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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, April 3, 2006

Basketball opposites meet in title game

By EDDIE PELLS
Associated Press

TV

Ch. 9 (7)

3 p.m. live, 8 p.m. rebroadcast

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INDIANAPOLIS — UCLA had Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and all those championship banners. Florida had Vernon Maxwell and Lon Kruger.

Different programs on opposite coasts with divergent histories play for the national championship today in a game that offers yet another reminder of how the success of yesteryear no longer guarantees anything.

"Are we a basketball school the way Kentucky and Indiana are?" Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley said. "Not yet. That's the goal."

Staying there isn't possible in the way it was when John Wooden coached. No longer can a great coach like Wooden sit in his office and expect great players to come.

While no one has ever doubted UCLA's status as a basketball school — 11 national titles can do that for a program — their dynasty is long gone. UCLA is closer to its last losing season (11-18 in 2003-04) than its last national title (1995, behind Ed O'Bannon and Tyus Edney).

Coach Ben Howland, in his third year, got the Bruins back to the top not by riding Wooden's coattails. He did it the same way Billy Donovan did it at Florida: recruiting, selling, building a team in his own image, not what someone else thinks it should be.

"With winning, players are going to want to come to UCLA again," said Mike Warren, the captain of the title teams in 1967 and '68.

Committing to Florida was anything but trendy before Donovan arrived. Though the head Gators are loath to admit it, Florida is a football school. Its few moments of success in hoops were always overshadowed by something:

  • Maxwell took the Gators to the tournament for the first time in the late '80s, but that experience was tainted by a drug scandal.

  • Lon Kruger actually broke through some barriers and got the Gators to the Final Four in 1994. Two years later, he left and proclaimed that "to do in basketball what they do in football is just not possible."

    But under Donovan, the Gators made a new commitment to hoops, and started locking up more Florida kids. Today, Florida players come from everywhere.

    And in an era where there are no dynasties, maybe the best that can be said for any program is that it keeps playing well enough to get back to the NCAA tournament. This is Florida's eighth straight appearance.