This year’s Gators love the haters

By Israel Gutierrez - Mcclatchy Newspapers     Mar 26, 2007

? Last year, Joakim Noah felt the love, becoming the intriguing, enigmatic poster boy for the champion Florida Gators.

This year, Noah pleads for hate.

“Keep hatin’,” Noah shouted while his teammates started the increasingly familiar net-cutting ceremony Sunday. “We love the hate.”

Actually, Noah detests the hate more than anyone on the team. A poster reading “So easy a caveman can do it,” with Noah’s picture on it earlier this season was particularly perturbing to him.

But he will hear a lot less of the hate for the next week or so.

He should, anyway.

Because anyone who actually recognizes how difficult a feat these Gators just completed couldn’t possibly still hate this team.

Think just because people were talking Final Four in November that getting to Atlanta was easy? This was far more demanding than last season’s skate to the title.

When the trio of sophomores contemplating the NBA decided to return for another run at a title, there always was the threat that at least one would treat the season as an official audition instead of continuing the teamwork that made the Gators great last season.

The fact that they avoided that so easily this season, with all five starters averaging double figures and none more than 13.3 a game (Taurean Green), continues to speak to the uniqueness of this group.

But dealing with the target that all champions wear wasn’t as simple to overcome. Particularly in the first four games of this NCAA Tournament, that proverbial target might as well have been drawn on the jerseys of Noah and Al Horford.

No longer were these two big men surprising, versatile talents that caught their opponents off guard. They were officially Goliaths.

And short of slingshots, the undersized opposition spent four games using well-placed elbows and fists to attempt to take the Florida big men out of the game.

“After the Butler game, I was drained,” Horford said, a few drops of someone else’s blood on his shorts helping emphasize his point. “It’s really tough.”

So tough, Horford’s own father doesn’t understand how he withstood the treatment.

Tito Horford, a former University of Miami and NBA player, is lucky his son’s temper isn’t as short as his.

“Al and me are different,” Tito said. “I don’t think I’d be able to take that physical abuse. I came close to jumping on the floor in this game. He’s too nice.”

The scouting report on Florida also was a few pages thicker this season. That meant UF couldn’t simply overwhelm the opposition with talent. Opposing teams now are telling the Gators how they will have to win. And they’re doing it anyway.

On Sunday, Oregon wasn’t going to let Horford and Noah dominate the paint, so it required UF’s guards to carry the scoring load.

So Lee Humphrey hit seven three-pointers in 12 attempts, one of them tearing a hole in the net that took nearly 10 minutes to repair near the end of the first half. It’s a shooter’s equivalent to shattering a backboard.

And Taurean Green hit four threes on his way to 21 points and a Midwest Regional MVP honor.

“You have to expect every team’s best shot,” Horford said.

That’s why there was nothing subdued about the Gator celebration in the Edward Jones Dome.

Noah was shouting this year’s catch phrase, “we win, we eat,” which is slightly more profound and more confusing than last season’s “The Gator boys are hot.”

“I guess he means when we win, we’re just happy,” Corey Brewer tried to explain. “We love being happy, I guess.”

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