By Gordon Mann, D3sports

Emory point guard Michael Florin showed NYU that he's a dual threat on offense. Emory athletics file photo

Most Division III teams travel to most, if not all, of their conference road games by bus. The only bus ride the Atlanta-based Emory Eagles take is to the airport so they can fly to their next UAA game. Their closest conference opponent is more than 500 miles away.

Like the rest of the UAA, Emory plays two conference games a week with Friday/Sunday road trips grouped into pairs of cities – St. Louis and Chicago, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, Boston and New York. The Eagles’ “travel partner,” which would normally be relatively close, is the University of Rochester in western New York.

The Eagles’ roster is as geographically diverse as its conference schedule with players from Texas, Oregon, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Florida and North Carolina.  Senior point guard Michael Florin comes from New York so Sunday’s game at NYU was a home coming of sorts.

Coming out of Long Island Lutheran High School in Port Washington, New York, Florin knew he wanted to play Division III basketball. He was looking at schools in the northeast when he attended one of the skill development camps and connected there with head coach Jason Zimmerman. While Florin hadn't considered Emory before that, he connected with Zimmerman, was "blown away" by him and the campus and decided Emory was "the perfect fit."

When asked about his roster, Zimmerman credits his staff's network of contacts, the program's recent success and the University itself. "It's not just our staff. It's our school. Emory University attracts the best student athletes in the country at our level."

After playing 18 minutes per game off the bench primarily as a shooting guard in his freshman season, Florin took over the starting point guard role as a sophomore in Fall 2012. He has started every game since and entered his senior year in fifth place on Emory’s all-time list for assists.

Florin is the Eagles’ primary ball handler and his teammates immediately look for him to trigger the fast break off defensive rebounds or to reset the half-court offense.  He can use dribble penetration to create open looks for his teammates or finish at the rim on his own. He’s comfortable playing up tempo, which makes him a good fit for the Emory offense that leads the UAA with 79.7 points per game.

Zimmerman knew he had a good player in Florin right away. "We thought he was going to be really good. He was competitive as heck, first off, and he can play very fast and that's how we play."

Against NYU on Sunday Florin scored 11 points in the first half, despite taking an elbow to the face and playing part of the half with gauze stuffed his nostrils to staunch the bleeding. In the second half, Florin distributed the ball to his teammates and piled up 12 assists.

Emory was trailing NYU by four with 30 seconds left in the game. Florin dribbled to the baseline, collapsing the NYU defense off the perimeter and found teammate Davis Rao for a spot-up three-pointer on the right wing.  After NYU responded with two free throws to push the lead back to three, Florin drove to the basket for an uncontested layup to cut the lead back to one.

"In the first half I was reading how they were playing me," Florin said. "They were backing up and I had some lanes and I took some easy shots. In the second half they were kind of converging on me in the beginning and I just hit open guys. Just reading and reacting -- that's how I play"

Ultimately NYU was too good from the free throw line (24-for-31) and the Violets defeated Emory, 96-92. Florin finished with 17 points, 14 assists and four steals in 33 minutes.

Zimmerman: If you can be successful in our league, you can win a national championship.

The good news for the Eagles is they have already completed all but one of their UAA road trips.  The remaining trip is February 20 at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland and then drive to Pittsburgh for a Sunday game against Carnegie Mellon. That might the easiest from a travel perspective since the two cities are a reasonable drive from each other, but not necessarily from a competition perspective. Case has the best record in the UAA at 14-4, 5-2.

Before the Emory-NYU game, one conference observer remarked that the Violets desperately needed a win after losing to Rochester last Friday night. According to him, the key to having a really good chance to win the conference is to win six of seven home games and finish at least .500 on the road, which translates to at least a 10-4 conference record.

Zimmerman agrees that makes sense and it’s still a possibility for Emory. The Eagles are 2-0 at home and could finish above .500 on the road if they sweep that Cleveland-Pittsburgh trip.

Even if Eagles don’t win the conference, they could still make the NCAA tournament as an at-large team. Over the last 10 seasons the UAA has received 13 at-large bids, fourth most among the 43 Division III conferences. Emory received an at-large bid last year and rode it all the way to the Elite 8 before losing to eventual national champions UW-Whitewater.

Zimmerman knows that, if the Eagles can get to the NCAA tournament, they’ll have a chance to make another run.

"It's something that [my staff] talked about when we came here eight years ago. If you can be successful in our league, you can win a national championship. Period. What Wash U. did last year when they went undefeated, winning seven games on the road, winning in everyone's gym, that may be harder than winning a national championship."

This is the last chance at a tournament run for Florin who will graduate with an economics degree in the spring. However the season ends, he’s proud of the progress that the program has made during his time there. When asked if Emory is now one of the elite programs in the UAA, he doesn't hesitate.

"We believe it and I think that's all that really matters. Before I got here the team won 20 games and they missed the tournament. These past four years we won 19 my freshman year, 20 and 19 and now we're pretty consistent every year. Yeah, we're up there with those teams."