Orange and Blue Hue » Florida Beats Georgia, 83-57

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It was a decent victory against a last-place team in the league. It brings the Gators to within 4 wins of breaking last-season’s pre-NIT mark. From a team-oriented perspective, there was little that was remarkable in terms of establishing tournament credentials.

But, seriously, Nick, two turnovers? Two whole turnovers? I know you had the game of your life and was clearly the best player on the court, but you still had two turnovers and no steals or blocks.

With that bit of nit-picking/schaenfreude out of the way, from an individual perspective, I consider this a very important game for the PG. As in the kind of game where he stops becoming a very good player and becomes a great one.

You see, folks, in that victory, Nick scored 20 points, tied a career-high with 13 rebounds, and dished out 10 assists. For the record, that marks his second triple-double in as many seasons, and now establishes him as the school’s all-time leader in that statistic.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, those things are even harder to get in college than in the NBA. And now Nick has two of them.

Want further proof that the mark is significant? No player in the combined histories of Duke, North Carolina, and UCLA has ever achieved multiple 3-D’s.

Not Grant Hill, James Worthy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Elton Brand, Vince Carter, Reggie Miller, Antawn Jamison, Christian Laettner, Tyler Hansbrough, Kevin Love, J.J. Redick, or even Michael Jordan.

Granted, Kansas has Wilt Chamberlain on record for 2 triple-double, although he played before assists and block shots were recorded NCAA stats. And no, none of the aforementioned schools have a player with 2-D’s even if you include the pre-stat games.

Maybe it’s fawning too much over number, but folks, you just don’t see this kind of production everyday.

Dare I say it, it’s (gulp) Tim Tebow-esque.

And on a side note, Nick needs just 8 assists to move into 8th place on the school’s career assist list, and he could finish as high as third by the time this season is over.

Enjoy him before he’s gone, fellas.

5 Comments so far

Outstanding performance by Nick. Great team effort plus the good guys shot 10-12 (83.3%) from the free throw line. This won’t be his last triple double in a Gator jersey…..at least I hope it’snot. Bring on the VOLS this weekend.

Another amazing night for Nick. We have guys who can step up on this team… now if we could get Calathes, Parsons and Tyus all clicking on the same night we’d be a hard team for anyone in the country to beat.

This team needs the shots to fall to win, but they are playing pretty good defense right now, too. I like our chances of making the tourney.

To be fair, Alex Tyus and Chandler Parsons also had excellent games.

But Nick showed yesterday that he was, by far, the best player on the entire court.

More and more, Tyus reminds me a lot of Udonis Haslem. The NBA version of Udonis Haslem.

And, dare I say it, Calathes reminds me of a slightly smaller Grant Hill.

The versaility, the unselfishness, and even the jersey number are alike.

Nice game, fun to watch one without that sinking feeling the whole time.

And welcome back Schadenfreude.

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