Butler beats Florida as the dream dies

And now that we are no longer in the Tournament, i’m glad Duke lost to Arizona. I always root against the team that won the NC the year before, cause I want our back-to-back teams to be the last to indeed win 2 in a row. All in all, I too, would like to thank the seniors for the hard work and effort they put into this seasoin. They had a lot of pressure when they came to Gainesville, but they grew into the program, bought into Coach Donovan’s system, and handled themselves at a very high level. As disappointed and saddened as I am for this loss, I am very excited for the future of this program, especially for someone like Young. I am very impressed with him, and look forward to seeing his progression next year. That said, I would also like to congratulate Butler. As painful and weird as that may sound, when you look at what they have accomplished in going to back-to-back Final Fours, you can’t help but be impressed. Brad Stevens is the youngest coach to ever go to 2 Final Fours, and they are the first team ever to get to 2 Final Fours seeded lower than 3rd. The way these games break for them, you would almost think that Hayward shot went in, because the ODU game, the Pitt game, and yesterday usually only happen to teams that win it all, and it seems that Butler is treated as such by the basketball gods. All in all, I can hold my head up high once again as a Gator fan.

the end of regulation shot was a pathetic choice. we needed one point, why go for 3? boynton should have had the ball and the decision to drive or pull up. mac is too bad at the line to get the ball at that point

should never have been overtime. butler’s missed free throw opened the door, and we refused to walk through

Yeah, those blocks were unbelievable. Tyus makes an outstanding defensive play to block the shot at the three point line and it falls right to Howard to then puts in an uncontested lay-up. That is unreal.

That was an alright soccer match last night. Good showing by the USA in my opinion.

But yeah, that charging call was a joke.

seemed as though it was called a lil one sided at the end of regulation, but then it seemed the refs tried to remedy that by calling a few cheap ones on butler in OT…..it was def an oddly officiated game

I disagree that the call was bad – whenever a player is completely out of control and comes barreling into the lane resulting in contact, it is called a charge. That said, Silverstreak is 100% right, the officials changed their calling in the last 10 minutes. It doesn’t matter if you call everything close or let them play, but you cannot let players battle for 30 minutes and then suddenly start calling every touch foul. It affected the game.

At the end of the day, this was Billy-D’s loss. There was simply no need for the Gators to take a single 3 point shot yesterday. We were dominating Butler inside. Why fire long shots that turn into long rebounds and degate your size advantage?

Everytime we ran that ball screen at the top of the key, Howard came out to double team the ball leaving his man WIDE OPEN. Tyus correctly broke to the hoop each time Howard left him, yet, not once did Boynton or Walker throw it back to Tyus for an easy dunk or layup. They were both too busy trying to dribble through the double team a take 3 point shots. It is sickening to watch your team lose to a opponent with less talent simply because it insists on playing away from its strengths and into the strength of its opponents. Quite frankly, the Gators deserved to lose the BYU game as well. Thirty-one 3 point shots? Really? When you have every advantage you could ask for underneath???? Why? Donovan is too good a coach to allow that, yet, that is what happened. Tyus bailed us out against BYU, and we decided again against Butler that we were going to be a three point shooting team no matter what.

The play at the end of regulation was asanine. It reminded me of the Matt Walsh/Peeps Robertson days. I would have liked to see Tyus take that last shot. He had been nothing short of spectacular for 2 straight games. Nearly every shot he took went down – even though many were long fade away jumpers that are typically outside his range. Plus, he is a good free throw shooter – so if we were to get fouled, I love our chances for him to make 1 of 2 in the bonus. Instead we elect to put our fate in the hands of a kid who was shooting 10% from the field on the night. What’s worse, he dribbles the clock down to 3 seconds before even making his move. Terrible. Even if a Gator would have blocked out perfectly and gotten a rebound, there wasn’t even enough time for a put back.

In overtime, one of Butler’s 2 big men fouled out. Our response? More 3s. It was puzzling.
I still think Billy coached his best season to date. I just wished he hadn’t reverted back to 2001 Donovan for our last 2 games.

Great season and I hope that the Gators become a tournament fixture form here on out.

I said the same exact thing in the game thread. It was pathetic.

But how many of those 20 points did they get at the line?

Tony Skinn, Jamie Skeen … Coincidence? You be the judge.

Compare Mike Miller’s shot to Erv Walker’s.

I rest my case.

who got swept at home by UGA. There’s an asterisk there because of our pitching situation (#1 pitcher was hurt and #2 was serving a 2 game suspension for intentionally throwing at a player (which is pretty awesome if you ask me)). But still, getting swept by UGA in anything is unacceptable. Even in a one game series.

This weekend sucked.

And no, I didn’t want Macklin to bring the ball up the floor for the last shot, but I sure as hell would have liked to see him shoot it instead of Walker. I’m a proponent of feeding the hot man, and Walker was so cold, he could have fallen out of a boat and missed the ocean on Saturday.