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
bit coming guard point question second
In the second half, it's a little bit different because your point guard is coming at you. But there is no question that it's a different environment. It's a different place to play in.
cinderella explosive love ncaa people powerful team
In the NCAA tournament, there are two things people love to see -- a Cinderella story and a team that is so powerful and explosive they look invincible.
control george great job keeping knew percent scouting shooting shutting year
In scouting George Mason, they had been shooting 33 percent on their 3-pointers all year and as much as 42 percent. We knew we had to control their perimeter shooting. I thought we did a great job of shutting them down and keeping them off-balance.
flowing generally guard point
If your point guard doesn't play great, generally your team's not flowing very well. It's just kind of the way it is.
bad chance chances higher lose sounds tournament win
If you win games, it sounds like you have a better chance of getting into the tournament and getting a higher seed. And if you lose games, chances are you may not get in or get a bad seed.
basketball team totally watching year
In my opinion, they are a better team this year than they were a year ago watching them on film. I would say that our basketball team is totally different.
build start trying
It has to start somewhere. That's what we are trying to build at Florida. It's never been done, never been sustained.
ahead rest
Because he made shots, it energized the rest of his game. He was getting away from that. He was getting ahead of himself.
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Hopefully, it's the era that Florida won a lot of games in. They are fine. It's more drawing attention to our league.
anybody bit challenges concerned course deal happen start throughout time
I'm concerned a little bit that it may go through our team. If anybody does come back positive, we'll try to start them on some antibiotics. This is the time of year, but I don't use that as an excuse. . . . We all have to deal with challenges and different things that happen throughout the course of the year.
change good gotten guy hard kids talented totally unselfish worked
If you have a guy that's talented but totally into himself, who never had to be unselfish a day in his life, it's really hard to change that mentality. Now we've got good kids who have been unselfish and have worked hard and gotten better.
against discourage eventually guys help lane pick post single time tried
If you do the same thing against those guys every single time down the floor, they're eventually just going to pick you apart. So we just tried to change. We tried to get some weak-side help sometimes. We got up in the lane to try to discourage post feeds. We tried to get around and front.
against basketball early everybody four knew last played playing six stretch talented teams toughest
If you look at our last four to six games, everybody knew it was going to be the toughest part and stretch of our schedule. Our basketball team, when we had all that early success, I don't know if we've played against teams as talented as we're playing against now.
guys handled impressive inside national played plenty talent team win year
If you look at Carmelo Anthony, to me what was so impressive was how he handled himself. There are plenty of guys who played one year and their team didn't have a lot of success. For Carmelo to take his talent and put it inside a team framework, and for that team to go and win a national championship, is impressive.