Billy Donovan was not sent from heaven to coach Florida’s basketball team. He is no miracle worker, magic healer or instant fix. On Saturday, he and the No. 1 seeded Gators will appear in their fourth Final Four in 14 seasons, but it took years for Donovan to turn water into wine.
Before reaching the Sweet 16 in the 1998-1999 season, Donovan limped his way to a 27-32 record during his first two years in Gainesville. Four years after Lon Kruger coached Florida into its first Southeastern Conference Championship and its first Final Four, athletic director Jeremy Foley was stuck with a 33-year-old coach whose only prior head coaching experience was with Marshall for two seasons.
But if there’s any word that best encapsulates Donovan’s coaching method, it’s “process.”
Back in his playing days at Providence, “Billy the Kid” managed to average only two points per game during his freshman campaign and just three per game the following year. When his mentor and now friend Rick Pitino took over the head coaching job for the Friars in 1985, Donovan finally came into his own — averaging 15.1 points per game as a junior and then 20.6 as a senior.
Providence’s 1987 squad, led by Donovan at the point guard position, climbed its way to the Final Four. Although the Friars fell to Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse squad in the national semifinal matchup, Donovan — a scrawny, 5-foot-11 kid from Long Island — finished his collegiate career with All-Big East first team honors as well as an All-American honorable mention.
“I’ve never had in my life anyone work as hard to improve as him, in 35 years,” Pitino would later say of his pupil.
After a one-season NBA career with the New York Knicks, Donovan began to use his knowledge from his playing career to transition into the coaching realm. And just like his Providence career, Donovan’s career as Florida’s coach took a couple of years to get off the ground and flourish.
He brought in future-NBA talent in Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem to transform Florida from a program that averaged 11.5 wins per season before 1996 to a 22-win season in 1998-1999. The very next year, Donovan brought back all but one starter to help his team make its first national championship appearance in school history.
Although Steve Spurrier had brought Florida football back onto the national scene with a national title of his own, Donovan was not far behind in his process of transforming the Gators’ basketball program into a winning one. Still, even with the unprecedented success on the court, Foley had a difficult time drawing fans into the stands. So Donovan took a crack at that as well.
As soon as he arrived on campus in 1996, Donovan instituted the “Billy D 3-on-3 Challenge,” which pitted him and two of his assistant coaches against three UF students. If the students could take down Donovan, Anthony Grant and John Pelphrey in two of three contests, they would each earn a free road trip with the Gators during the regular season.
For eight years, Donovan suited back up and took to the court as part of the annual challenge. Even as his assistants came and went, he was always out there for the students. After winning the first five, he and his coaches lost the next three. Either way, Donovan was winning over the hearts of the Rowdy Reptiles.
He showed he could get NBA-level talent like Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer to stay and fight for a second-straight title in 2007. He showed he could withstand the bad days as well as the good after settling for two straight NIT appearances immediately following the championship years.
And then he showed he had the patience to build up another championship-caliber team while Kentucky coach John Calipari snagged nearly every top recruit en route to a 2012 national championship. Although Donovan wasn’t pulling in the players like Anthony Davis and Julius Randle, he was slowly assembling the right guys for his team.
Calipari has seven McDonald’s All-Americans on this year’s roster. Donovan has three — two of whom come off the bench if they see the court at all. But unlike Calipari, Donovan has groomed a team strong in every link of the chain.
He took a potential one-and-done center in Patric Young and transformed him into the face of the program. He took a troubled Scottie Wilbekin and molded him into what he called a role model for the community as well as the SEC Player of the Year.
He took a beaten and battered Will Yeguete and gave him one final year to overcome the pain and achieve greatness. And he took a lost Casey Prather and helped him find an identity and become one of the Gators’ most dangerous scoring threats.
Because to Donovan, success is not one-and-done. It’s a development. It’s a journey. It’s taking something good and making it great.
For three years, Donovan has put together good teams that always found their way into the Elite Eight. But it took until this year to make this squad a championship one.
“When things don’t go your way, it causes you to pause and reflect and to try to find out a solution,” Donovan said. “I think one of the greatest things and one of the most difficult things in life is when something doesn’t go the way you want it to go [you must] legitimately find the answer and the reason of why it didn’t go and make the correction.”
Well Billy, problem solved.
Follow Jonathan Czupryn on Twitter @jczupryn
Billy Donovan looks down the court during Florida’s 62-52 win against Dayton on Saturday in FedExForum in Memphis, Tenn.
