Brewer, Florida survive Georgetown
MINNEAPOLIS -- They may be kids, but they can play, and now they are 40 minutes away from an improbable appearance in the Final Four.
Talkin' about Florida, which started the season somewhere in the top 40 (maybe) after losing some key, misguided veterans to the lure of the NBA, and which depends on four sophomores to get the job done. But they all came up big last night, none more than guard Corey Brewer, whose falling-down, baseline, old-fashioned 3-point play was the go-ahead basket in a 57-53 conquest of Georgetown in the Minneapolis Regional semifinals.
''I want to thank Corey Brewer for saving my life," said fellow soph Joakim Noah, who had missed a layup that set in motion the forces that created the winning bucket. ''He got me a wide-open layup and I missed it."
Noah had no need to apologize for anything. He had 15 points and 10 rebounds, throwing in five blocks as a little bonus. He provided an energy lift at the start of the second half that the Gators could not have survived without. And there was very little resembling an easy anything in this hard-fought game.
Neither team was able to shake the other in a game whose biggest second-half margin was 6 (36-30, Florida). Florida likes to get up and down the floor, but Georgetown kept the Gators locked up in the second half. But Georgetown likes to slice-and-dice you in the half court with its Princeton offense, and Florida wouldn't allow that to happen, either.
''I was really pleased with our guys," said Florida coach Billy Donovan. ''Georgetown only had two back-door layups. But we had to defend about 150 back-door layups."
The game was tied at 49 with 3:23 remaining, and then things really got interesting, with lead exchanges on four consecutive possessions. Florida was leading, 52-51, after a Lee Humphrey 3-pointer when Georgetown came up with the kind of hoop that sends coaches into new professions. It wasn't as if it were Ashanti Cook's intention to bank that foul-line jumper. It just happened.
That could have been the winning hoop, however. But it was trumped by the whatever-it-was that Brewer manufactured after Noah missed that layup and Al Horford dug out the offensive rebound.
''Al took the ball off the glass and it came to me," said Brewer, a 6-3 guard. ''I really didn't see the guy. I spun and the guy grabbed my arm. I threw it up and it went in." He saw it go in while sitting on the floor.
''That's the way these games go," said Donovan, whose team will play Villanova tomorrow afternoon for the regional title. ''Crazy things can happen, and I've been on both sides of it."
