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
There's no question Corey has the ability to make game-changing plays with his length, his quickness, and speed. But more than anything else, he gives us an experienced player who gives us a little depth and maybe some size across our frontline to help us rebound a little better.
That's the one thing we don't know. That's the big question right now is this something that gets prolonged into the end of February, the beginning of March. Right now, we're hopeful that it's not going to be that situation.
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.
I told I think it would be great if that's what they want to do if they came out public with it so everybody knows. No more questions about it or talk about it. It's over and done with and this is where they're at.
I said to those guys, we're doing a thing now and I'm probably going to be asked some questions beforehand and/or after and I said what I would like to do is say something. They were like, 'Yeah, yeah Coach, that would be great.' Now the whole thing they did I didn't know. I just told them I was going to paint a picture and say I don't know what those guys' futures were.
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.
Georgia is a basketball team that's much improved from the 3-point line. There's no question that offensively they are a lot more explosive than they were a year ago.
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.
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.
We just tried to continue to attack and mix up our defenses. I told our guys this game would come down to the same things we've been doing all year - unselfishness, making the extra pass and being able to defend and rebound.
We weren't good enough. We weren't built to make a deep run in the tournament.
We were playing for survival. I felt fortunate just going into the locker room being tied at halftime.