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
Obviously as a freshman, without question he was not only one of the best freshmen in the league, but was one of the better players in the league. He's got great size. He can shoot over top of people. He makes every difficult shots.
Chris, really, to be honest with you, was a very, very difficult guy to coach in his first two years here. And he has really grown.
Tonight happened to be one of his nights. We become a very difficult team when he shoots like that.
It was a good win for us. Vanderbilt is a very good basketball team. Vanderbilt is a very difficult team to play against. The biggest thing is that our basketball team is still learning. Vanderbilt did some things to us at first where we had to settle in and we picked it up, certainly in the second half, but the first 10 minutes were tough.
It's going to be a difficult road challenge for us because of the different problems they present us.
It's an area he's invested a lot of time in. It would have been very difficult for us (Wednesday night) had he gone 12-for-22 from the line, or 10-for-22 from the line.
They made it very difficult for us to get prepared. Just trying to space the floor. And you have to extra pass against them.
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.
I thought Chris Lofton had a phenomenal night. He made some very difficult shots with people hanging on him. But that is the type of shooter he is, so you have got to give him a lot of credit. We (Florida) did a pretty good job defending them - they only shot 31 percent from the 3-point line - but he certainly made tough ones.
He has the ability to take difficult shots one, to get them off and two, to be able to make them at a high percentage. He has a special gift and there is nothing you can do about it.
I'm very happy for John. He's done an absolutely fantastic job with his team this season. It's always difficult playing a game at this level against such a close friend.
We tried to make them score outside their offense. We gave up 10 offensive rebounds in the first half, but in the second half I felt like their frontcourt was fatigued.
We just recently had a function where we had to go into the student assistance fund to get players some clothes. Some of our kids come from backgrounds where getting a suit on short notice is difficult.
We just wanted to continually attack and mix up our defenses.