Horschel has always been fun to watch and a great quote, but there was never any reason for someone other than the papers in North Central Florida to ask him questions until he went on this run that has elevated him to third on the money list.

On Wednesday, he was his entertaining self in the media room at TPC Sawgrass.

On his scholarship to Florida (he received book money, that’s it): “It wasn’t like we come from money. I remember my parents were sort of playing devil’s advocate a little bit. And I don’t like people playing devil’s advocate when I have my mind set on something. I remember I was upset and I started crying. I was like, man, I want to go to Florida.”

On his father’s promise that he would take him to the course if he could hit the ball over a canal in the backyard: “I was maybe four or five. I finally hit it over the creek and I just waited outside the whole time until my dad came home. Another story, I hit it over the house the first time and I said, OK, I’m going to hit it back over the house and I put one through the living room window. Ran into the house, threw my club into the garage. Dad comes in and goes, ‘Did you just hit the ball through the window?’ I said no, I think that was Brian. I blamed it on my younger brother Brian.”

On his sports psychologist: “He understands (emotions) are my personality. I’m never going to be a flatline guy. It’s not going to change. I can’t change it.”

Yeah, we could use some more Billy Horschels on the PGA Tour. And fewer Vijay Singhs.

1. If you were like me, you thought Ohio State was going to pull it out Saturday night when they whittled a 20-point lead down to three with 2:45 to play. Give Wichita State credit for hanging on for the win. That’s the thing about this tournament — you’re always one bad-shooting night away from being eliminated. Ohio State, which had won 11 straight games, went 5-of-25 from 3-point range.

2. I know it’s difficult to prepare for the Syracuse zone with only a day to prepare but there is no excuse for Marquette’s miserable offensive performance. If Syracuse’s zone was so impossible to play against, why is this the first trip to the Final Four in 10 years for Jim Boeheim? Marquette missed a lot of open shots. Still, Syracuse has limited its opponents to 45.8 points a game in the tournament.

3. Hmm, Steve Alford to UCLA? Seems like a good fit. But it says a lot about the job that Shaka Smart and Brad Stevens turned them down. And what was all this Billy Donovan to UCLA stuff? Sometimes I think people just make stuff up. Meanwhile, Minnesota was turned down by Flip Saunders. Which is all you need to know about that job.

4. There were 1,820 people in ESPN’s contest who correctly predicted that Wichita State and Syracuse would be in the Final Four. I’m guessing they were all Shockers fans. My bracket is ruined with only Louisville still alive. It’s in the 74th percentile, which isn’t very good but better than most of the so-called experts at ESPN. Colin Cowherd is in the 10th percentile. Remind me not to listen when he’s talking about college basketball.

1. The best part of Thursday night was meeting up with a couple of old friends. Jeff Miller, whom I succeeded as sports editor of the Gainesville Sun, and Scott Noll, who worked for me in Gainesville, both came to the sports bar at our hotel. A lot of stories were shared and we showed off pictures of our kids. The last time I saw Jeff’s kids they were running around the back yard. Now they’re in their 30’s. Man, I’m getting old.

2. We talked about how the Big 10 teams love to get away from their conference and play somebody else. I think the same goes for Syracuse. When you’re familiar with that zone it’s easier to attack and Syracuse looked very ordinary at the end of the season. But in the tourney, teams find themselves lost in it.

3. Some nights the shots go in and some nights they don’t. They didn’t for Miami, which shot 35 percent from the field and their magical season is over. The Hurricanes took 13 more shots than Marquette and were still handled. I don’t think Reggie Johnson’s absence was as much a physical issue as an emotional one.

4. Classic case of overreaction — Aaron Craft has the ball with the clock winding down and two Arizona players chase him leaving LaQuinton Ross wide open for a three. Is every Buckeyes’ game going to come down to the last shot?

Tomorrow, we move to the media hotel which is in Dallas. The NCAA in its infinite wisdom has placed the media 30 minutes from the stadium. I’m guessing that was part of the bid to get a regional here, that Dallas would have to be involved.

We’ll force ourselves to stay in a luxury hotel and take shuttles to and from the stadium. It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it. Hah!

I saw this statistical comparison on a website called MrSEC.com. They took the production of each SEC player, his positive plays and the minutes he was on the court and declared that Ole Miss forward Murphy Holloway was the most productive player in the SEC this year. Jarnell Stokes of Tennessee was second.

Florida’s starters? Patric Young had the highest ranking at No. 8 with Erik Murphy at No. 10. Scottie Wilbekin was ranked 28th, Mike Rosario 35th and Kenny Boynton 37th.

The Player of the Year Kentavious Caldwell-Pope of Georgia was ranked seventh. Marshall Henderson of Ole Miss was 24th.

I’m not sure how accurate their formula is because four of LSU’s players were in the top 16 and Kentucky had zero.

Four From The Floor:

1. On Saturday night I thought the UCLA basketball team was staying here, but it turned out to be the UCLA track team. I asked one of the athletes in the hotel elevator this morning if it was a coincidence that they were here when their basketball team was playing in the NCAA Tournament. He said, “Yeah, it’s coincidence. If we had planned this we would have planned on them winning.” Now they have to go find a new basketball coach. Ben Howland’s off-the-court issues ended up getting him fired.

2. There has been a lot of talk at this regional in Austin about how the Big Ten teams have shown a lot of offense now that they’re not facing Big Ten defenses. We’ll see tonight if that holds true, but Minnesota certainly put up a lot of points in its first game. Michigan looks like an offensive juggernaut. Even Michigan State scored some points. There’s some truth to the theory that these guys are so happy not to be playing against each other.

3. See ya, Gonzaga. I don’t know anybody who had the Zags going very far in the tournament. There’s just something to be said for not playing against high-quality competition in the season.

