Pat Dooley’s High Five (February 17th)

I’m a big believer in taking someone’s career and sitting on the porch in a hermetically sealed jar to let it age for a while before we start decorating it.

That’s the case with Colin Castleton, who suffered a broken hand Wednesday night and will likely never play for Florida again.

It’s a real shame.

I started thinking about where he would rank among Gator centers all-time and therein lies the trickiness of this.

Because Joakim Noah, Andrew DeClercq, Dwayne Davis and several other players worth considering actually played most of their careers as the four, or power forward.

So, for this High Five, we leave those guys out as well as Castleton. It needs time to ferment.

1. Neal Walk – You never saw him play? Your loss kiddies. The guy was one rebound shy of averaging 20 a game in his junior year.

2. Al Horford – I cannot stress enough that he was the glue on those back-to-back title teams. You needed a basket, you got it down low to Big Al.

3. Dwayne Schintzius – Best passing big man ever for the Gators. Great touch. Had his problems at Florida but now we miss him.

4. Udonis Haslem – Undersized but never under-performed. He just outworked people. Huge part of a deep team that played for it all and went on to a stellar four-year career.

5. David Lee – He was a big part of the first Gator team to win the SEC Tournament. Starter for his last three seasons and parlayed his college days into a great NBA career (at least financially).