Two game notes that deserve their own post

6 February 2008 — rbk

Billy Donovan is phenomenal

Okay, first of all, you win back-to-back national titles and you’re pretty damn good. But what happens when your top 6 players from that team ALL leave at the same time, forcing you to mold a team out of one junior and a bunch of underclassmen?

If you’re Billy Donovan, you turn around and send a damn good team onto the court anyway. I know, we beat them by 22 and they just lost at Arkansas by 19, but you know as well as I do that Florida played a great game last night until we cranked up the buzzsaw. They’ve won some good SEC games and will win some more– the road is just hard on such a young team in this league. They don’t turn the ball over much, they shoot very, very well, and they already run his offense to perfection. The D needs a lot of work, but hey– these guys are just out of puberty. Give them time.

Most teams would be lucky to sniff the NCAA tourney with such a mass exodus of talent. At this point I think the Gators are a lock. They’ll win at least 9 conference games and that will be enough. Donovan has done a masterful job and such a class guy deserves credit. Every win over UF should be cherished.

Ted Valentine is phenomenal(ly idiotic)

Have you ever, in any sport, seen an official that makes himself the focus of a game as much as Teddy V? From pausing before he signals to get as much of the crowd (and cameras) looking at him as possible to gesturing a T on J.P. Prince not once, not twice, not three times but AT LEAST 4 times, getting progressively closer to his face each time . . . the man is a pompous ass and gets as much of the focus to himself as possible. Sorry for the poor vid quality, but someone captured this event with a camcorder.

A little reminder– everyone knows the old adage that if you don’t notice the officials, they’re doing a good job, right? Note that in Sunday’s Super Bowl, the officials played almost no role– perfect. Teddy V, though, doesn’t think his job as an official is to ensure a fair game and stay out of the way. No no, we must watch HIM. He must be important.

He’s taken a major attitude with Bruce many times in Pearl’s 2 1/2 years here, most likely because he knows Bruce upstages him. Last night went beyond the norm, though, even for Teddy. He was openly, noticeably taunting a player. If you could call a technical on a ref, Teddy V would have gotten one in TBA last night.

The most baffling part of all this is that the SEC keeps giving Valentine big, national games to work. He’s terrible– the worst of a lousy group of officials– and yet they keep giving him center stage. He must have dirty pictures of someone in the SEC office. There is no other explanation for how such an incompetent attention whore keeps getting the spotlight.

If you think it’s just UT fans that feel this way about the pompous prick, check the following from a simple google search:

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