Start with Lee Humphrey. When Florida beat Ohio State for the 2007 national championship, he made four of his seven three-point attempts and scored 14 points. You can tell the story of that team through Joakim Noah's energy, Al Horford's work inside or Corey Brewer's tournament award. Leave Humphrey out and you have trouble explaining the final score.
The Gators won 84-75. Florida's game report gives the perimeter comparison. The Gators made 10 of 18 threes. Ohio State made four of 23. Whatever else happened in Atlanta, Florida had players capable of turning space into points when a national title was available.
I like that championship as a starting place for a conversation about fit. You can hear that word so often during recruiting that it stops describing anything. Humphrey gives it a job. A team with accomplished frontcourt players still needed someone who could finish possessions from outside.
Staying together left the jobs intact
Noah, Horford, Brewer, Taurean Green and Humphrey had started together on the 2006 champions. Florida's account of their reunion identifies the same five starters on the repeat winners. Keeping that group allowed the Gators to return a working set of relationships alongside the individual talent.
That is the part I would ask a recruit to investigate when a coach talks about building a team. Which responsibilities are already covered? Where does the new player add something? How much of the plan depends on asking somebody to become a different kind of player?
You can collect excellent prospects and still spend a season sorting those questions out. Florida had already answered enough of them to win once. Bringing the starters back gave Billy Donovan another year with players who knew what they had managed together. That was an advantage worth taking seriously, even though another championship remained a difficult assignment.
There is a temptation to turn their decision into a general command that college players should always stay. I would leave the choice with the player. A successful team is one reason to return. Health, opportunity and a professional evaluation also belong in the conversation. Florida's result shows what this particular group accomplished after choosing another year.
The final had more than one answer
Horford led Florida with 18 points and 12 rebounds against Ohio State. Green scored 16. Brewer, named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, had 13 points and eight rebounds. Those figures belong together because they show how many players contributed to the same victory. Nobody had to carry the scoring total alone.
Green's late three also belongs in the story. Florida's report places it after Ohio State cut the margin to six with about five minutes remaining. A perimeter opportunity had an immediate consequence for the championship. Humphrey's four makes and Green's response gave the Gators scoring outside the frontcourt matchup.
This is why I enjoy discussing combinations more than declaring one player a perfect fit in isolation. The useful question is what his teammate gets to do because he is on the floor. Can a guard feed the post? Can an outside shooter make help more expensive? Does a rebounder let the team finish a stop? Those are questions to investigate with game evidence, rather than qualities to award automatically because a roster looks impressive.
CBR's Kentucky shooting and frontcourt discussion takes that approach to a newer pairing. It is a proposal about how players could work together, subject to what actual games show. The 2007 Gators give us a completed season to examine alongside the preseason possibilities.
They shared a team and had separate futures
By June 2007, three members of Florida's title group had been selected among the first nine NBA draft picks. The university's draft report records Horford at No. 3, Brewer at No. 7 and Noah at No. 9. Green and reserve Chris Richard went in the second round.
That helps answer another recruiting worry. A player can contribute to an arrangement that shares the work and still give professional evaluators plenty to assess. Florida offered several different jobs on a very visible team. Its draft night does not prove that sharing the ball will produce a professional career. It does show that individual opportunity and a successful group coexisted for those players.
Humphrey remains essential to the college story regardless of where the draft attention went. If your explanation of a championship becomes a list of the highest selections, you will miss the shooter who made four threes in the final. I would want a recruiting evaluation to leave room for that kind of contribution.
Our Houston recruiting analysis looks at responsibilities a recruit would need to earn. Florida offers a useful reminder to keep the entire lineup in view. One player's opportunity depends partly on the work the others are willing and able to do.
For anyone studying Florida's basketball program, the repeat champions reward a little extra attention to the less spectacular parts of team construction. Read the five names together. Then return to the final and find the points each player supplied.
Humphrey was one of those five names. His contribution survives the end of the tournament and the attention of draft night. Take him out of that lineup and Donovan has another job to fill.
