What were you doing in 1981?
The answer for the entire roster of the Florida Southern College men’s basketball team is: They weren’t born. Still, the 2014-15 edition of the Moccasins is now forever linked with the 1980-81 team – both are NCAA Division II national champions.
Florida Southern captured this year’s title with a 77-62 victory over Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the championship game of the tournament on March 28. The run was especially sweet for the Moccasins’ six-man senior class, five of whom – Stephen Battle, Kevin Capers, Bubby Johnson, Tyler Kelly and Tyler Logan – started every game of the 36-1 season.
“We've got a great group of guys that represent Florida Southern not only on the court, but off the court, and I can't be prouder to be their coach and I'm going to miss them,” said Florida Southern coach Linc Darner, who improved to 218-72 in his ninth season at the helm of the Moccasin program.
Kelly added: “We’ve been talking about this all year, actually all four years; we said we wanted to get coach Darner a ring. We don’t get (rings) for a conference championship. We won, but we don’t get a ring for those. We just talked about it all year.”
