The NCAA BB Tourney is a painful time for us Gator fans. In my head I keep hearing old Funny Face Barbara Streisand singing " The Way We were" when the talking heads mention the last school to win back to back titles. Then watching KJ dropping shots all over UK , but not wearing Orange and Blue. Plus seeing former Gator assistant coaches like Dusty May and even Shaka Smart having success in the Show. I still can't figure out how our AD selected our current coach over other more logical candidates.
I wanted to see an upside and I actually thought that if Castleton stayed healthy we could have had a shot at the Show. We most likely would have finished with a winning Conference record, and who knows a 19 or 20 win season? So Golden gets a pass into 2003-24, and maybe he can use his recruiting talent and knowledge of NIL to be successful.
I ask my GC brothers and sisters who have much more knowledge of our BB program, is there hope for next season and beyond? Do we have the right head coach to make us competitive enough again to get us back in the Tournament? Or to use another old movie title is this "As Good As It gets"?
I think the Bball program has been slowly dying since Billy left, which shouldn't be surprising because it was almost always pretty bad before he got here other than a spare year here or there where we got lucky. Heck, we used to hang freaking NIT banners in the o'dome before Billy came along, and I'm not talking just championships, I'm pretty sure there was an "NIT finalist" banner and even one with the various years we made the NIT written on it. The student section is pathetic now compared what it used to be when Billy first got here.
I think that atmosphere is a huge recruiting tool for these players, and it is pretty obvious that there is a huge gap between our program and a program like Kentucky (or even Tennessee and Arkansas). Some people might say, "oh well they have bigger/louder crowds because the team is better or it is more exciting." I don't find that to be true at all. If our team was ranked 25th in the nation you would see our stadium at 70-90% capacity for nearly all the games based on my personal experience from going to games in years that we were "pretty good." Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky (obviously), would be filling their arenas up for every single SEC game or other big game and the students would be going wild in these games. And even in the more minor matchups you would see a bigger and more raucus crowd.
I don't know what the core issue of it is, but I truly believe we have fans that are much more apathetic towards basketball. Maybe if we suck for long enough people will get excited about finally being just "pretty good" again. Maybe that's why Tenn has such rabid football and basketball fans, they have sucked so long and for so hard that they will latch onto any sliver of hope that they can find. We are sort of the antithesis of that. We were at the top and now it's hard to be excited about a barely above par team.
Anyway, TLDR: Our basketball program has had a sucky atmosphere for a long time (compared to better basketball schools) and that hurts our recruiting.