No. 9/11 Florida Gators basketball (24-5, 14-3 SEC) captured the fourth outright regular-season Southeastern Conference title in school history on Wednesday during Senior Night at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center. Florida also finished undefeated (15-0) at home for just the second time in program history and locked up the No. 1 overall seed in the upcoming 2013 SEC Tournament.

Check out the videos below, courtesy of GatorVision.tv and the Gainesville Television Network‘s Julie Quittner, to see what you otherwise have not seen unless you were in attendance at the game – the Senior Night ceremony, Gators cutting down the nets and post-game celebration. Continue reading for the rest of what head coach Billy Donovan and the seniors had to say about the victory and Senior Night festivities.

» Donovan on the impact of winning the SEC regular season title: “I was happy our guys could do that. … Because of unbalanced schedules now, because of all the conference expansion, because of the attention on March Madness and Selection Sunday, a lot of people don’t necessarily pay attention to conference championships or view them as a great accomplishment. For the people that go through the grind of a nine-week schedule with no time off and having to come every day to practice, prepare for every game, deal with the ups and downs, highs and lows, injuries, setbacks, guys getting healthy, guys coming back, it’s an incredible and a terrific accomplishment for our team considering the things that we’ve had to overcome.

“I was very happy they could celebrate that and they could share in it together. To be able to do it on our home court for Kenny Boynton, Erik Murphy and Mike Rosario – a lot of times on Senior Night it doesn’t quite get the chance to end like that for you. You go undefeated at home your senior year, you clinch a conference championship outright, and you walk off the court with an opportunity to cut down nets. I was very happy for those three guys.”

Read the rest of what Donovan and the seniors had to say…after the break!
Continue Reading » VIDEO: Gators cut down nets after SEC title win; Donovan, players wrap up Florida’s Senior Night

Tags: Billy Donovan, Erik Murphy, Kenny Boynton, Mike Rosario, SEC, SEC Championship, SEC Tournament, Senior Night

It was a storybook Senior Night for No. 9/11 Florida Gators basketball, which capped off Wednesday evening’s festivities at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center by celebrating a victory and cutting down the nets after defeating the Vanderbilt Commodores 66-40 to clinch the outright 2013 SEC Championship.

Florida (24-5, 14-3 SEC), which locked up a share of its sixth regular-season title on Saturday, won its second outright championship in the last three years and the fourth in program history by outplaying Vanderbilt (13-16, 7-10 SEC) on both ends of the court.

The Gators completed an undefeated season at home (15-0) for the second time in school history and also clinched the No. 1 overall seed in the 2013 SEC Tournament.

Continue Reading » Nets come down as Florida Gators clinch fourth outright SEC regular-season title in school history

Tags: Erik Murphy, Kedren Johnson, Kenny Boynton, Mike Rosario, Patric Young, SEC, SEC Championship, Senior Night, Stephen C. O'Connell Center, Vanderbilt Commodores

OGGOA concludes its look at the three seniors set to be honored Wednesday evening as the Florida Gators basketball program celebrates Senior Night at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center. Be sure to check out the other two features as well.

Monday - Forward Erik Murphy: “It’s been the best four years of my life.”
Tuesday - Guard Mike Rosario: “You got to be accountable for everything you do.”

When senior guard Kenny Boynton committed to the Florida Gators on Oct. 30, 2008, he was ranked as the No. 12 overall prospect in the 2009 recruiting class and seen as player who would spend one – maybe two – years in college before moving on.

Things obviously did not go as planned for Boynton. While reflecting on his four-year career at Florida on Monday, he certainly admitted as much.

“I think everything happens for a reason. I think in the four years that I’ve been here, I think I’ve gotten better as a player. I definitely didn’t think, when I first signed, that I would be here four years,” he said.

Boynton earned himself a starting role right away as a freshman. He averaged team-highs in minutes per game (32.9) and scoring average (14.0) in his first season but was quite inefficient overall, shooting just 37.6 percent from the floor and 29.4 percent from beyond the arc. Those numbers basically held true during his sophomore campaign, making it quite clear that a professional career would have to wait as he worked on improving his game at the collegiate level.

What Boynton did accomplish in those first two seasons was helping the Gators return to the NCAA Tournament after consecutive NIT appearances. Florida got bounced by BYU in a two-overtime dogfight in the first round when Boynton was a freshman but won the 2011 SEC regular season title outright and made its first of back-to-back Elite Eight appearances during his sophomore season. The Gators returned to prominence and he was a big part of that turnaround.

Continue Reading » Florida Gators senior G Kenny Boynton: “I’ve tried my best to win as much as I could.”

Tags: Billy Donovan, Kenny Boynton, Patric Young, Scottie Wilbekin, SEC, SEC Championship, Senior Night, Stephen C. O'Connell Center

Over the next two days, OGGOA will continue its look at the three seniors set to be honored Wednesday evening as the Florida Gators basketball program celebrates Senior Night at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center.

Monday - Forward Erik Murphy: “It’s been the best four years of my life.”
Wednesday - Guard Kenny Boynton: “I’ve tried … to win as much as I could.”

The biggest on-the-court story of the 2012-13 campaign for the Florida Gators has been the turnaround of redshirt senior guard Mike Rosario. A huge question mark coming into the season, Rosario has matured from a score-first, team-second player to one who puts winning over everything else and has, in turn, become the team’s leading scorer and one of its most trustworthy offensive options.

As head coach Billy Donovan has made perfectly clear over the last year, Rosario was anything but dependable during his first season playing for the Gators.

“He had a hip pointer and he was out for 10 days. That’s just mind-boggling to me. Ten days for a hip pointer? My daughter could work through that!”

Donovan uttered those words in October while recalling how frustrated he was with Rosario’s work ethic during the 2011-12 season. A model of inconsistency, Rosario saw just 14.4 minutes per game of playing time and averaged just 6.6 points per contest. It was his inability to be reliable off the court, in practice and on defense that hurt him the most because when Rosario did see time and played responsibly, he proved that he could be an effective part of the team.

That all changed over the summer when Rosario returned to Florida after spending a few months with the Puerto Rico National Team in its quest to earn a place in the 2012 London Olympics. Puerto Rico ultimately failed in its charge, but Rosario learned valuable lessons during his time out of the United States and was humbled by the experience. He returned a changed man with a brand new outlook.

“He’s really grown in a lot of ways,” Donovan said of Rosario on Monday. “He’s come a long, long way, and I’m proud of the progress that he’s made as a player. He would not even have been remotely into a situation last year to do what he is doing this year. He could not even do that. He missed 25 practices. He missed five games. He was in and out of practices. He was hurt. You couldn’t even rely on him.

“Now he’s gotten to a place where you know we can rely on him. He’s leading us in scoring in the league, shooting a pretty good percentage. He cares about winning; he’s trying to play the right way. He’s done some very positive things for us from a year ago.”

Rosario may very well be Donovan’s best work.

Continue Reading » Florida Gators senior guard Mike Rosario: “You got to be accountable for everything you do.”

Tags: Billy Donovan, Casey Prather, Erik Murphy, Kenny Boynton, Mike Rosario, SEC, SEC Championship, Senior Night, Vanderbilt Commodores, Will Yeguete