Sports
Everything that had to go right for Florida to prepare for a title defense
GAINESVILLE, FLA. — THIS OFFSEASON, months before the Florida Gators could focus on its pursuit of back-to-back national titles, a feat the program had previously achieved in 2006 and 2007, head coach Todd Golden first needed another championship roster.
He had known the best backcourt in America would graduate and push for spots on NBA rosters, but he couldn’t predict Denzel Aberdeen receiving NIL offers that would turn Florida’s new potential leader into what Golden called a “cap casualty,” ultimately departing for Kentucky. At that point, he didn’t know whether Alex Condon would remain in the 2025 NBA draft or return to Gainesville.
Through that draft process, though, not only did Condon decide to return, but he crossed paths with former Arkansas star Boogie Fland and tipped the scales of Florida’s title defense.
“I was like, ‘Come to the Gators. We might have to all run it back,'” Condon told ESPN of their conversation at a Brooklyn Nets workout. “So I don’t know if that swung his decision at all, but seeing him [commit to Florida] really helped me out with my decision.”
Fland clarified: “For sure, it added to my decision, especially when I knew everybody was coming back.”
That fortuitous meeting between Condon and Fland wasn’t the only stroke of luck Golden’s Gators benefited from as they prepared to chase another ring. To have a realistic chance at etching their names next to the John Wooden-era UCLA Bruins as only the second school to achieve a two-peat more than once, Florida needed more dominoes to fall. A chance connection to an Ivy League star and a watch party at Golden’s house were the next foundational pieces in the Gators becoming only the second reigning champion in the past decade to earn a top-three ranking in the following year’s preseason AP Top 25 — expectations that they are collectively embracing.
“I think we need to lean into [the pressure] a little bit because this team at some point is going to fail,” Golden said. “That’s just the bottom line. And I would love to be able to say, we’re going to go 31-0 before the NCAA tournament. That’s not going to happen. I think for us to be the best we can be, we need to, at some point, deal with that — the frustration, the vulnerability, the disappointment — to really grow.
“If we try to protect our guys from that pressure, I’m not sure we’re ever going to be able to experience that.”
THREE DAYS BEFORE Princeton’s season finale, Xaivian Lee was mesmerized, watching Florida flirt with a 100-point game against Alabama from a dorm room in New Jersey.
The two-time All-Ivy League guard couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. There was a Walter Clayton Jr. to Will Richard to Condon whip-around that ended with a dunk. An Alijah Martin slam on a fast break. Thomas Haugh got a finish in transition, too. And Clayton stood out as the maestro of a furious attack.
That’s when Lee began to envision himself in a blue and orange jersey.
“I just remember they were playing really fast and Condon was getting a billion lobs and I thought that it was good offense,” Lee said about watching that game. “It was fun. It was fast-paced, flowing. And everything was open and they were getting up and down the court.”
After the Gators punched their ticket to the Final Four a few weeks later, Lee received a text from someone new. Golden had broken his own rule of not recruiting during the NCAA tournament — he didn’t want potential reports to distract his team — to capitalize on the fact that Lee and Haugh, teammates during prep school, had kept tabs on each other through a group chat, including Lee’s decision to enter the transfer portal.
A week after the confetti fell at the Alamodome, Lee committed to Florida.
Golden’s decision to limit recruiting during the postseason put Florida in a tough spot. By the time his team had cut down the nets after a come-from-behind win over Houston in the title game, he had an inkling that Lee would join the squad, but he still had more work to do. While the frontcourt seemed to be intact after a flurry of NBA-related decisions — with Condon, Haugh and Rueben Chinyelu opting to return — the backcourt still had more questions than answers after Aberdeen’s surprising departure.
Fortunately for the Gators, another elite guard was having second thoughts about his future.
Fland was a five-star prospect who entered the 2024-25 campaign as a projected lottery pick before a thumb injury interrupted his season and, with it, his shot to prove that he could excel at the next level. It didn’t help that NBA teams questioned the measurements of the 6-foot-2 guard. A return to college — and maybe Florida, after his convo with Condon — began to feel like his best move.
