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 is, our kids play the game the right way. They're going to make the extra pass and move the basketball. We're averaging almost 20 assists.
We didn't have the ball movement and the player movement that we had had in the course of the year. But I thought the defense and rebounding in the first half kept us somewhat close. I was pleasantly surprised that we were only down 11.
I don't know there's a clear-cut favorite right now. If you're going to look at what's happened, LSU has been the most impressive in our league. You're dealing with depth issues for everybody, you're going to be dealing with fatigue issues, you're going to have to deal with foul trouble, you're going to have to deal with playing three teams in a row and you have to deal and move from one day to the next.
It's good to see him do well because he was non-existent at South Carolina. He's having a phenomenal year. I'm hoping he can continue to evolve and move forward. We missed his rebounding last game, but he did a terrific job on both ends of the floor today. It's good to see him learning.
It's nice to do something that hasn't been done in 21 years. But it does not move you any closer to the goals you have.
He's probably never going to get to a point where he feels great the rest of the season. But I think his confidence level is high. It's good to see him take the amount of shots he took. He put up 11 3s on the road. It was great to see him confidently shoot the basketball and it was great to see him move to the next shot, even when he missed a couple in a row.
For our basketball team, it was a tale of two halves. In the first half, our guys were very, very impatient on offense. We didn't have the ball movement and the player movement we needed to have. We had good ball movement and player movement and we shot 57 percent in the second half. If we would have played similar to that and rebounded like we did in the first half, it would have been a different game. We couldn't put it all together.
You can't get many assists if you don't shoot the ball well. I thought our player movement in the first half at times was poor.
I'm very blessed and thankful to coach these kids.
I'm sure he'd have too because he's got some wiring in his teeth right now. If he did, he'd definitely have to wear something. I don't know how he feels about that or if that would be comfortable with him, but my guess would be he'd have to do something.
I'm very critical of myself, and I know that you need to realize your mistakes to grow.
I knew this would be a team that would play hard.
Effort has never been a problem with these guys. Our problem has been our guys not understanding and not recognizing certain situations.
Everybody's role on the team is a lot different than a year ago. For us, right now, it's really a one-game tournament. We've got to play to the best of our ability on Friday and hopefully advance and be able to play on Saturday.