Executive Associate AD Mike Hill shares an embrace with Gators coach Mike White after last week's defeat of Kentucky. (Photo: Tim Casey/UAA Communications)
Hill Leaving His Lasting Imprint
Friday, March 9, 2018 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
After the SEC Tournament, Executive Associate AD Mike Hill will take over the athletic director's post at UNC Charlotte.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — After back-to-back NCAA championships in 2006 and '07, the Florida Gators experienced an altogether different kind of back-to-back in '08 and '09.
Two straight trips to the NIT.
Those were two trying (if not miserable) seasons for Coach Billy Donovan and his basketball program, which was what made the developments of 2010 all the more rewarding. Especially for Mike Hill and that phone call he got on Selection Sunday that year when the Gators returned to the NCAA field.
"You were right," Donovan said. "Thank you, Mike."
That was not one of Donovan's finest teams, having gone 21-12 overall and finishing fourth in the Southeastern Conference East Division with a 9-7 record. It was, though, one of UF's boldest teams because it dared to venture into territory that for years the program had resisted.
Those NIT teams had put records of 21-11 and 22-9 to the selection committee, only to be rejected because of soft non-conference schedules. Hill, as executive associate athletics director for external affairs, oversaw men's basketball and decided a philosophy change was needed.
In 2009-10, the Gators played Michigan State and Rutgers on a neutral court at Atlantic City, N.J., and beat both. They lost to Syracuse on a neutral floor in Tampa and to Richmond in Sunrise, Fla. They beat North Carolina State on the road and Xavier at home. All told, they were 3-3 in those games but answered the committee's challenge to beef up their schedule rather than pad it with virtual automatic wins. The reward was a No. 10 seed -- and one of the last at-large berths in the field.
"Winning games, obviously, is important," said former UF athletic director Jeremy Foley. "But Mike convinced us all — especially the coaches — that who you played and where you played was something we could control and ultimately have work in our favor."
Last week, the University of North Carolina Charlotte announced the hiring of Hill as its new athletic director. Hill's nearly 25-year run with the University Athletic Association officially comes to end after this weekend at the SEC Tournament. The legacy Hill will leave behind figures to a lasting one, from his early years as a marketing coordinator, to the branding of the men's basketball program (think Rowdy Reptiles and U2 music), negotiating multi-million dollar rights packages, and his imprint on numerous coaching searches, including the one that put Mike White on the Florida sidelines.
Hill has been on the front lines for it all and not just been witness to Florida basketball's incredible evolution, but been a pivotal player in making it possible.
"The turning point, obviously, was when we hired Billy," Hill said of Foley's gamble in 1996 to pluck a 30-year-old coach with just two years experience at Marshall. "I remember Jeremy's words vividly. He said, 'We're going to blow this thing up, start over and do it differently.' It wasn't disrespecting the achievements of the past, but rather reevaluating and rethinking every area of our basketball program. At the time, people said you couldn't be really good in football and basketball. We took that as an affront."
Ten years later, Hill stood alongside Foley inside the RCA Dome in Indianapolis and wept tears of joy as the Gators reveled in the program's first national championship.
"I'm not sure what fell harder; the tears down my face or the streamers and confetti from the rafters," he said. "Jeremy and I stood there and watched 'One Shining Moment' together. It was like a dream."
A year later, the Gators relived the dream in becoming just the third program in more than four decades to repeat as NCAA champions.
After that, though, UF went those two seasons settling for the NIT. That's when Hill made an executive decision to annually beef up Florida's schedule, what with home-and-home contracts with Xavier, NC State, Ohio State, Arizona, Wisconsin, Connecticut and Michigan State, invitations to the Jimmy V and Coaches Vs. Cancer classics, the Battle4Atlantis, and spot in the prestigious one-time-only PK80 Invitational.
It got to the point that Donovan once gigged Hill by asking, "Who we getting a home-and-home with this year, the Lakers?"
[Note: Just wait till you get a load of next year's schedule, given some recent developments. Wow.]
"Mike is a guy who just got it. One of the best hires I ever made," Foley said. "Great guy. Fiercely loyal and incredibly knowledgeable. I'm really, really happy for him."
The circumstances Hill will exit the Gators are fitting, and not just because his farewell event will be a basketball tournament. Just a couple weeks ago, the UF team was struggling a bit as the postseason approached. And yet, because of its ambitious schedule, the Gators never strayed very far out of the bracketology mix. Hill helped set the standard.
What was it that Billy D said?
Thank you, Mike.
For everything.
Road to Gameday: Florida Football
Thursday, April 30
Ava Brown: Carwash Convos
Wednesday, April 29
Kaitlyn Davies: Carwash Convos
Monday, April 27
Florida Men's Basketball | Thomas Haugh Is Back
Monday, April 27
