late February both National Championship years but grooved come early March. While this year's bunch didn't lose any in mid to late February, we struggled a little. Now, again, it appears Billy has them really firing and ready to go. It is a long, grinding, season. Billy doing it over and over again...it isn't a coincidence.

He's the best, just the best. He's the best in the college hoops business, and he's the best varsity coach we've ever had at Florida.

Are we just getting lucky, over and over again - at a football school, no less - to attract not just amazingly talented basketball players, but good, solid individuals who are adaptable and moldable as players and as people?

We first cracked the championship game in 2000, running roughshod over bluebloods and strong programs like UNC, Duke, Illinois and Oklahoma State. Only a revitalized MSU team that was finally healthy and clicking again was able to beat us.

Then the 04's came aboard, and we fell in love with a group of kids that loved each other and loved playing for and with each other and representing UF.  A wondrous championship run was followed with an even tougher mountain to climb, and like Joe Torre with those stacked Yankee teams, the coach, nearly invisibly, pushed all the right buttons and kept a hungry, championship atmosphere and mindset until they'd once again won it all.

Now, several years later, we have another great group of fantastic young men who have stayed the course over FOUR full years while staying true to themselves and each other, and the coach and his program, all the while representing UF with class and grace.  And lookie there, they are putting together multiple accomplishments that we've never seen before in our hoops program.

Sure, UF is a great place to play and go to school and to live, and sure, Jeremy Foley and crew have steadfastly maintained a top-shelf athletic department which is respected among the very best.  But as you noted, Billy Donovan is the common thread of why we keep getting great people to play basketball here, and why they keep coming together to form great teams.  It's the way he recruits, the way he teaches, it's the people he puts into his program and the consistency with which he nurtures and brings them along as young adults.  You can see it in everything he does and everything he says....there's a right way and a wrong way to do things, and you will be expected to do things only the right way.

There are lots of storied places where HS basketball studs can stop over on their way to the NBA for a year or two, lots of basketball factories which are just that - turnstiles and waypoints on the way to the pro game.  But what Billy Donovan has done time and time again, and which is illustrated beautifully by this senior group who have stayed the course for four years of evolution and growth under his guidance and leadership is this.....what he has done is truly made UF something that in today's game is incredibly rare: He has made Florida a basketball school.

How many of those, nowadays, are there, really?  I hope he stays here forever.