Gators Put The Clamps on UCLA's Offense

INDIANAPOLIS, April 3 -- All last week, the Florida men's basketball team had to listen to how George Mason was America's favorite team; it coolly dispatched the Patriots in the national semifinals on Saturday night. The Gators spent a day listening to how UCLA was the better defensive team playing in the national final; then they used a terrific defensive effort to beat the Bruins, 73-57, on Monday night.

"Everybody was talking about their defense," Florida sophomore swingman Corey Brewer said. "We proved who's the best defensive team and we're national champions."

No team scored more than 62 points against the Gators in the tournament, and UCLA's 57 points marked only the third time in the shot clock era that a team failed to reach 60 in the championship game.

As they have throughout the tournament, the Gators made it difficult to shoot from long range. UCLA made only 3 of 17 shots from beyond the three-point arc; it was the fourth straight game in which a team shot worse than 25 percent from three-point range against Florida. The Gators' last four opponents -- the others being Georgetown, Villanova and George Mason -- were 14 for 72 (19.4 percent) from beyond the arc.

The Gators forced 12 turnovers (seven of which were steals), and they blocked 10 shots -- six by Joakim Noah and two by Al Horford -- to set a team record for the championship game. UCLA shot only 36.1 percent.

"All of them are long and quick, so you've got to be careful when you're dribbling the ball," said UCLA guard Darren Collison, who had three of the Bruins' 12 turnovers. "You can't stop, so you're always having a full head of speed down the court, and when you get down to the basket, you have to be under control. We had a lot of charges and we had too many turnovers, plain and simple."

Florida's players seemed to be everywhere on defense. Brewer ran down UCLA guards from behind, and poked the ball away. When the Bruins sped up, the Gators stepped in front and took charges; Brewer and senior forward Adrian Moss each drew one in the first six minutes of the game. When the Bruins finally did get close to the basket, they had to worry about the long arms of Noah or Horford.

"Even sometimes when you don't get blocks, you intimidate them," said Noah, who was named the Final Four's most outstanding player. "We're like trees out there. At the end of the day, it's not about getting blocked shots, it's about getting W's."

The Gators have always had the potential to be a very tough defensive team. Brewer (6 feet 8), Horford (6-9) and Noah (6-11) all have long arms, excellent quickness and leaping ability. The problem was, they didn't always make the smart defensive play.

Horford and Noah, for instance, would often leave their man and try to block a shot they had no chance of blocking, leaving the Gators with no one in position for a rebound. Brewer would lunge for a steal, fail to come up with the ball, and take himself out of the play.

Right around the start of January, however, Florida Coach Billy Donovan noticed that Florida was becoming a more disciplined, more accountable and more reliable defensive team.

"I don't want to say that [the Gators were] undisciplined, but we didn't understand the concept of when to go block shots, when to go for steals," Donovan said Sunday. "We needed a little bit of that. We've gotten better as the season has gone on, through watching film, of understanding what we can and cannot do defensively."

Brewer did a terrific job of shadowing the Bruins' leading scorer, Arron Afflalo. The 6-5 guard missed 7 of 10 shots and committed three turnovers. Afflalo, who averaged 16.2 points heading into the game, didn't record his first field goal until 31 minutes into the game. By that point, his team trailed by 20 points.

"I was just playing solid D," Brewer said. "I was following him on double screens, I wasn't letting him get anything easy. . . . I was talking to him a little bit, I was doing everything, I was hitting, I was biting, doing anything I could to get the win."