BALANCE PART OF FLORIDA KEYS TEAMWORK CARRIES GATORS INTO FINAL FOUR.

Byline: Matthew Kredell Staff Writer

For every spotlight-capturing Cinderella team in the NCAA Tournament, there has to be an underachiever. The past five seasons, Florida topped that list.

Each season, the Gators failed to live up to their seed or get past the second round despite highly talented teams. In 2002, they were upset by mid-major Creighton in the first round. Manhattan ousted Florida to open the 2004 tournament.

This year's young, inconsistent team looked like another one ripe for the upset.

With the amazing run of Saturday's opponent, George Mason, the unlikelihood of the Gators being in this Final Four has been overshadowed.

``I felt like this year's team would be great to coach, a fun team to coach,'' Florida coach Billy Donovan said. ``They would be a team that would play unselfishly, play together. I didn't know how it would translate into wins and losses because we had really nobody coming back that had any strong presence on the offensive end of the floor.''

Florida's top two scorers from last season, Anthony Roberson and Matt Walsh, left early for the NBA though they didn't even go in the first round.

The Gators entered the season with one junior and four sophomore starters. The expectations Florida has carried since making it to the NCAA championship game in 2000 were downgraded. The Gators weren't even ranked in the Associated Press preseason top 25.

Then Florida started the season with 17 consecutive victories and climbed to No. 2, though none of the wins were against ranked teams.

Just when it looked like the Gators were onto something, their youth showed. Florida finished the regular season 7-6.

Then the team went out and won the Southeastern Conference Tournament, finally beating a ranked team in regular-season conference champion LSU.

With the inconsistency of youth, the third-seeded Gators looked like a team that could do well or be knocked out at any step in the NCAA Tournament.

But this year's team proved to have something the teams of the past five years did not.

In a decade at Florida, Donovan has recruited nine McDonald's All- Americans to the school. That was one of the reasons why the early NCAA exits were so disappointing.

But those teams often depended on a couple players to do all the scoring. This year's team - with only forward Corey Brewer receiving the prep honor - had the balance where teams couldn't take away one or two guys, a key to tournament longevity.

``We have a lot of different people that can go out and get 10 or 15 (points) a night, and that's tough for other teams to match up against,'' forward Chris Richard said. ``They might focus on two or three people when we have others.''

Florida has five players averaging in double figures during the tournament. Forwards Al Horford and Joakim Noah, a sophomore who has become the star of the tournament, have dominated on the inside. Brewer, Lee Humphrey and Taurean Green have stroked the ball well from the outside.

``It's a great feeling when you have a lot of doubters and prove them wrong,'' Noah said. ``I think it made us a tighter unit at the end of the day.''

With all first seeds out of the tournament before the Final Four for the first time since 1980, Florida enters as the favorites.

With the first basketball title in school history, the program could finally climb completely out of the shadow of Florida's famous football team.

``I think we will always be remembered, whether we win (the title) or not,'' Richard said. ``But, if we win, we may go down as the best Gator basketball team ever. It may be that other teams (in Florida history) had more talent than us. But, in terms of accomplishment, no other team has won a national championship.''

Matthew Kredell, [phone]

matthew.kredell(at)dailynews.com

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Florida head coach Billy Donovan will be guiding his second team to the NCAA Tournament national semifinals since 2000.

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