“To be honest, I didn’t have a plan of coming back to college basketball,” Fland said. “I was going to tough it out and see what the draft experience was like and see what the scouts were saying. And then when I was in New York doing my predraft workout, I had a private meeting — that became public — with Coach Golden and the staff and the proposal was fantastic … it made me think and self-evaluate about the last year and things that I wasn’t able to accomplish and the things I need to work on.”
The phone kept ringing after Golden and Fland connected, with either Condon or Fland wanting to know whether the other had committed.
“As soon as [Fland] goes in the portal, I’m like, ‘Dude, this is a picture-perfect situation for both sides,'” Golden said. “It just really is. We need a point guard and another ball handler with [Lee]. We needed one more really talented guy and we had what I thought were all the other pieces really in place. We had the whole frontcourt back and for [Fland], I’m like, ‘This guy is going to be so much better this year just from last year’s experience.”
AS HE LOOKED at his roster over the summer and thought about its chance to make history, Golden had to remind himself that most of his players might not understand the past.
“Some of them hadn’t been born yet,” he said about the program’s 2006 and 2007 national title runs, a stretch led by Al Horford, Corey Brewer and Joakim Noah, a trio of future lottery picks and NBA standouts.
He aimed to solidify the magnitude of the moment by inviting the team to his house to watch “SEC Storied: Repeat after Us,” an ESPN documentary about the program’s two-peat, once practice began in August.
“I wanted them to understand how tight that team really was and about their relationships and that it was about more than making money in the NBA,” Golden said. “They loved each other, man. That was why they were really, really good. I wanted to show them the documentary because the second year was really hard for those guys. It was tough.”
At the Final Four, Condon got in touch with Horford and visited Noah’s house later that summer. Connecting with them helped Condon understand where this team could cement itself in the annals of Florida men’s basketball history if they can accomplish what Horford and Noah’s Gators did almost 20 years ago.
“I think creating a legacy is something we want to do,” Condon said.
Emulating the bond that the 2005-07 rosters had is why the 2025-26 Florida Gators have all been intentional about building their chemistry this offseason. There have been frequent trips to Dragonfly, a local sushi joint, but some members of the team prefer a nearby hibachi restaurant with unlimited portions. The team also went snorkeling with turtles in a den on a recent Sunday, a first-time experience for many of them.
“[Lee] and [Fland] have done a good job of hanging out with us off the court and starting to build those connections,” added Condon. Scattered around Golden’s office are trinkets yielded by the bond of last year’s group.
There is a framed key to the city that was presented to the team by Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward when the Gators returned with their new hardware. In another frame, there is a proclamation from the U.S. Senate that commemorates the day they won the program’s third national title, and a signed letter from President Donald Trump that Golden picked up on the customary trip to the White House.
But it’s the sea of shoes that have arrived in droves — 32 pairs, to be exact — that align his office and highlight the role Florida now plays in the Jordan Brand hierarchy, also stamping the benefits of a national title run.
“I don’t know a ton about shoes,” Golden said. “But the kids love that s—.”
When he was the head coach at San Francisco, Golden said he had just four pairs of shoes in his office. That fortune, though, also comes with a pressure that is magnified with his entire frontcourt back — 7-foot-1 center Micah Handlogten (2.6 PPG) should play a bigger role this season — and a new pair of elite guards.
Lee and Fland both thrive with the ball in their hands, but they’ll have to share the load this season and find the same synergy that anchored last year’s backcourt. The frontcourt will also demand a few tweaks. Haugh will have to showcase a perimeter game and versatility he mostly demonstrated in spurts a year ago. Chinyelu and Handlogten will play more significant roles for a deep frontcourt, too. Are they ready for that? Condon was never the same after he suffered a midseason ankle injury last year, though he’s doing extra workouts on a stationary bike after every practice to increase his durability.
