Franz Beard’s Basketball Confidential

If you’re a Florida basketball fanatic, then the last two years have given you enough to go cruise control the rest of your life when you stroll down memory lane. Now that the 0-Fours, Lee Humphrey and Chris Richard are part of a new and glorious Florida basketball past, it’s time to take a look at what’s been going on in the basketball program the last couple of months and get a glimpse of what’s ahead this summer.

This is the first Basketball Confidential of 2007 but it won’t be the last. Count on one serious de-briefing every month.

With that introduction out of the way, it’s time to take this to the Insider Full Court Press forums for full discussion.

The latest tactic used to get the best of the Gators on the recruiting trail isn’t anything new. In fact, it’s just a different version of the one we saw right after the NCAA championship game in Atlanta. Then, everyone was trying to speculate that Billy Donovan was heading to Kentucky. It didn’t matter how many times that Billy said he would deal with Kentucky when the time was appropriate, certain websites like Kitty Litter were claiming the deal was done and Billy was Lexington-bound. Of course, three days after the championship game Billy put that to rest. What’s interesting is that certain posters over at Kitty Litter are claiming that the deal was done and Billy somehow backed out at the last moment. Truth is, there never was a deal and nothing close to it nor was there ever any serious interest in the job.

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Franz Beard
Back in January of 1969, the late, great Jack Hairston, then the sports editor of the Jacksonville Journal, called me on the phone one night and asked me if I wanted to work for him. I said yes. The entire interview took 30 seconds. It's my experience that whenever the interview lasts 30 seconds or less, I get the job. In the 48 years that I've been writing and getting paid for it, I've covered Super Bowls, World Series, NCAA basketball championships, BCS championship games, heavyweight title fights and what seems like thousands of college football, baseball and basketball games. I'm a columnist and special assignments editor for Gator Country once again, writing about the only team that ever mattered to me, the Florida Gators.