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Florida hopes Sunday won’t be the last time it cuts down nets in March (or maybe even April), and so just maybe the wonderfully odd thing that occurred in Nashville will actually happen again.
After Florida took apart Tennessee, 86-77, to win the SEC Tournament title, it was time to celebrate. There’s nothing unusual about that, and there’s surely nothing unusual about a college basketball team celebrating a conference tournament title with the traditional cutting down of the nets.
All of that happened, right on schedule, but there was certainly something highly unusual about the Gators’ party at one of the baskets of Bridgestone Arena. It had everything to do with 1 player, and that 1 player stands an eye-popping 7-foot-9. It was towering freshman Olivier Rioux, who is a center, in case you were wondering.
When the 19-year-old native of Terrebonne, Quebec, took his turn to cut down the net, well, the ladder that everyone else uses became a prop. Because he didn’t need it. Rioux stepped up with the scissor and did the honors without needing the ladder.
Rioux raised his hand in triumph after he cut the net and had a wry smile on his face, probably knowing what everyone else on his team and the celebrating Gators fans were thinking at that moment.
Florida can only hope it reaches similar heights again as March continues and, just maybe, the Gators take their party into April.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
