Carter's Corner: Former Gators Baseball Equipment Manager Has His Team in March Madness
Tuesday, March 19, 2019 | General, Scott Carter
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By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Tim Craft was up long before the sun on Tuesday morning. It's not often ESPN decides to stop by Boiling Springs, N.C., for a segment at 5 a.m.
But this is an unusually big week for Craft and his Gardner-Webb University men's basketball team. The Runnin' Bulldogs are in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history and face No. 1-seed Virginia on Friday.
The 42-year-old Craft is a UF graduate and former Gators student equipment manager – those Gators who went to the 1998 College World Series. That's right, Craft was part of the baseball program at UF prior to making the switch to basketball and becoming a coach.
"It's a good story,'' said UF baseball play-by-play voice Jeff Cardozo, a pitcher for the '98 Gators. "He's come a long way since then."
In his sixth season as head coach at Gardner-Webb, Craft guided the Running' Bulldogs to the Big South Conference Tournament title with upset wins over No. 1-seed Campbell and No. 2 Radford. Tim Craft
Craft graduated from Florida in 2000 and later served as an assistant at Gardner-Webb before stops as an assistant at Auburn and East Carolina.
He became a head coach in 2013 when he returned to Gardner-Webb. Craft grew up in Tallahassee and as a student at UF, turned down an offer to work as a student manager for the Billy Donovan-led Gators since then-Gators baseball coach Andy Lopez had given him a partial scholarship to work with the baseball program.
Making history! Tallahassee's Tim Craft leads Gardner-Webb into NCAA Tourney for first time https://t.co/srBkjzn6rs via @tdonline
"It was probably a dumb career move, not to work for Billy Donovan, but baseball was such a great experience,'' Craft told Tallahassee Democrat sports editor Jim Henry this week. "I learned so much from Coach Lopez and how to get players to buy in and compete. That's so important across all sports."
While in college, Craft was a roommate of former Gators infielder Mark Ellis, who went on to have a successful major league career. He maintains contact with several former UF baseball players as part of an e-mail group.
That group has exchanged a lot of congratulatory messages this week.
