Defending national champion Florida is in town for the Rady Children’s Invitational.
Moments before Florida’s high noon tipoff Thursday against TCU, a tournament official named Steve Martin (no joke) was standing in the Fun Zone reminding those around him about proper procedures for the Gator Chomp.
To wit: “Right arm up by your ear, left arm down by your side, and meet in the middle.”
And this part is critical: It’s right arm over left, not the other way around.
Got it?
Florida fans have been chomping away enthusiastically for years. They figured to embrace the tradition during the tournament opener at the University of San Diego’s Jenny Craig Pavilion, where one fan held a sign reading “Gators Gobble Horned Frogs.”
Turns out TCU didn’t get the memo, upsetting No. 10 Florida 84-80 to advance to Friday’s championship game.
Florida led by five points at halftime and doubled its lead with 15 minutes to play, but the Horned Frogs wouldn’t go away.
In fact, TCU chipped away at the lead down the stretch before moving ahead 79-77 with 48 seconds remaining on guard Brock Harding’s jumper inside the key. Harding made five of six free throws over the final 13 seconds to seal the win for the Horned Frogs.
“We stepped up our defense and we didn’t foul, which I thought was a big thing,” TCU coach Jamie Dixon said. “We got some turnovers, but at the end of the day, they didn’t get to the foul line as much. There were some careless fouls in the first half, so we had to take responsibility for that. We made that adjustment. … We battled and responded.”
Olivier Rioux, Florida’s 7-foot-9 redshirt freshman center, towers over teammates before the 2025 Rady Children’s Invitational at USD’s Jenny Craig Pavilion. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The game was so closely contested that fans never got a glimpse of Florida reserve Olivier Rioux.
The redshirt freshman from Canada made history three weeks ago when he took the court for the first time in a game against North Florida.
At 7-foot-9, Rioux is the tallest player ever to play college basketball. Unfortunately, the only glimpse fans got of him with a basketball was during warmups.
Then again, Rioux is only the second-tallest athlete to visit San Diego this year.
Savannah Bananas pitcher Dakota Albritton stood 10-foot-9, a full three feet taller than Rioux, when he took the Petco Park mound in September.
Of course, Albritton was on stilts.
Wisconsin’s Nick Boyd scored a tournament-record 36 points in the 2025 Rady Children’s Invitational game against Providence at the Jenny Craig Pavilion on Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Day 2 matchups
TCU (4-2) will play Wisconsin (5-1) in Friday’s final at 2:30 p.m. Former San Diego State guard Nick Boyd scored a tournament-record and career-high 36 points in the Badgers’ 104-83 win over Providence in the tournament’s second game.
Boyd seemed right at home in front of the red-clad crowd. He did a postgame interview, then climbed into the stands to exchange hugs with more than a dozen family members and friends. The 6-3 guard from Garnerville, N.Y., who had 18 points at halftime, was 15 of 25 from the field with four 3-pointers. He also had a game-high seven assists and seven rebounds. Boyd hit a 3-pointer with 4 1/2 minutes remaining in the game to reach 29 points, eclipsing the 28 points scored by Ole Miss’ Jaylen Murray last year against BYU.
Florida (4-2) meets Providence (4-3) in the third-place game at noon.
Gary Sladek performs the “death-defying tower of chairs” routine during the 2025 Rady Children’s Invitational at the Jenny Craig Pavilion on Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Pull up a chair (or six)
During halftime of the TCU-Florida game, a 67-year-old man walked out to halfcourt and jumped on top of a table. He then stacked six chairs on top of each other and proceeded to do a handstand once he got to the top, 25 feet above the floor.
The man was billed as “The Amazing Sladek” and his feat called the “death-defying tower of chairs.”
Sladek was calm, cool and collected during the performance. Word is, he was more nervous during pregame preparation when the two guys he recruited to hand him the chairs, a pair of young hipsters named Alex and Turner, didn’t appear up to the task.
The show went on without a hitch, to everyone’s relief.
Gary Sladek started down this path in the mid-1970s as an all-American gymnast who went to college to become a gym teacher, but took a detour and joined the circus. Sladek has traveled around the world doing daredevil acts. He has performed the chair routine thousands of times over more than four decades.