At this time last year, Florida had not yet been viewed as a real contender. The fanfare came later. That’s the difference between the two iterations of these teams: The expectations for 2025-26 were set at a high level before the season even tipped.
Golden knows the Gators can either run from them, or — like the 2007 and 2008 national title teams — use those great expectations to make history.
“We flew under the radar for a long time last season,” Golden said. “This year … we’re going to be preseason top-five most places, so we’re not going to have the ability to do that. And I want the guys that are back to feel the pressure and the pride of trying to repeat.”
The ball is tipped
And there you are
You’re running for your life
You’re a shooting star
David Barrett was sitting in a bar when the idea came to him. The 31-year-old musician had spent his entire young adult life grinding as a performer in the watering holes of Michigan. College bars. Dive bars. Even the occasional honky tonk. On this particular spring night in 1986, it was an East Lansing establishment known as the Varsity Inn and his set — a performance heard by perhaps two dozen patrons — was done.
And all the years
No one knows
Just how hard you worked
But now it shows
Barrett was unwinding over a drink. With one eye he watched the TV over the bar, watching Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics running over another unfortunate NBA opponent. His other eye was affixed on the woman who had served him that drink.
“The waitress was so beautiful, I thought, well, I’m a songwriter, so perhaps my only chance to catch her attention was through poetry,” Barrett says today. “If I could express to her the poetry of Larry Bird’s abilities at the height of his career, this special moment in his life creating so many special moments on the court, perhaps she would be impressed.”
Well, was she?
“No, she was rather busy.”
No offense to Barrett, but we should all be thankful that she had more critical tasks than posting up at the bar to admire the singer’s basketball spoken word. Because it was within that space of lonely time that, inspired by his own lesson about moments, he scribbled three words onto a cocktail napkin. The following morning, he expanded those words into a chorus, this time onto a stack of napkins at a brunch spot, The Knight Cap Too.
In one shining moment,
it’s all on the line
One shining moment,
there frozen in time
For nearly 40 years, those lyrics and the tune Barrett wrote to accompany them have been the soundtrack of our college basketball lives. On Monday night, shortly after the men’s college basketball national champion is crowned, the winning team will lock arms on the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium, gaze up at the jumbotron and soak up a three-minute montage of clips from this year’s tournament, set to Barrett’s song, building to the inevitable 30-second climax of images of them winning the very title that they are very much still celebrating.
“There are so many moments that make up a championship celebration,” explains Mike Krzyzewski, who won five national titles as Duke’s head coach. “There’s the moment the game ends. There’s hugging your family. There’s cutting down the nets. The moment of being handed the trophy. But the moment it feels real is when they play ‘One Shining Moment.'”
“It’s this literal life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing, watching that video set to that song,” adds John Calipari, who won it all with Kentucky in 2012. “It’s like watching a movie of your life, that you wrote, with the people who wrote it with you.”
“You also don’t just watch it if you win it,” says Tom Izzo, who celebrated with Michigan State in 2000. “If you are there at the game, you wait to see it. If you are home on the sofa, you wait to see it. The season isn’t done until you hear that song.”
And to think, the NFL almost intercepted it right out from under college basketball’s nose.
For that moment, let’s go back to ’86. That’s when Barrett met sports reporter Armen Keteyian. Keteyian, like Barrett, was a native of the Detroit area and had moved to New York to write for Sports Illustrated. Whenever Barrett went East, he’d stay at Keteyian’s apartment. During one of those visits, the two were watching the NBA Finals on TV — Larry Bird again, doing work against the Houston Rockets — and Barrett mentioned his basketball song from the napkins.
Keteyian told Barrett that if he got the song recorded, he’d love to hear it.
A few weeks later, a cassette was waiting in Keteyian’s mailbox, tracks laid down in a make-do studio used for local advertising jingles. The reporter loved it, so he walked the tape over to a colleague in TV production.
“One day my phone rang and the gentleman on the other end said he was Doug Towey and he was the creative director at CBS Sports,” Barrett recalls now, his throat catching to hold back tears. “Of course, I didn’t believe him at first. He sounded like a buddy of mine pulling a prank. But over the next 15 minutes, I made a friend for life over a phone call that changed my life.”
