It was great to return to the O’Connell Center in my seventh and final year as a student at the University of Florida. The UAA graciously provided me a lunch (although the guy refused to give me BOTH a hamburger AND a hotdog) and a spiffy new “Rowdy House” white T-shirt. I looked around at all the younger students and thought about how spoiled these youngsters truly are. During the Zook days, I could not wait for Basketball season to begin because usually the football team had racked up multiple losses and could not even book a trip to Atlanta. Nowadays, Basketball seasons starts quietly, and the football team has yet to lose a game in middle November.

I hope this season starts a new era in Gator Basketball. I started here at 2003, and I lived through three previous eras: Matt Walsh and co.’s early exits from the NCAAs, Joakim Noah and gang’s championship domination, and most recently Nick Calathes’ squads late season collapses landing them in the NIT. How will we describe the Kenny Boynton and Vernon Macklin era? Hopefully without the letters N, I and T.

Stetson came to town looking to pull off the “Rider over Mississippi St.” opening night upset. But the Gators played strongly, and Chandler Parsons team-high 14 points led UF to a 74-46 victory. The real story of the night was when Parsons hit the team’s lone three-pointer of the night with 32 seconds remaining in the game. If that shot would not have fallen, it would have ended the Gators 579 game streak of making at least one three-pointer in every game.

The Gators backcourt looked very promising on the night. The speedy combination of Erving Walker and Kenny Boynton created multiple turnovers and subsequent runouts. Walker (“Official Player Of This Blog”), had a beautiful play where he stripped the Stetson point guard and then threw an alley-oop from his knees to a streaking Ray Shipman. Speaking of Shipman, the man must have attended an overnight, two-week Julius Irving dunking camp this summer, because despite his 6’5’’ frame, Ship only sees dunks when he heads to the basket. The major negative from the little guys was the aforementioned 1-13 from behind the arc stat.

The frontcourt also looked promising, and as I am sure I will discuss at nauseam for the next few months, the arrival of Georgetown-transfer C Vernon Macklin allows the some of the undersized forwards a chance to play more natural positions. For example, F Alex Tyus played marvelously with a double-double of 12 points and a team-high 13 rebounds. Freshman F Erik Murphy had a solid outing and came off the bench early and often. Mysteriously, Kenny Kadji only played six minutes, and I will monitor his situation for the next report.

Up next for the Gators is Georgia Southern, the first of two more easy games before FSU comes to town next Tuesday the 24th. The GSU Eagles first game was a domination of NAIA opponent Reinhardt University, but they will face the South Carolina Gamecocks on Monday night before heading to Gainesville for the Wednesday night battle (7pm) with the Gators.