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 one of those things I can hope will get better and he can get back to playing because it's very obvious watching him play that he's not as reckless and daring and playing like he's capable of. I don't know if there's a level of uncertainty if he plants or runs or jumps or if the pain is so severe he just can't do what he's supposed to do.
It's very, very obvious watching him play that he's not as reckless and daring and playing like he's capable of. I don't know if there's a level of uncertainty when he plants or jumps or runs, or if he just feels like the pain is so severe that he just can't do what he needs to do.
The whole thing with them is, if they pull up on jump shots in the lane, they take runners in the lane, and we are giving two, we are going to live with that. But we were not living with threes.
That takes a kid with unbelievable character. It takes a kid who cares about the team, a kid who wants to win.
Corey was a definite spark for us at the start of the second half. He made a couple baskets to get us going and he did some good things defensively.
It's teams like George Mason that give so many people hope in their lives, just seeing what great things can be accomplished.