaker, by the way -- to Connecticut. A varied version of the piece actually was ready for print two days earlier, but was held for space reasons.
It was bumped for football.
GAINESVILLE — Jacob Kurtz had a message for anyone who showed up at the O'Connell Center on Saturday wanting to give him a hug.
"I don't want any sympathy," he said.
The UConn game was Kurtz's first public appearance since temporarily becoming the world's most famous basketball player. If you don't know why, you must have been renting the Unabomber's old cabin for the holidays.
The Hagerty High grad tipped in the winning basketball during FSU's last-second win last Tuesday. Problem was, Kurtz plays for Florida.
Gators' Jacob Kurtz tips ball into own basket to win game for FSU
The good news Saturday was Kurtz didn't tip in the winning basket for UConn. The bad news for UF was Kurtz was its second-leading scorer in the second half.
He had three points, which helps explain how UF lost 63-59 in a rematch of last year's Final Four semifinal game. As they frittered away a 13-point lead, it again became apparent that these Gators are a weak-kneed imitation of those Gators.
"We don't have enough competitive substance inside us," Billy Donovan said.
He said Kasey Hill and Dorian Finney-Smith do. Then one other player occurred to him.
And Jake," Donovan said. "I hate to using the reference he was a walk-on . . . "
But he was, which shows Kurtz's strength and the Florida's weakness. Walk-ons are supposed to be lovable lunks the crowd cheers to get in when the game is won.
Before he even got a tryout, Kurtz spent a season as a manager, doing laundry and fetching water for some of the guys he now calls teammates. The senior forward is basically a basketball version of Rudy, which makes what happened against FSU a movie script gone terribly wrong.
The Seminoles had the ball with the score tied at 63. They got off a jumper that looked like an airball.
Kurtz went up to grab it, but the ball grazed off the rim. It bounced off his hand and into the basket with 0.4 seconds left. Back in Oviedo, Asa Kohn spoke on behalf of the entire community.
"That shouldn't have counted!" he screamed.
Then he started to cry.
Asa is 7, and the son of Hagerty coach Josh Kohn. As sorry as he felt for Kurtz, millions more got a good laugh.
If a fluke play had turned Jameis Winston into an international goat, OK. But Kurtz?
It just didn't seem fair, right Jake?
"That stuff happens in sports. It does no good to sulk about it," he said. "I'm not going to lay down and have a pity party."
That's the attitude that made "Jake da Snake" a crowd favorite at the O'Connell Center the past couple of seasons. It's also turned him into more than a lovable lunk.
Kurtz is playing almost 22 minutes a game this season. He's the 6-foot-5 guy with the crewcut and intense look, setting picks, getting floor burns and doing everything except the laundry. If Donovan could transplant Kurtz's heart into the bodies of his more talented players, the Gators might again be Final Four material.
"He is one of the mentally toughest guys on our team," Donovan said. "I wish our guys responded more like he does when things don't go well."
Things could not have gone worse for Kurtz than they did against FSU. If there were karmic justice in this world, he would have tipped in the winning shot Saturday — into the Gators' basket.
But life isn't "Rudy," especially not when you make only 2 of 8 free throws in the second half. Back to Billy D:
"There is a mental, competitive spirit that you must have," he said, "and our team does not have it."
So don't cry for Kurtz.
It's the rest of the Gators you should be worried about.
dwhitley@orlandosentinel.com
