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
Self-inflicted wounds, you know. It was all just self-inflicted.
Self-inflicted wounds. I knew it was going to be this kind of a game. I told our team we're going to have to grind it out and win ugly.
Self-inflicted wounds. All just self-inflicted. We contributed to them getting back in the game with our mental errors.
Offensively, pretty much the entire game, I thought we played very well. But we played an exceptional half defensively in the second half. We were just fair at best in the first half.
No question, we have depth issues with only eight scholarship players.
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.
This has been a remarkable run to this point. There was just so much uncertainty surrounding our season with people leaving early and guys having to step up.
This has been a great place. It's hard to believe it's been almost 10 years.
They've been totally selfless and they've been all about the team and they've been all about winning.
They've been able to inspire a lot of different people... people that maybe are really, really in need.
They started to understand that playing hard isn't enough. I think that stretch helped them understand that there was another piece to winning.
A lot of it was their slapping, their reaching, their grabbing, experienced ways they know how to do things. I don't want to say they frustrated us, but they made things difficult.
A lot of our guys don't have shirt, jacket and ties, so we wanted them to be as neat as possible.