ATLANTA -- Reaching the Final Four can have any number of side effects on coaches, common among them is this penchant for the wistfulness it invites.

Take Ben Howland, which is what Pitt said to UCLA almost exactly four years ago.

All right, not exactly.

Nothing likely was going to keep Howland at Pitt at the time, but the UCLA coach didn't need much prodding on the topic of Pittsburgh even yesterday.

"We loved Pittsburgh, my wife and I and our children," Howland said. "We had a great experience there. My daughter's graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in April, and I'll be back for graduation on the 28th. She's in the nursing program, a great medical program and I've been very, very happy she stayed in Pittsburgh and finished her degree there. She was a freshman there my last year.

"My mom and dad lived in Santa Barbara when I came home to UCLA. That was something that was very important to me, to be closer to family and friends. But also just the fact that UCLA has always been the dream job for me. As a child, watching the [John] Wooden teams play, with Dick Enberg doing the call, the replay on KTLA at 11 o'clock. Watching those teams as I grew up, UCLA was always, to me, the pinnacle job. So to have that opportunity was a once in a lifetime thing I couldn't pass up.

"I'd have been very happy to have stayed at Pitt the rest of my coaching career had it not worked out. Loved the people there. What a great family atmosphere and setting it has. I'm very proud of the great job that Jamie Dixon has done, continuing the program."

Howland, in four years at Pitt, was 89-40. In his first four years at UCLA, he's 91-40.

Feeling right at home

Florida has won six games in a row and is 8-1 overall in the Georgia Dome. The Gators won the 2007 and 2005 Southeast Conference tournaments in their past two trips to Atlanta.

Share and share alike

If you thought Dixon's Pitt team had made something of a science of sharing the ball and sublimating the self on offense, Florida has carried the same notion to extremes.

All five Florida starters -- Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer, Al Horford, Lee Humphrey and Taurean Green -- average in double figures, but no one averages as many as 10 shots per game. Brewer averages the most shots (9.6), Noah the least (7.3).

And still the Gators average 80 points.

Graduation daze

According to NCAA President Myles Brand, the graduation rates of the Final Four basketball programs are as follows: Florida 100 percent, Georgetown 64 percent, UCLA 44 percent, Ohio State 38 percent.

Lots of similarities

That statistical similarities between Ohio State and Georgetown, combatants in the first game today, are little short of startling.

Both teams have scoring margins of plus-11.2.

Georgetown shoots 50 percent to Ohio State's 49 percent.

Both teams shoot 41 percent from behind the 3-point line.

A discernible difference exists at the free-throw line, where Ohio State shoots 75 percent to Georgetown's 69 percent.

That could be critical in that Ohio State was the national leader in personal fouls per game.

"I think everyone's excited to see [7-foot centers] Roy Hibbert and Greg Oden," said Ohio State super-freshman Mike Conley, "but it goes a lot further than those two. Both of these are great teams, and there are a lot of role players around those big guys.

"With all the attention down low, they still have great shooters and we still have great shooters, so I think this will be about which team's guards play better.

"That's who'll win this game."