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
They like to go up and down the floor and we like to go up and down the floor. The team that executes that phase better is the team that will win the game.
They've had some very heartbreaking losses that they've had chances to win. They're coming off a big win against Kentucky. To me, they're playing as well as anyone in our league.
The second half was a back-and-forth basketball game. Give Arkansas credit. They made some plays and their kids played hard and I thought it was a great college basketball game that both teams had a chance to win at times.
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 knew both teams played sound defense. I thought whoever could attack better had the best chance to win this game.
I'm just happy for everybody. I'm very blessed and very thankful for the opportunity to coach these kids. I thought whoever attacked the other team's defense better was going to have the best chance of winning the game.
I'm very, very thankful. The NCAA Tournament to me, what's the lottery motto? You've got to be in it to win it.
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 a courageous win for our basketball team.
It was one of those games where we did enough offensively to win the game . . . (but) you've got to defend and rebound better than we did.
This team, starting the season, I felt had all the team makeup. Unselfishness. They wanted to learn, they wanted to work, they wanted to get better. I didn't know if we'd have the experience to win basketball games or enough basketball games because we'd never been there before.
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.
I've never gotten into any of that stuff. If we win basketball games, our seed will continue to improve. If we don't win basketball games, our seed will not improve.