Saint Peter’s may be eliminated, but it will be the defining team of the 2022 edition of March Madness. There are other dominant storylines for sure, including Coach K’s final tournament ending up with a Final Four showdown against UNC, but everyone will remember this for being the Year of the Peacocks.
Well, I will at least. There are a lot of people who won’t be able to get past the Duke/UNC stuff. However, I can guarantee you that Kentucky, Murray State, and Purdue fans will remember it as the Saint Peter’s year.
There was once a time, not too long ago, that Gator fans at least could rest easy when facing one of the darling underdogs of March. It came, though, after a time when they could reasonably dread them.
Billy Donovan is the best basketball coach in Florida history, and it will take a long time for anyone to match or exceed him as such. Something that’s easy to forget is that it took him some time to go from Billy D the promising coach with flaws to Billy D the legend.
Donovan’s first NCAA Tournament bid came in 1999, and it was a solid outing. UF made it to the Sweet 16 as a 6-seed, which on its face is nothing to go home sad about. It’s just that the loss in the second weekend came to 10-seed Gonzaga. This was the first time Gonzaga made any noise on the national stage, so it’d be like losing a bowl game to circa 2004 Boise State. Dropping a tourney game to the Zags now is no shame, but at the time it was a real disappointment.
The Gators of course made the Final Four the following season, losing the title game to Michigan State. Despite the relative black eye of falling to a 10-seed with the Elite Eight on the line, it was a great couple of debut tournaments for Donovan. The next few years got very rough, however.
UF dispatched a 14-seed in the first round of 2001, but then they fell by 21 points to 11-seed Temple in the second round. In both 2002 and 2004, the Gators were on the wrong end of 5-12 upsets. The ’02 team at least lost to a Creighton team led by future longtime NBA pro Kyle Korver; the ’04 Manhattan Jaspers had only a marginal NBA player in Luis Flores on its side. In between the Gators flopped in a 22-point second round defeat as a 2-seed to temporary nemesis Michigan State again, itself a 7-seed. At least the early exit in 2005 came to a 5-seed Villanova team with multiple future pros.
The breakthrough back-to-back title teams in 2006-07 reversed a program trend in a big way and finally established Billy D as one of the current era’s greats. In the process of winning the first title, Donovan appeared to finally figure out how to put down Cinderella uprisings.
The Gators were a 3-seed, and their second round matchup was against 11-seed Wisconsin-Milwaukee. UWM, built by Bruce Pearl but for the first year coached by successor Rob Jeter, was a trendy pick after reaching the Sweet 16 the prior year. The Gators dropped the hammer on the Panthers to the tune of 82-60.
Then in the Final Four UF faced off against that tournament’s great Cinderella team, another 11-seed in George Mason. The Patriots had already dismissed blue bloods Michigan State, UNC, and UConn on their march to the semifinals. It wasn’t a breeze early, but the Gators took control in the second half to cruise to a 15-point win.
Donovan had a couple of trips to the NIT and a first-round loss as a 10-seed from 2008-10 to get through as he adjusted to the changing landscape of college basketball and dealt with rebuilding the team culture once the 04s left. His last loss to a true Cinderella came in 2011 when 8-seed Butler upset the Gators for a trip to the Final Four.
After that, though? Donovan was the grim reaper for storybook seasons.
In 2012, 15-seed Norfolk State upset Missouri in the first round. The Gators eviscerated them 84-50 in the second round. In 2013, FGCU captivated the country by dunking Georgetown and San Diego State into oblivion in becoming the first 15-seed to make the Sweet 16. UF closed down Dunk City 62-50. In Billy D’s final tournament, he faced 11-seed Dayton in the Elite Eight. UF advanced by ten, 62-52.
Donovan wasn’t perfect in dismissing lower seeded teams after his title runs. There was the aforementioned loss to Butler in 2011, and his last tournament loss was as a 1-seed to 7-seed UConn in the Final Four. That was a Brad Stevens Butler team with future pro Shelvin Mack, though, and Jim Calhoun and Shabazz Napier were hardly the stuff of fairy tales.
After a rocky start with too many early round losses to lower-seeded teams, Donovan hit his stride and became one of the better villains of the tournament in terms of putting down underdog uprisings. Part of why Mike White lost the patience of UF fans is that either his teams weren’t seeded high enough to qualify as such a villain, or, as in 2021, he lost in the first round to a Cinderella (15-seed Oral Roberts). Todd Golden would do well to turn the tables on the ilk of his former school and make a habit of slamming shut the storybook seasons of mid-majors.