Billy Donovan
Billy Donovan
William John Donovan, Jr.is an American professional basketball coach who is currently the head coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association. He previously spent 19 seasons at the University of Florida, where his Florida Gators men's basketball teams won two NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships in 2006 and 2007. Donovan has more wins than any other coach in the history of the Florida basketball program, and he coached the Gators to more NCAA tournament appearances,...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth30 May 1965
CityRockville Centre, NY
After practice, he'll thank me three or four times before we leave the gym.
Someone told me his comments after the game was he put blame on himself. That's wrong. If anything I hold myself more accountable than I would hold him. The only thing I told him in that situation is not get ahead of himself and say, I probably should have called time out. That's probably what we needed to do. But hopefully next time he'll be able to learn.
As a basketball team you have to go through it. They need it. The game came down to our inexperience on the basketball court to their experience.
Auburn is a very difficult team to play against, because they take so many threes. When they make them like they did - and I thought they made some awful difficult shots - they're going to hang around and play with anybody.
That's what we're trying to build here at Florida. That's what we're trying to create. It has to start somewhere.
That takes a kid with unbelievable character. It takes a kid who cares about the team, a kid who wants to win.
That's just what they want to do. I think they're having a lot of fun; I think they're different types of kids. They're not prepared to make the next step right now. They want to be here, they want to play, they want to be together was a group. They want to stay to play together as a team.
That's generally a recipe for disaster, but because we defended the 3-point line that gave us an opportunity.
Actually it's going to start next year. It's a five for one. We've got you guys coming here five times and then we'll come back and play you guys there.
Coach Pitino sat me and Delray down and told us, 'If you take one shot, we'll lose,' ... I don't know if it was radical as much as he was saying to us, 'Here's what we have to do to take advantage of the way Georgetown is playing.'
Coming out of high school, he was one of the few guys that could dominate a game without scoring, ... He was special. The way he played against us was the way people thought he'd be. If he played like that every game, he wouldn't have been at Villanova very long.
The thing that's so shocking of his 37, he only took 14 shots. He got to the free-throw line tonight. That was the difference.
The thing that gave me the most enjoyment on the bench is that I've never seen so many players at one time wanting to see him do it, wanting to see him grab a rebound or get an assist or score. I've never seen anything like that.
So much of it right now has nothing to do with the talent level. It has to do with their makeup. It has to do with what they're about.