Yea, the gap. And about the email, I just find it strange for a supposed UF student with planned graduation in 2010 to not be listed in the campus-wide personal directory. I suppose you can make the choice to have your email unlisted, but taking that effort means you have some complex the average person doesn't have.
Oh and...
DULLSVILLE – That's what this place felt like Friday, with the empty seats in the New Orleans Arena outnumbering live bodies until …
Boomp-boomp-boomp.
Boomp-boomp-boomp.
The walls vibrated inside the cinderblock interview room while Purdue coach Matt Painter joylessly discussed Purdue's victory over Arizona. Someone asked the three Purdue players on the dais if it would be an honor to play Florida.
"Well," one said, "they've still got to play Jackson State."
And no one laughed, perhaps because of the disconcerting, boomp-boomp-boomp, and the faint roar emanating from the once-lifeless arena. As one NCAA official later explained after hustling toward the sounds, "I knew either Florida was winning big or something crazy was happening."
It was something crazy all right. Funky crazy. Ear-splitting crazy.
The Jackson State band and basketball team were playing their guts out.
Almost six minutes into the game, Jackson State led Florida 13-8. With 6½ minutes left in the first half, the 16th-seeded Tigers still led 26-25. Boomp-boomp-boomp.
OK, so when the final buzzer sounded, it was Florida 112, Jackson State 69. But if you only saw the score, you missed the fun. And if you only cared about the score, you missed the point.
This was David vs. Goliath – after taking away David's slingshot and tying both of his hands behind his back. This was Jackson State, a No. 16 seed that has never won a game in the NCAA tournament, against Florida, the No. 1 overall seed with a roster full of NBA prospects. But in addition to the nation's second-leading scorer, Jackson State had a not-so-secret weapon – its band, "Sonic Boom of the South."
Early on, caught in the chaos of Tigers and tubas, the Gators were as rattled as the arena walls. Maybe it was the band, that introduced itself by way of a decibel-blaring rendition of "Get Ready," the old Temptations tune, which had the Jackson State fans on their feet, swaying to the funky music and chanting along with the band, "Get ready, get rehhh-dee."
Florida's band members looked as unsettled as the basketball players. Said tuba player Cody Ray, "To tell you the truth, I didn't even know Jackson State had a band."
Which is like the Jackson State point guard saying they didn't know Florida had a basketball team. The Sonic Boom of the South is the Florida of college bands.
For those of you scoring at home, The Sonic Boom – 300 strong at football games but pared down to the 30 allowed by NCAA tournament rules – came loaded with three tubas, five trombones, two French horns, three baritones, nine trumpets, one piccolo, two saxophones, two clarinets, a trap-set drum and a bass drum that put the oomp in the boomp.
Just when you thought the band couldn't possibly get louder, the action on the court helped crank up the volume. You see, there was another surprise. Jackson State thought it had a chance.
There was Catraiva Givens, a point guard about as tall as a tuba, with the gumption – if not the good sense – to attempt to take a charge from 6-foot-10 Florida forward Al Horford. Then came the mastodon, Stanley Turner, generously listed at 285 pounds – perhaps his grade school weight – who bumped Horford as if he were a sumo wrestler.
The crowd went nuts. The band went nuts. Dullsville transformed into New Orleans, and then, sadly, it all came to an end. Sort of.
When Florida pulled ahead late in the first half and the Gator fans broke into chants of "U-F, U-F," the Jackson State fans that had traveled by the busload from Jackson, Miss., came with another ear-splitting rendition of "Get Ready." But as the game progressed, the raucous fans lost their gusto.
Florida started pounding Jackson State harder than the kid who pounded the bass drum for Sonic Boom. And the Gators put on their own show, a medley of dunks and blocked shots and long-range three-pointers, but nothing quite matched the boomp-boomp-boomp and the swaying fans and the little team from Jackson State that played with the same soul and spirit as its band.
Not everybody got it.
Joakim Noah, Florida's star forward, derisively dismissed the The Sonic Boom as "some small little band."
Ray, a tuba player in Florida's band, huffed, "They're a little out of control, a little overdone, like they're trying to prove something."
Of course they were. They were trying to prove they belonged. Trying to electrify the crowd. Trying to put the fun back into the Midwest Regional.
Sure, only minutes into the second half, for all intents and purposes, the game was over. But until the final buzzer sounded, the Jackson State band and its team played on.
But you guys like me anyway (I think?)