Will basketball be revived at athletics?

The Florida Gators have been trudging through the desert of irrelevance for years.

Each step was a fight – boots that burn in the endless sand, the muscles, dries out the neck and sunk the skin.

You can almost imagine a pressed UF sports director Scott Stricklin, who blinks into the relentless sun and scans the horizon in search of something – anything – This could be seen as protection or shadow.

But wait!

What’s the wrong thing?

An oasis?

A glimmer of redemption?

A way out of this barren wasteland of senselessness and back to UFS dominating days of sporting superiority?

Admittedly, I may be too melodramatic here and maybe I overreact, but is it so far to believe that this amazing UF basketball team has the chance to lead the school’s sports program from the wilderness and back to relevant?

The top seeds gators, which appear in Sweet 16 against Maryland No. 4 on Thursday evening, are the trendy choice to win the national championship. And if this should happen by chance, it could be the development of a Gator -Athletic awakening.

For many long -term fans, it seems almost unfathomable that it is 17 years – almost a whole generation – since Gator Nation has experienced a national championship in the two sports that are most important – football and men’s basketball. But since the basketball program from Todd Golden also not better-every team in the country and Billy Napier’s football team finally lives, the gators may finally be retired from their years of darkness.

While a lot is made about a football-centered conference like the SEC, it suddenly becomes the most powerful basketball conference in history, but do not let us forget that it was the gators themselves that showed their league brothers, which could actually be dominated in both sports.

Jeremy Foley, the legendary former sports director at UF, made two of the largest attitudes in modern college sports history when he commissioned an unproven 29-year-old coach of Marshall named Billy Donovan to head his basketball program, and then over-maneuvered emergency lady to hire football coach Urban Mey.

These two men initiated Gator Athletics’s gold era when the national championships in football and basketball also held the only school in modern history that performs such a performance in early 2007. A few months later, Donovan’s Gators became the first school since the Great Grant Hill-Christian Laettner Duke teams from 1992-93 to win national championships in a row. In the meantime, Meyers Gator won two national championships in a period of three years from 2006 to 2008.

At that time, Gator Nation ruled the sports world with rock star coaches and superstar players such as Tim Tebow and Percy Harvin in football and Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer in basketball. This famous UF rally scream – “It’s great to be a Florida Gator!” – was not just a jubilation; It was a reality that every other fan base envy in the country.

But then Meyer burned out and took a short break before landing in the state of Ohio, while Donovan left UF a few years later to make the leap to the NBA. And unfortunately the gators slowly drift downstream on the flow of mediocrity.

Admittedly, UF always had one of the best sports programs in the country and continued to be characterized in other sports – baseball, softball, golf, lane, swimming and gymnastics, to name just a few – but it is no secret that football and basketball define the national identity of a program.

A cavalry from football coaches – Will Muschamp, Jim Mcelwain and Dan Mullen – had their moments each, but the Meyer magic could not get back. Mike White had the task of stepping in Donovan’s footsteps and had a respectable term in Florida, but he was beaten and beaten by the expectations of fans. White was unable to meet the incredibly high standard that was left behind and ultimately went to Georgia.

Now, finally, there is literally and in a figurative sense a “golden” opportunity for the Gator to get back into the national spotlight from the dark. The jury is still adopted in the football program, but Napier’s team ended with a winning streak with four games last season and has returned one of the hottest young quarterbacks in Land-DJ Lagway-in this season.

The Golden basketball team stormed through the tournaments of the SEC and NCAA tournaments and proved to be a legitimate championship candidate. In its third season, Golden implemented a basketball mark that is both exciting and effective: fast but disciplined. The gators have the talent, depth and the boasting to win everything.

Of course, the trip is far from over and there is still a lot to do.

But at least there is hope.

At least there is a way.

Is that a rainbow in front of us?

Is the relentless Stobel almost over through the desert?

Will the gators growl again soon?

Send me an email to [email protected]. Beat me on X (formerly Twitter) @bianchiwrites and listen to my Open Mike Radio Show every weekday from 6 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, on 740 and 969thegame.com/listen

Originally published: March 26, 2025 at 3:37 p.m. Edt