4. If you had told me back on Nov. 29 that I was watching a Sweet 16 team when Florida pounded Marquette 82-49, I would’ve told you that you were crazy. In that game Vander Blue scored 20 points, but nobody else on the team scored more than six. I remember walking away from the game thinking this isn’t a tournament team. And now they’re one of the last 16 standing. It just shows you what a good coach Buzz Williams is.

1. I was courtside, obviously, when Brett Comer lofted an underhanded pass that seemed to be a huge mistake only to see Chase Fieler come flying to the basket for the one-handed dunk that was the signature moment in Florida Gulf Coast’s win over Georgetown. It was during a timeout in the Florida game and I let out an audible, “Whoa!” Back in the press room where some of the hacks were watching the game, it was an even louder reaction. It’s been a pretty good sports year for Florida Gulf Coast so far.

2. Miami is a lock to be in the Sweet 16. I watched the last half of the Illinois-Colorado game at the Frank Erwin Center and both of those teams are awful. They lack skill and good decision-making. The SEC may be down but I thought I was watching a Wednesday play-in game in Nashville.

3. The buzz going into the Minnesota-UCLA game was that the Gophers would kill the Bruins with their rebounding but both teams had 35. What Minnesota did to win easily was shoot the lights out. UCLA offered no defensive resistance. Zero. Nada. Minnesota shot 51 percent from the field and 56 percent from 3-point range.

4. I’ll say this again, Ole Miss is a dangerous team in this tournament but not because of Marshall Henderson. He’s the circus but Murphy Holloway and reginald Buckner are the guys putting up the tents. They combined for 19 points and 21 rebounds against Wisconsin. Henderson needed 21 shots to score 19 points.

1. I can’t say I am surprised that Missouri laid an egg in the tournament. If you watched that team this year, it was a collection of good players but it only acted like a team at home. And never bet on Frank Haith in the Big Dance. That’s two straight first-round losses for Haith who is 1-3 overall.

2. Ben Howland was in a particularly grumpy mood at his press conference Thursday. At one point, he covered up the mike and asked the moderator to admonish the writers behind the curtain for being too noisy. Later, he brought up the incident again with the moderator. We’re working here, man. Oh, and we were watching the Marquette-Davidson game.

3. You always want a 12 beating a five in your bracket but if you didn’t pick Oregon over Oklahoma State, it’s only because you didn’t listen. Everyone knew Oregon was terribly underseeded. The one thing that you can’t know is whether or not a team left it all at its conference tournament or whether it is still riding the wave. Oregon’s hanging 10, while New Mexico is wiped out.

4. One reason Syracuse is a good bet to go far every year is that if you haven’t seen that 2-3 zone it can be hard to score points. Take Montana, please. It scored 34 points in a game that was over by the half.

1. There’s a lot of buzz in Nashville that Tennessee is going to make the field. Jerry Palm of CBSsports.com has the Vols in, Joe Lunardi does not. He has them as his first team out. Tennessee may end up benefitting from the lack of mid-major conferences producing conference champs other than the team that would have been in anyway. We’ll see tonight but if Tennessee gets in we might see both the Vols and Ole Miss in Dayton for the First Four.

2. I think Florida is locked into a three seed. Even if the Gators win today in the SEC Tournament final, I don’t think they’ll jump to a two seed. Then again, Florida would have won both the regular season and conference tournament and played a tough schedule (25th in strength of schedule). And the teams ranked below them in RPI (Nos. 8-12) all lost in their conference tournament.

3. The state of Florida will have three teams in the tournament with Miami and Florida Gulf Coast also in. Think about this — the state of Texas will have no teams in the tournament. Neither will Alabama for the third time in the last seven years. Alabama has the last four national champions in football, but basketball is another story. I felt bad for Anthony Grant Saturday night because he’s had his team right on the cusp the last couple of years only to come up empty.

4. One of my pet peeves is the stat about coaches winning close games. Florida was 0-5 this year in games decided by less than five points. But does anyone think the two games against Alabama were not close games? If you’re up four points with a minute to play and the other team starts fouling and you win by seven, that’s not considered a close game. Or if you make a three at the buzzer to lose by five, that is considered a close game. To me, any game that you could still win or lose in the last three minutes is a close game. The final score isn’t always the true reflection of how close a game was during crunch time.

1. OK, so here’s why I think Kentucky has a chance to make the NCAA field. There is nothing to suggest they should but isn’t the tournament more interesting if the Wildcats are in it? I know the NCAA selection committee isn’t supposed to consider this but if they stick Kentucky in Dayton for the First Four it would mean a sellout and better ratings. I know I’d watch. It will be interesting to see how many Kentucky fans stay for the duration of the SEC Tournament. This event is a reunion for a lot of them and they don’t want to go home even if their team is.

2. Duke is still probably going to be a No. 1 seed even though it won’t have won either its conference regular season title or the tournament. I mean, they have to have four No. 1s, right? The Blue Devils loss to Maryland was an indication of just how wide open this NCAA Tournament is going to be. With Ryan Kelly back, I thought they were the favorites to win the whole thing. But college basketball is unpredictable, especially this season.

3. SEC commish Mike Slive doesn’t want the launch of the new SEC Network to be the story this week to take away from basketball. That’s why the league is waiting until mid-April to announce it officially. I talked to Slive about it on Friday and he was pumped up. You know that if the SEC is doing something this big, the league is going to do it the right way.

4. UCLA suffered a major blow Friday when freshman Jordan Adams was lost with a broken foot late in their win over Arizona. He was leading them in scoring and had 24 against the Wildcats. How it affects their seeding will be interesting but that is a team that is not deep anyway. North Carolina’s P.J. Hairston needed eight stitches in his non-shooting hand Friday and the Tar Heels don’t know about his status today.