Any fashion mistakes aside, last night's NBA Draft was (one of) the most satisfying professional draft I've watched as a fan of the University of Florida.
Five Gators were drafted, including all four of the Juniors which declared early after last season. Chris Richard, one of only three seniors on last year's squad, also was drafted in the second-round last evening. Not only was this an unprecedented feat for the University of Florida basketball program; The '07 class made NBA Draft history as well.
Al Horford, Corey Brewer and Joakim Noah became the first same school trio in NBA Draft history to be drafted in the Top Ten (top nine, actually) when they went at pick three, seven and nine. Horford became the second highest picked Gator of all time, and only the third player ever selected in the top five of the draft (Neal Walk went at #2 in 1969, Mike Miller went at #5 in 2000).
The drafting of five players, including one that even came off the bench, just shows us how special the squads were from the last two seasons. There have been great college basketball teams, but never one quite like this is Gainesville.
What a night to be a Gator. It will be very exciting watching these young men try to make their marks at the pro level -- I already have an added interest and will no doubt be maying much more attention to the NBA next season.
Unfortunately there are no Minnesota Timberwolves (which drafted both Brewer and Richard) or Atlanta Hawks blogs on this network, but Blog-A-Bull has a nice writeup on the drafting of Joakim Noah.
Go Gators!