Despite an earlier-than-expected exit from the SEC Basketball Tournament this week, the projection of the future for the Women’s Basketball program at the University of Florida is a positive one under Kelly Rae Finley. They will finish with a winning record in consecutive seasons for the first time in a decade. People are taking notice of the squad, and of Finley, and just what kind of program is being rebuilt in Gainesville.
Finley made noise a year ago when she was thrown into an interim head coach role shortly before the 2021-2022 season. She proceeded to lead that squad to a 21-11 record- besting the year before her takeover when the Gators were 12-14. She was rewarded with removing the word “interim” from her title one day after the last regular season game was played.
Finley has injected an infectious attitude into the program and fans are taking notice. Her outgoing style and engaging personality made a big impression on former Florida football defensive lineman Wally Smojver, who played for a renaissance program himself in Gainesville from 1979 to 1980. That year-to-year changeover marked the largest win increase between two seasons in Division 1 history when they went from 0-10-1 to 8-4.
Smojver has hung around the athletic program for decades. He left town for years on end, but always came back. He moved back to Gainesville in recent years, one can find him at all kinds of Gator sporting events- and he’s not hard to miss with his 6-foot-6 frame.
But it was a chance encounter with Finley that directed his attention to her program. He’d been to a game or two in the previous year, but the two met at Spurrier’s Restaurant one night when several of Florida’s teams and coaches were meeting. He was introduced to Finley and the two hit it off.
Smojver made it to a couple of ladies’ early season games this year. The team was winning, and things were going well. As a former high school football coach, though, Smojver focused on the interactions between Finley and her players.
“I paid attention during timeouts, not how she was interacting with the girls, but how the girls were interacting with her,” he said. “Were they listening to her when she was trying to coach her up? Were their eyes all over the arena? Were they paying attention? What the body language was? And they were into it. They were responding to her style and her coaching. Her style and coaching have a lot to do with family, that’s how she treats those girls.”
Smojver is someone that has been helping draw funding to the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) and the various organizations that facilitate that in Gainesville, but mostly for football. He tends to hang around people that can make a difference that way.
Smojver is a long-time friend is Jeff Nudelman, the CEO of Stuart Building Products. Nudelman is a UF graduate and a lifelong Gator and has always found ways to give back to the school and athletic programs. He’s taken an interest in NIL and how it can help, directing almost all of that to football help.
But Nudelman was being primed for a side deal.
Smojver and Nudelman had been discussing the women’s basketball program, Finley and the various things that Smojver had seen with his own eyes about the program. By chance, the two were on the sideline of a late-season football game in The Swamp when Finley walked up and was introduced to Nudelman. It didn’t take long for Finley to impress.
“The three of us sat there and talked and had a great conversation for about 15 minutes and I turned to Jeff afterward and said ‘now you see why I want to help her Jeff?’ and he said, ‘Absolutely, let’s do it’.
In the meantime, Smojver made his way to practice a few times and started to get to know some of the players. A former on-stage promoter, Smojver is a rah-rah type that is not shy about giving a pep talk and was asked to do so a time or two.
Some of the players made an impact on him. One, in particular, was senior guard Nina Rickards, who Smojver decided to tell his life story. Of Croatian descent, his mom escaped from communism when she was pregnant with him. “The communists killed my dad,” he said. “She escaped to Austria; she was caught and put in a refugee camp. That’s where I was born.”
“She had tears in her eyes,” Smojver said about Rickards, who was listening intently. “Then she tells me how she was homeless in New York until she got a scholarship.”
One of the things about women’s basketball, in particular, is that it’s a sport where there are a lot of Nina Rickards that may struggle, need a chance or need a little extra support.
It is the kind of group where a little extra money via NIL could help. So Smojver and Nudelman, along with help from Finley and the Gator Collective, made a plan to award the ladies on the squad.
“Jeff and I have been involved over the years with trying to help people that need it the most,” Smojver said. “If you look at the demographics of college sports, women’s basketball is probably the poorest. They come from the poorest backgrounds.”
In a ceremony held in January, the ladies dressed up and were told at the ceremony they would be receiving $1,000 each through NIL and the generosity of Nudelman. The event was great. Each lady spoke to a crowd of about 40 in attendance, which also included media. The ladies told their stories and opened up.
Nudelman flew in for the event and left admiring all the ladies- and Finley- even more than he did when he wrote the check in the first place.
“(Nudelman) told me afterward when I was driving him to the airport, ‘you know what? I had an incredible time. I love these girls. You know what? We’re going to do it again for them’,” Smojver said.
“Those girls brought a tear to my eye. I loved hearing their personal stories and we’re going to do it again,” Nudelman continued.
That led to a surprise last week.
Nudelman flew into town and with only Finley knowing ahead of time. Smojver and Nudelman met privately with the team in the locker room before one of their biggest wins of the season against Alabama.
“The season was full of ups and downs and you guys learned a lot,” Smojver told them in the locker room. “You’re building a foundation, but at the same time, the one thing that you never lost is that you played together. You were all family.”
To much excitement, Smojver and Nudelman passed on to the ladies that there would be another $1,000 each coming soon through NIL opportunities.
As much as it made the ladies feel great, the two couldn’t be happier to help make a difference.
“They’re all really cool people,” Smojver said. “It’s easy to help these girls.”
And some of the future funding won’t just have to come from the likes of Nudelman.
‘I’ve taken Kelly and CJ (assistant Cynthia Jordan) to the Chamber of Commerce to discuss a couple of businesses to help sponsor next season and for more funding,” Smojver said.
“Because of what we’ve done she’s gotten 4-5 calls from people and businesses in town for people to meet with her and see how they can help.’
Now it’s up to the ladies to pay it forward. They will get to be themselves, but NIL isn’t designed as pay-for-play, so there has to be something more involved. It should be a win-win for the program.
“A part of the whole program besides getting the money is introducing them out in the community and I have some people from the police department and from the chamber that are working with them… some community leaders in the minority areas of town. We’re going to get the girls out there to do some academic stuff like ‘Reading with the Gators, Doing Math with the Gators’ and have them work with kids. We’re going to do some camps for free in the minority areas.
“We’re also going to create a ‘kid crazy’ section in the arena (for games). We’ll bring a bunch of kids in and we’ll give them a t-shirt, soda, and hot dog, and put them in a section and let them go crazy. After the game, we will get them on the court to maybe shoot baskets with the ladies and get autographs. It’s really to get the girls out into the community.”
“We’re helping her build the program from the ground up… from the community up.”
And this should help the program in other ways. Giving NIL funding to women’s basketball is just not a common thing. There may be a popular player or two on some squads nationally that earn NIL funds for whatever reason, but as far as a program, there aren’t many. This should help to recruit. Notably, Finley just signed the second-only McDonald’s All-American in program history.
“She’s making a video about the reactions of the girls when they found out and she’s using it to send to her recruits,” Smojver said. “It helps put us on the map with about 8-10 programs around the country because ladies aren’t getting paid around the country.”
But as more are finding out, “it’s easy to want to help these girls.”
By Bob Redman.