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
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.
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 really thought that maybe they were not as fresh coming down the stretch. That was kind of our hope in the second half, that maybe we could try to wear them down because they were really sticking with their seven guys.
I thought the release by one of them there in the second half at the end of the game, his follow through did not look good on it and it came up short. Lee was in here (Sunday) night getting shots up. I've obviously got to be intelligent here because I've got a player burden in Brewer and we're down to eight scholarship guys. It's not like every day Lee can run and bang and go up and down the floor.
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.
I was hopeful going into second half. I thought maybe they were starting to get a little worn down. We were hopeful maybe their shots wouldn't go in and maybe they wouldn't rebound as well.
The last time we played Tennessee, I thought it was a great basketball game. Both teams played well. It was a tie score with 20 seconds to go. Both teams played a pretty balanced game. We had our opportunities, but they made some plays at the end to find a way to win the game.
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.
I thought we left a lot of points on the board in the first half, because we had 11 turnovers and we were shooting 52 or 53 percent from the field. Second half we only turned it over three times and we shot 52 percent from the field and that's why we had a 52-point half.
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.
I thought we played well on the defensive end to only be down at 11 at the half with the way we shot the ball. As well as we played defensively in the first half, we didn't do the things we needed to on the boards and on defense in the second half.
That takes a kid with unbelievable character. It takes a kid who cares about the team, a kid who wants to win.
It's teams like George Mason that give so many people hope in their lives, just seeing what great things can be accomplished.
You're playing a game right now, living each moment. Play each moment. They peaked and probably played well because of the setbacks we had in February that helped us grow.