Towey, a sports television legend — the theme music for The Masters, the iconic CBS Sports college sports themes, you name it and Towey was probably behind it — had fallen in love with the song and told Barrett that he really, really wanted to use it for … Super Bowl XXI?
“Yes, it was a basketball song, but you know what you do not do in that situation?” Barrett says. “You do not say no to CBS. Why yes, Doug Towey, please use my song for the Super Bowl!”
CBS even flew Barrett out to Pasadena to watch the matchup between John Elway’s Denver Broncos and Lawrence Taylor’s New York Giants. During his postgame report, sportscaster Brent Musburger even quoted the song. “The New York Giants, their first Super Bowl triumph, a shining moment they will never forget…” The time had arrived. Barrett’s big break was happening!
But it never ran. The Super Bowl-winning Giants were a little too chatty in their postgame locker room interviews, so the broadcast ran long, and time ran out. Barrett was crushed — until a second call from Towey.
“He said they wanted to use it for March Madness,” Barrett’s voice nearly explodes as he tells the story. “So, my little song about basketball, you know what? It figured out a way to make sure it was still a basketball song.”
On March 30, 1987, “One Shining Moment” made its debut in the most perfectly shiny momentous manner.
Indiana’s Keith Smart had stroked a drifting corner jump shot with four seconds remaining to defeat Syracuse for the championship. CBS Sports editors scrambled to add nine shots from that game to the end of the montage they had already pieced together throughout the month. The seventh of those images was Smart’s dagger.
From a clunky makeshift video edit room next to the CBS production truck in the bowels of the Superdome, the instant those shots were added, the videotape was popped and sprinted by hand via a panicked young producer to the end of that truck, where tape machines had just spent hours turning around instant replays and interview clips for the telecast. It got crammed into one of those machines, cued, and ready to play.
Once again, it was Musburger who did the lead-in honors. And this time it aired.
“The idea of the song, that one moment can change everything. Well, that’s what happened to me in that moment,” says Barrett, who has since composed themes for CBS, ABC and PBS, melodic backdrops for the Olympics, U.S. Open tennis, the PGA Championship, and a documentary about C.S. Lewis. He’s won two Emmys.
His go-to joke now is to say: “After all those years, suddenly I had talent!”
Since that night, CBS Sports and now TNT have aired 38 editions of “One Shining Moment” performed by four different singers. Barrett himself did the honors over the first seven editions before Towey recruited Philadelphia soul legend Teddy Pendergrass for a new version. Bennett’s vocals returned in 2000, along with a bluesier overhaul of the tune. Two years after that, Barrett received another call from Towey, asking how he’d feel if Luther Vandross were to give the song a spin. Barrett said of course and asked when it would happen. Towey, clearly having already made up his mind before the call, told Barrett that Vandross was slated to be in the studio that very night.
Vandross laid down his vocals in the winter of 2002, captured by CBS cameras to be intercut with the hoops highlights in true music video fashion. The following spring Vandross suffered a massive stroke that forever altered his voice, meaning that “One Shining Moment” was the final song recorded by the legendary artist.
It has been Luther’s song ever since, with the exception of 2010, when Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson’s rendition was beloved for its sound but criticized because the internet claimed it was imbalanced, with too much of her and not enough college basketball. (At 3:12, it’s only a few seconds longer than average, and Hudson is featured for a total of about eight seconds.)
Screening all 38 editions of “One Shining Moment” (thanks, Internet!) is a history lesson not just on college basketball, but television production. Grainy standard definition video transitions into 4K HD as majestically as the images of 1980s feathered hairstyles morph into low burst fades. The production process has evolved not unlike the game being played on the floor of the arena. Digitized and fast-paced, with the ability to be nimble on the fly like UConn and Michigan on the break. But the spirit of how it is pieced together hasn’t changed at all.
