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
Whether or not we're deserving of all this, I don't know, ... I'm just trying to look at the bigger picture of my team.
What they've been able to do this year is great for basketball.
We felt like Darrel Mitchell was the key to their team, so we tried to run at him and trap him as much as we could. When he gets his 18 or 19 points, everything else falls into place.
We're just a basketball team that doesn't have a lot of depth right now. That's our biggest challenge.
We're a different team. I don't know if it's better or good or what it is, but it's different with different roles. I don't know how much we'll take from last year's game. It's a new day, new season, new opportunity.
We're 16-0 right now, but we could very easily be 11-5. It's that fragile. We have to work for everything we get. We had to work against Auburn all the way to the end. We had to work all the way until the end against Mississippi State.
We didn't want to put David into the game, but we didn't have much of a choice. Anthony (associate coach Anthony Grant) was out of eligibility.
We've got a very quick turnaround. We're going to have to get a lot done in a very short period of time.
It's hard to win a road game when it's 42-20 at the free throw line. It really disrupted our flow and made us stagnant in our offense.
I went off pretty good at halftime. It's hard if you're not making shots to get off to a good start. We could have very, very easily have been up 15 or 20 in the first half.
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.
It's hard to win on the road when it's 42-20 (Arkansas' favor) in free throws shot. That's a big discrepancy. But Arkansas made only 5 of 12 free throws in the first half and that kept us in it.
Corey just didn't have it today. And it's hard to expect him to have it when you don't practice for two days.
I think you could see how hard it is to play back-to-back nights. I didn't like our defensive intensity in the first half. In the second half, we did a much, much better job.