GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Florida basketball team had just watched their beloved teammate and superstar forward,
Keyontae Johnson, taken from the floor at Tucker Center on a stretcher in a non-responsive state. The players who weren't in tears were in a virtual state of shock, and with less than four minutes gone in a game against rival Florida State.
Like so many other things about 2020, there was no playbook for this. When Coach
Mike White asked his Gators if they wanted to continue, they said yes. They wanted to play on for Johnson.
"When it happened, we all said we wanted to play. And honestly, I [felt] like I shouldn't have said that," junior shooting guard
Noah Locke recalled Monday of the traumatic sequence of events of Dec. 12. "It just wasn't something I could do at the moment of everything that happened."
UF had opened the game with a flurry, jumping to a quick eight-point lead, but minus their leading scorer and rebounder — and reeling emotionally from the sequence of events that had played out before them — the Seminoles eventually went on a run of 17 consecutive points and pulled away for a 83-71 victory against a heavy-hearted foe.
The Gators did not take the floor together again until Sunday, a span of 15 days that featured four games — non-conference home dates against North Florida, Florida Atlantic, Florida A&M and James Madison — wiped from the schedule. Not because of COVID, but because of Keyontae. Not only did the team not play games, the players, after a few meetings, were told (encouraged, actually) to go home, be with their families for the holidays, hit reset and come back ready to go.
When they returned Sunday for two practices, Johnson was on the sidelines to cheer them on. Obviously, he won't be in uniform any time soon, but he'll be an inspirational and motivational force as he deals with a complicated recovery. Florida (3-1), meanwhile, has a 2020-21 season to contend with, starting with Wednesday night's Southeastern Conference opener at Vanderbilt (4-2).
The 18-day lull between games be will the longest such spell for the Gators since the 1950-51 season, but a burden as weighty as anything the program has ever dealt with has been lessoned to a far greater degree than what it was before the players were sent home to process their emotions.
"They're ready to move on; not
from Keyontae, but
for Keyontae. These guys want to play basketball," White said Monday. "We've got a ways to go with this team. We're going to be a different team. But if we're going to move forward we're going to do it correctly. We're not going to half-step it. Our guys are committed to that."
That commitment, though, could only go so far in knocking off the rust of two weeks of no basketball activity as a team. Offensively, the Gators turned the ball over too much Sunday. Defensively, they fouled too much. From a conditioning standpoint .. well ... take a guess.
"We weren't very good," White said. "[But] we're happy to be back together."
And with Johnson back in the fold, if only to blow a whistle, offer advice to the younger players and be his playful joke-cracking self.
"He'll do a really good job in that role, and I think it will help his development down the road," White said. "Not only that, but I think it will give our guys another voice and a pure voice. And Keyontae will become an extension of us in the near future."
That image is light years away from the one of Johnson incapacitated in a Tallahassee Memorial Hospital bed. He remained there for two days before being airlifted to Gainesville and UF Health, where his recovery became a god-send development for his family and team.
UF coach Mike White huddles with and consoles his players moments after Keyontae Johnson collapsed to the floor in their Dec. 12 game at Florida State.
Both UF and the Johnson family released statements and social media posts updating Gator Nation — college basketball nation, actually — about his progress, including a video message from Johnson himself. But it was an Instagram post, courtesy of Locke, that showed Johnson and several teammates dancing on a hospital balcony at sunset that might have best illustrated the relief the Florida program, as a whole, was feeling.
That was Dec. 18. The next day, the team made the collective decision to cancel upcoming games and get away from it all.
And as much as the Gators needed and appreciated the break, they were just as thankful to be back at it Sunday.
"It was definitely release," Locke said. "Guys had a lot of energy. Guys were just happy to be back out there for sure."
Now comes the really hard part: Playing games. Games against teams that did not have two weeks off and, of course, have not experienced the kind of adversity and emotional highs and lows the Gators have dealt with since Dec. 12.
Not just the players, obviously.
White called that day in Tallahassee the worst of his life. He called the day Johnson left the hospital one of his best.
"I've lost all kinds of sleep. A really hard couple weeks, incredibly emotional time, really for our entire program and most importantly for Keyontae's family and for Keyontae," White said. "Regrets? No. No regrets. Decisions were based on the best interest of our student-athletes, period."