“We have a dedicated team that travels to the Final Four. They are on site,” explains Drew Watkins, SVP and Creative Director of TNT Sports, from the sprawling TV production compound that sits outside the south gate of Lucas Oil Stadium.
Watkins has been with TNT since 2000; before that he was an entry-level producer at ESPN. On Monday night, he will be keeping an eye on his on-site producer and editor, George Adams and Chris Vining.
“They’re in one of our edit trucks and are linked in with the studio and the game production truck,” Watkins says of how it will all go down as the clock ticks down on the title game. “So, when we’re editing those plays, and we’re filling in those last few moments and winners are being decided and ‘One Shining Moment’ is minutes away from airing, there is a team on site in the TV compound that is putting those shots together, talking to the broadcast trucks to make sure everything is on track.”
There will actually be two edit suites running simultaneously, just in case. Because all it takes is one power outage, one video glitch or one computer deciding that it’s a great time for a restart, to turn the dream of Barrett’s song into one nightmare moment. Redundancy is a producer’s best friend. No one wants to be the person who ended a four-decade streak of making air.
“The good news is that we have backups in place,” Watkins said. “The better news is that nobody’s having to pop a tape and run it across a parking lot anymore.”
Once that final shot is added and the final click of the mouse sends the finished product to the truck, Adams, Vining, Watkins and their colleagues make sure to pause and watch their work go out into the world, collapsed back into the chairs of their respective production trucks, just like the 20-plus million viewers at home.
Meanwhile, the viewing of “One Shining Moment” as it airs on the arena’s big screen always feels downright intimate, even on a tiny basketball floor situated in the center of a 70,000-seat NFL stadium-turned-basketball gym.
That’s the part that chokes up Krzyzewski, Calipari and Izzo when they talk about it. The part that former players always remember as the pinnacle of their first minutes as champions.
On Monday night, the man who brought us the song will be right there with them. Because it’s his favorite part, too: David Barrett’s literal “One Shining Moment.”
“People ask me all the time which ‘One Shining Moment’ is my favorite one to watch, but I can’t answer that. That’s impossible,” he said on Saturday morning as he prepared to attend the semifinal games with his wife, Tracy. (No, she’s not the waitress from East Lansing, though that server, Jan Shoemaker, and Barrett were eventually reunited through a mutual friend.)
Tracy is a Michigan alum, and she and David still live in the Detroit area, where they raised two girls. As soon as they arrived in Indianapolis, they purchased some Block M Final Four gear before they witnessed the Wolverines’ devastation of the Arizona Wildcats to officially become the favorites to win the national title.
“No, I do not have a favorite ‘One Shining Moment,'” Barrett repeated. Then he laughed. “But Monday night, if we get to watch the home team watch themselves celebrate a championship, set to my little basketball song, well…”
That would be a moment.
“Yes, it would.”
INDIANAPOLIS — Duke star freshman Cameron Boozer, a projected top-five pick in the 2026 NBA draft, said he suffered multiple fractures around one of his eyes during his team’s loss to UConn in the Elite Eight.
Boozer did not offer specifics about the injury but said he decided against surgery only two months before the NBA draft.
“I have a couple of fractures, but I’m all good,” Boozer said as he accepted The Associated Press and United States Basketball Writers Association player of the year awards. “I’m just going through the healing process. It hurt in the game, but I wish the outcome would have been better, but that’s not really what I’m here to focus on. We had a great year. Like I said, it’s an individual award, but I wouldn’t be here without my teammates and my coaches.”
During Duke’s 73-72 loss to UConn on March 29 — decided on Braylon Mullins‘ 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds to play — Boozer took an elbow to the face as he drove to the rim on 7-foot-1 center Eric Reibe. Soon after the play, Boozer’s right eye began to swell and a Duke trainer applied a soda can to his face while he sat on the bench.
Depending on its severity, the eye injury could impact Boozer’s standing in the NBA draft. He is one of the most decorated players in college basketball history, but he has faced scrutiny about whether he has the next-level physical tools to compete against bigger, stronger and more athletic players in the NBA.
