PHOENIX — They hand out the biggest trophy — the NCAA championship trophy — on the first Monday in April, not the first Monday in March.
No two teams could be happier about this than Marquette and Florida.
The third-seeded Golden Eagles and seventh-seeded Gators each came limping into the NCAA Tournament — Marquette losing two of three, including its first Big East tournament game, and Florida dropping four of five, including an ugly pair at Georgia and Vanderbilt, to close out the regular season.
Yet here they are, ready for a meeting in the West regional semifinals today — Buzz Williams’ team coming off two strong finishes against Brigham Young and Murray State and Billy Donovan’s squad still high off blowouts over Virginia and Norfolk State by an average of 30 points.
“I think like anything else, when you win, a lot of times the things that you’re doing not very well get covered up,” Donovan said. “And when you lose, the things that you do well, no one really talks about.”
In hindsight, maybe Florida’s losses — setbacks that certainly bumped its tournament seeding down a few notches and also made the Gators a popular candidate for an early upset — weren’t so bad.
When the cold spell began, the Gators (25-10) were still adjusting to the loss of a key reserve, forward Will Yeguete. They were still trying to help freshman all-conference guard Bradley Beal get comfortable taking a primary role instead of deferring, which has worked — he’s averaging 14 points, 10 rebounds in the tournament.
As for the teams they lost to — well, one of them was at a pretty good Vanderbilt team on senior day and two were against Kentucky, the second only a three-point loss in the SEC tournament.
“I saw our team making strides and getting better,” Donovan said. “I think the biggest thing I tried to do was keep their confidence level high, that they were doing the right things and this is the thing we needed to confront and get better to push us over the hump a little bit.”
First, the Gators overcame Virginia’s pack-line defense, which was allowing less than 54 points a game, in a 71-45 victory over the Cavaliers. Next, Florida crushed out one of the tournament’s great (early) stories, going on a 25-0 run early en route to a 84-50 victory over 15th-seed Norfolk State, two days after the Spartans had eliminated Missouri.
Florida became the first team in tournament history to score 70 or more points and allow 50 or less in its first two games.
“I would say we definitely didn’t hit the panic button, but we knew it was time to buckle down and listen to coach and have some great practices before we got to the NCAA Tournament,” Florida guard Erving Walker said. “And I think it’s definitely paid off for us.”
Marquette (27-7) took a similar path after an 84-71 loss to Louisville in the Big East Tournament — a loss not-sosubtly described by Williams as one in which the team “peed down our leg.”
How to respond after that kind of game, the last before the start of the NCAAs?
“Just wake up and go to work,” Williams said.
Marquette is led by two seniors — a rarity all by itself in this era of one-year players and other early departures.
Darius Johnson-Odom leads the team with 18.5 points a game, while Big East Player of the Year Jae Crowder averages 17.6 points and 8.4 rebounds.
“I’m not sure if it’s an advantage or not,” Williams said of having a team led by seniors. “I have no problem with guys that are one and done or two and done. I just haven’t done a good enough job of signing those guys. But at the same time, I’m very thankful for the leadership of Darius and Jae.”
Only a week before the Louisville loss, Marquette had played a similarly uninspired game in a 72-61 loss at Cincinnati. The fact that Cincinnati, Louisville and Marquette are all still playing this weekend might speak volumes about those losses. But Johnson-Odom said some lessons were learned there.
“I think everyone knows in our program, when we don’t play with energy, we’re not good at all,” he said. “And that’s the main focus. That’s something we can’t be talking about going down the stretch, is our energy and how hard we play.”
Sports, Pages 15 on 03/22/2012