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
The biggest thing for David is to make good decisions and play very hard. There are some games, athletically, where what David can do is stretch the defense and really shoot it. So, we have to make sure in this game (Ole Miss) that we have him in the right match-up situation because they have so much quickness.
The best way to describe this team is we have a very good motor, ... We have high-energy people. We have a lot of youthful enthusiasm.
It was a great college basketball game with both teams going back and forth and they were able to take the lead on a play. We got Lee a pretty good shot and if he makes it, we're up by one. It was a little bit short. I thought it had a great chance to go in.
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 was a great win against a very good team. From start to finish, LSU has really had an unbelievable season, individually and as a team. They've been the most consistent team all year long.
It was good to see us score so many points without those guys playing so much.
It was good to see those guys get rewarded out there. Our normal rotation guys enjoyed those guys' success on the floor.
They were really showing signs of becoming a very good team. The last 32 minutes we were outplayed, out-coached and out-everything by South Carolina.
We weren't good enough. We weren't built to make a deep run in the tournament.
To me, he's involved in every aspect of their offense. He can score off the dribble and he's gotten better at finding his own shot. And he's probably as good as any point guard in this league in terms of knowing when to shoot, when not to shoot, when to go inside and when to pull it out.
Those three losses, to be honest, I felt pretty encouraged. I just didn't want our guys to get down. I wanted them to see 'Hey listen, this is what we're giving up, and we're losing in overtime and losing by 2 to 3 points. Imagine if we shore this up, how good we can be.' That was kind of the message I tried to give them during that time.
Flat out, the past several years -- to be totally honest -- we weren't good enough to advance. They didn't advance far enough in the tournament because maybe some of the past teams weren't built to make a deep run in the tournament.
Flat-out, the last several years, being totally honest, we weren't good enough to advance.
We've had some good quality wins on the road at Providence and Miami, but our guys still feel like they have an enormous amount to prove. The mindset of our basketball team is we feel like going against Georgia is a lot to prove.