The 6-9, 250-pound forward said he is ready to “win” in the NBA, no matter where he’s picked.
“I think I’m just a winning player, all-around player. I think I impact the game in so many different ways,” Boozer said. “And I think my competitiveness translates to any level. I think any team who takes a chance on me is going to be very happy with the results they get from it.”
Boozer admitted that he had a lot of emotions accepting awards in Indianapolis, the site of this year’s Final Four, a week after his team had been eliminated by the Huskies, who will face Michigan in the national title game Monday night. But those emotions were secondary to his feelings after his twin brother, Cayden Boozer, faced backlash on social media following his turnover that preceded Mullins’ game-winning shot in the loss.
“First of all, I’d like to say it’s definitely nasty, but that’s not the reason, that one play is not the reason we lost,” Cameron Boozer said. “But just being there for him, obviously it’s tough. It’s going to be hard for anyone to go through that. There is not really that much I can say to make him feel better. We’re all hurting as a team, but we’re going to get through it together. We’re a super-connected group. It’s definitely a hard moment, but he’s a tough guy. We’re all tough. It’s going to make us so much better going forward. So it’s something you’ve got to take on a chin and learn and grow from.”
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The New York Islanders have fired head coach Patrick Roy despite being in a tight playoff race.
Islanders GM Mathieu Darche announced the change from Roy to Peter DeBoer, who was fired by the Dallas Stars in June 2025.
The move comes with just four games left in the regular season for the Islanders, who sit on a four-game losing streak entering Sunday. And the streak comes with seven losses in their last 10 games.
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Head coach Patrick Roy of the New York Islanders manages bench duties during the first period against the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, on March 21, 2026. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
As the NHL standings sit entering Sunday, the Islanders, who were once comfortably in position to reach the Stanley Cup Playoffs, sit third in the Metropolitan division with 89 points, which would give them a slot if the season ended today.
However, the Philadelphia Flyers (88 points) and Columbus Blue Jackets (88) are gunning for that third and final divisional spot in the few games remaining. As a result, the Islanders are making the surprise change in hopes DeBoer can get them into the playoffs over the next week.
HOCKEY OFFICIALS REJECT CANADIAN COACH’S COMPLAINTS OF 3-ON-3 OVERTIME RULES AFTER OLYMPIC LOSS
Roy’s exit comes after a loss where the Carolina Hurricanes, who already secured a playoff spot, out shot them 40-16 in a 4-3 loss for New York.
The Islanders are not the only NHL team making a change at head coach with just days left in the regular season. The Vegas Golden Knights axed Bruce Cassidy from his role, hiring veteran coach John Tortorella on an interim basis last week.
Patrick Roy coaches the New York Islanders during a game against the New Jersey Devils at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., on Feb. 5, 2026. (Rich Graessle/NHLI)
Like the Islanders, the Golden Knights (86) have the third and final position in their division, though the race is a bit more comfortable for Vegas with a five-point lead over the Los Angeles Kings.
But, while Tortorella is an interim move for Vegas, the Islanders are keeping DeBoer intact heading into the 2026-27 campaign.
DeBoer has been head coach of five different franchises over his extensive coaching career. He owns a career 662-447-152 record in 1,261 games with the Florida Panthers, New Jersey Devils, San Jose Sharks, Golden Knights and the Stars, who he led for the past three seasons before his firing.
Head coach Patrick Roy of the New York Islanders looks on during a game against the Philadelphia Flyers at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., on April 3, 2026. (Steven Ryan/NHLI)
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DeBoer wasn’t with a team this season, but he’s stepping up for the opportunity to help turn the tides on Long Island, as the Islanders hope to make the playoffs after missing out the previous two seasons.
While DeBoer hasn’t coached this season, he was a part of Jon Cooper’s Team Canada staff for the Milan Cortina Olympics earlier this year.
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Inside the origin story of ‘One Shining Moment’ — the highlight of March Madness
Duke star Cam Boozer says he suffered fractures around eye
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