Gators Flunk Gu Pop Quiz

If overlooking your opponent is a preamble to certain doom, Gator-lovin’ hoops fans of Gainesville, Fla., may be setting themselves up for a rabid bite of the Bulldog.

“Who did Gon-zola play last?” asks Ron DeFilippo, an employee at The Swamp, a popular sports bar and haunt favored by University of Florida students.

Sorry, Ron, but the more pregnant question is: “Who does Gon-zola play next?”

The answer - as everybody up here in God’s Country knows - is sixth-seeded Florida in Phoenix on Thursday.

Ron was one of the Gonzaganally challenged Floridians who emphatically flunked my impromptu Monday telephone quiz. I dialed up Gaines-villains to find out what Gonzaga means to those who dwell in a tropical land of Anita Bryant, sink holes bigger than Butte and sun-baked geezers.

“I don’t know what comes to mind when I think of Gonzaga,” says a Florida campus operator. “Certainly not a college.”

For your information, our Catholic college of 5,000 (if you count the future lawsuit-filers at the GU law school) performed an 82-74 exorcism of Stanford Saturday.

The delirious win put Gonzaga into the Sweet 16 for the first time.

Florida’s athletic glories are too numerous to recount.

The Gators made the Final Four in 1994. Yawn. They even won a recent national championship in women’s soccer.

To our humble Jesuit David, the Gators are evil Goliath, a powerhouse mega-university with an enrollment of 42,000.

That’s the collective populations of Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and all the hill folk living up around Ruby Ridge.

Is it any wonder so many of us have turned into instant Zag nuts?

“I don’t have enough bodies to handle the orders,” says a frantic Connie O’Brien, who was fielding a flurry of calls for Sweet 16 T-shirts and ball caps Monday in Gonzaga’s campus bookstore.

She put two callers on hold to talk to me.

How crazy was it? The bookstore stopped taking calls Monday other than souvenir orders. “We couldn’t advertise our school any better than this,” adds O’Brien. “I’m so excited for the guys.”

According to O’Brien, the cargo of new Sweet 16 items ($19.99 each for hats and shirts) will be in the bookstore today.

Meanwhile back in Florida, the merchandise manager for the university bookstore is so pumped he decided not to order any Sweet 16 gear.

“We got stuck with some Final Four” stuff in ‘94, explains Richard Vallance. He later adds, “To be honest with you, I’m not even a Gator fan. I’m from upstate New York.”

Vallance and several other UF fans agreed to participate in my first-ever Gonzaga Challenge.

Question 1. Name Gonzaga’s most famous celebrity.

Campus operator: “John Wayne.”

Carrie Smith, Student Union receptionist and student: “The Pope.”

DeFilippo: “Bugs Bunny.”

(Answer - Dan Monson. Sorry Bing.)

Question 2. Name Gonzaga’s most famous basketball player.

Operator: “I don’t know basketball. I’m just a Gator fan because I was born here.”

Smith: “Scotty Pippen.”

Susan Wilson, Florida University accounting manager: “Michael Jordan.”

DeFilippo: “Hold on a minute. I got a call coming in.” He covers the telephone, but I can still hear him ask his boss, Frank Villante, who answers the question correctly.

“John Stockton,” declares DeFilippo.

“Hey, you cheated,” I tell DeFilippo.

“I had to,” he says, beginning to whine that he knew the answer all along, but just forgot.

DeFilippo apparently forgot about what happens to cheaters. The Minnesota Golden Gophers lost four players over alleged cheating incidents and Gonzaga cleaned their clocks last Thursday, 75-63.

To his credit, DeFilippo and the vermin at The Swamp are trying to get a little rivalry going. This week they are featuring a Gonzaga salad dressing on the menu.

“We renamed the Gorgonzola,” he explains.

Boy, that oughta set the heartburn of competition ablaze.

At Gonzaga’s student cafeteria, diners can show their school spirit by chowing on a Dog Bowl of chili (sorry, Wednesdays only) or the ever popular Bulldog burger.

Unfortunately, there were no special Gator items on menu.

“Oh wait,” says Joan Colliton, a cafeteria worker, pointing to the Gatorade in a nearby cooler. “We do have that in the bottles.”

1. WHAT’S NEXT RALLY THE TROOPS Gonzaga University will hold a send-off rally for the men’s basketball team today at 6 p.m. at Martin Center on the GU campus. The team, bound for the Sweet 16, will fly out for Phoenix immediately following the rally. The Bulldogs play the University of Florida at 4:55 p.m. Thursday at America West Arena in Phoenix.

2. TICKETS GOING, GOING … Quick. What do tickets to Gonzaga’s Sweet 16 game have in common with the Pac-10 entries in this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament? They’re both gone, baby, gone. GU’s allotment of 1,250 tickets to the Thursday game against the University of Florida sold out in 6-1/2 hours Monday, school officials said. The four Pac-10 schools who made the tournament - UCLA, Stanford, Washington and Arizona - all were eliminated in the first two rounds. Gonzaga athletic officials are working with sources across the country to try to come up with more tickets for the game at America West Arena in Phoenix, GU spokesman Dale Goodwin said. If they are successful, an announcement will be made through the media, he said.