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
As a coach, all you're trying to do is feed them stuff that's going to help them grow faster. You hope that they take their vegetables, and they grow up healthy and they understand. And some of them do and, you know what, it certain situations they have.
That's a really, really interesting question because I've always been a big, big believer that things that have happened in the past, negatively or positively, don't affect your future. I believe I have to work harder now as a head coach, and what I mean by that is we've got to try to continue to recruit good, quality kids.
Every time we were ready to blow it open, they hit a three.
Arkansas' fans do a great job in this building. It's a shame the weather caused a big problem -- this was the smallest crowd I've ever seen here.
Arkansas fans are great fans. It's a shame because you have two really great teams playing against each other and it wasn't a sellout because of the weather in the area.
The last 32 minutes of the game, we were totally outplayed, outperformed, out-everything. I don't think the score is indicative of how they outplayed us in this game.
The last three or four days have been an incredible ride, but nothing like this.
I'm not really worried about how many games back we are. Even if we would have won tonight, Tennessee is still in control.
I'm not really concerned about that with us at this point. I'm concerned about us going into each game being the best we can be.
I'm going to gain pleasure if that happens Monday night.
I'm going to support any decision our players make, but I hope to be very involved in the process. The thing you have to understand is that our kids don't want to just make it to the NBA. They want to excel.
I'm not even worried about that. I don't even focus on that. I don't talk about that. That's completely out of our hands. That's the selection committee. And that has to do with us winning basketball games.
I'm not even concerned about that right now. I'm more worried about playing LSU (Saturday at home). Even before this game, Tennessee was in control of its own destiny.
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.