When he appeared on “America’s Got Talent,” panelist Simon Cowell asked him if anything has ever gone wrong.
“Three close calls in 45 years,” said Sladek, who righted himself each time to avoid disaster. “I can’t believe it myself. It’s crazy. I’m so thankful. I was strong out there today.”
This is my motto: “Flexibility is the key to longevity.”
To which one might add: “Musical chairs are safer than a tower of chairs.”
Memories of Maggie
TCU’s Dixon said before the Rady’s event that “I’ve been here many, many times,” speaking about San Diego in general and USD in particular.
Dixon took an official visit to USD when he was a player at Los Angeles’ Notre Dame High School before deciding to attend TCU. More than a decade later, Dixon’s sister Maggie came to Alcala Park and played on the USD women’s basketball team from 1995-99
“She was a Torero,” Dixon said. “I didn’t get to see her play a lot. She was 12 years younger. I would always get the reports back from my parents and from her after the games.”
Maggie overcame injuries early in her career to become a team captain as a senior, helping the Toreros to the 1999 WCC championship and NCAA Tournament berth.
“I’m really glad Maggie was able to play there and be a part of the university,” Dixon said. “It was a great place for her, a great education for her and the beginning of her wanting to go into playing and then coaching afterwards.”
Jamie encouraged his sister to become a coach, and Maggie became an assistant at DePaul not long after leaving from USD. In 2005, less than two weeks before the 2005-06 season began, she was hired as the head coach at Army. She guided the team to a surprising 20-11 record, won the Patriot League and advanced to the NCAA Tournament.
Maggie died tragically of a heart attack after the 2006 season, one month before her 29th birthday. She was buried in West Point Cemetery, an honor usually reserved for military officials.
Florida coach Todd Golden talks to his players during the 2025 Rady Children’s Invitational game against TCU at the Jenny Craig Pavilion on Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
They did
San Diego holds a special place in the lives of Florida coach Todd Golden and his wife, Megan.
The two met in college at Saint Mary’s, where Todd was on the men’s basketball team and Megan was on the women’s volleyball team. After getting engaged, their focus shifted to finding a good wedding location.
“We got married at Estancia in La Jolla across from UCSD,” Golden said. “I grew up in Arizona. My wife grew up in Texas. We didn’t necessarily want to have a summer wedding in either of those locations, so we picked San Diego.
“A lot of our friends from school up in the Bay Area were from down here and we felt that that was a place where people could get behind spending some time in late May, as the weather was so really nice.”
Badgers lend a hand
Wisconsin landed in San Diego at the beginning of the week.
That enabled the Badgers to visit the San Diego Zoo on Monday. The team then participated in a community event with Feeding San Diego on Tuesday.
“Anytime you can help our players maintain or regain perspective of the real world, I think is always good,” Wisconsin coach Greg Gard said. “To go in there for a couple of hours and, whether it was bagging apples or loading up canned goods and boxing up that stuff, I think our guys really enjoyed it in terms of they understand. They have a great perspective of the impact they can make and, more importantly, the help that is needed.
Added Gard: “Not only do the people who end up getting the food benefit from it, but our players benefit from it. … It was a good team-bonding experience, and it gives them a snapshot of reality sometimes when we’re living in the sports world that we are in most days. There are many, many needs out there for a lot of people.”
Shooting the 3
Providence coach Kim English played at Missouri from 2008-12 before getting a two-year taste of the NBA with the Detroit Pistons.
English has been coaching for a decade, and he’s now in his third season at Providence.
Where has the game evolved the most since he played?
“The pace and the reliance on the 3-point shot, without question,” English said. “I was on a great college team. We were No. 1 in offensive efficiency, and when I go back and look at it, we should have shot so many more 3s.”
English coaches where the 3-pointer was first embraced. Former Providence coach Rick Pitino was way ahead of the curve when he encouraged his players to launch the deep ball when the 3-pointer was adopted by the college game 40 years ago.
“He revolutionized the game with 3s on his 1986 Friar team,” English said. “Teams’ willingness to shoot 40 3s (a game) now if they could. That just wasn’t the case 15 years ago.”
And where is it headed?
“Faster, faster, faster,” English said. “More 3s. Yes. That’s where I see it going.”